Phil used to post a Friday Fight every week in this space, so I was amused when Floyd at Threedonia posted a “Friday Night Fight” this afternoon. Even more amusing, it’s this clip from a TV movie, “Hulk vs. Thor.”
Marvel Comics’ Thor was always a dilemma for me. I only saw a few issues as a kid, and I was grateful that they paid some lip service to actual Norse mythology. But they made Thor a blonde, and shaved off his beard. (A friend told me that he understood that the artist had determined from the first that he wanted Thor to wear a red cloak, and red hair would have tended to bleed into that. I say that if you prioritize wardrobe over authenticity, you must be gay.)
Aside from the aforementioned cosmetic problems, the big change Marvel made was to make Thor bright. The Thor we meet in the Norse myths does not have what you’d call an analytical mind. He solves problems by a) hitting things with his hammer, or b) getting help from a smarter friend.
Historically, this may be a residue of class prejudice. The myths as we have them come from Viking Age poems. These poems were written by poets (skalds) who congregated around royal courts and made their fortunes by their language skills. They were intellectuals. Odin, being a god of poetry, attracted their worship, and they gave him credit for high intelligence. Thor, on the other hand, was the popular god of the common people, and the skalds portrayed him as a country rube. I suspect the farmers had other myths which portrayed Thor in a more positive light, but they didn’t get into poems that have come down to us.
The Norse gods have been something of a challenge for me in my fantasy novels, and Thor in particular. I try to follow orthodox Christian theology in my presentation of the supernatural. Christianity has generally considered heathen gods to be either a) a delusion, or b) demons (“No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God….” 1 Corinthians 10:20). It works best for fantasy purposes to treat the old gods as existent beings.
Odin’s easy. He’s smart, crafty, a liar, and it’s no stretch to imagine him as completely evil.
Thor is harder. It’s hard to envision a dumb demon.
So when I gave him a scene in The Year of the Warrior, I pretty much played him as what he is in the myths—sort of a force of nature, powerful and dumb. I cast him in a comic scene, which I think was just as corrosive to his worship as demonization.
Lars, Can you share any links to online translations of the Scandinavian mythic poems?
Also, many people lump all Scandinavians together. What differences do you see between the Swedes and the Norwegians? How have you worked the regional distinctives into your novels?
I thought you handled Thor very well, as did Dave Freer in Pyramid Power. You made him into a kind of human with power, well meaning but generally mistaken. More worthy of friendship than worship.
The term “demon” in Roman period Greek, the language of the New Testament, didn’t imply evil. It simply meant a spirit, a lesser divine power. Realize he’s not divine, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with him. Some of those powers were evil if they had existed (Moloch who drank babies’ blood, for example) – but that’s like people. Some people are evil, others try to be good.
Wow–that video. I remember liking the show, but I doubt I could watch it now–too much posturing. That “fight” could have been much faster paced.
Greybeard: Here’s a link to the text of the Prose Edda: http://sunnyway.com/runes/prose_edda.html
As to differences between Scandinavians, they’re really pretty minor. Essentially the Scandinavians are one people with a common culture, speaking various dialects of a common tongue. We like to pretend we’re more different than we are. In the Viking Age, the very idea of a nation was a novelty in Scandinavia, and often doesn’t apply at all.
Ori: I’m handicapped by not knowing Greek, but there’s a definite sense of “evil spirits” in the New Testament. Jesus cast them out, for instance.
Thanks Lars.
I straddle the mountains a bit. Dad’s dad was born in Marmorbruket, which I believe is near Nankoping. Mom’s grandpa was born in Stavanger.
I actually lived for 5 years in Odin, MN but really hadn’t heard of him till I bought a house in the city named after him. Even then, I didn’t know anything about Odin other than the fact that he was a Norse God till I read Year of the Warrior.
BTW, If you’ve ever been to Odin, you were lost.
Lars, I don’t know Greek either (it’s all Greek to me, really). I got that by “cheating” using the Internet.
I remember the New Testament having evil spirits. Also, IIRC, good ones that function as God’s messengers, usually called angels. The question is whether there can be spirits that are like living people, not wholly good nor wholly evil. Wishing to serve God, and often making a hash of things.
That’s the Thor I saw in your book. He tried to serve justice, which is an attribute of God. He made a hash of things, the same way my 3 year old makes a hash of things when she dresses herself so we won’t have to.
Ori, such a theory is problematic. If there are such powerful, supernatural spirits, one has to assume they know their status in regard to the One True God, who is also spirit. If they nevertheless accept worship and sacrifice, usurping what is due to Him, then they’re not neutral, are there?
Being powerful does not equate being smart. Odin is going to realize that accepting worship means going against God, and that he needs to choose one or the other. Thor, on the other hand, might simply think humans do funny things, and not worry about it.
In your book, Thor isn’t serving God directly, but he is trying to serve goodness. He’s like the sincere worshiper of Tash in the last Narnia book, whose head got everything wrong, but whose heart is good and whose soul ends up in the right place.
Oh dear. I realize you mean well, but if I’ve suggested to people that Thor is among the elect, I’m probably in big trouble…
Don’t worry, you didn’t suggest anything of the sort. You have to remember I’m Jewish. We believe in an eternal hell, but we also believe you have to work very hard to get there. The word typically used for hell, “geheinom”, in closer in meaning to purgatory.
What your Thor scene suggested to me is that we don’t know what will happen with him, or the people who chose to follow him. Maybe he’ll spend all of eternity as the king of his own domain, trying to produce justice and failing miserably. Or maybe God will enlighten him, and he’ll realize his mistake.
Maybe a Christian reading your book would interpret things differently. But to me your Thor is more silly than evil, and as such merits compassion.
Regarding the differences and similarities between the various Scandinavians, one joke I’ve heard says that Norwegian is Danish spoken with a Swedish accent. (Undoubtedly, the Swedes think it works the other way around.)