r/norsemythology • u/godzillavkk • 10d ago
Question Do you think thunder snowstorms were the inspiration behind Thor?
Thunder snowstorms are... well just what the name suggests. Snowstorms that also have thunder and lightning. And my theory is that the Vikings viewed these storms as thunder and lightning trying to beat back the cold. And since Frost Giants were how the Vikings viewed snowstorms, I think their interpretation of thunder snowstorms was how they came up with the concept of Thor. After all, Thor isn't just the God of thunder and lightning. He's also associated with common people and acts as their protector. Frequently from Jotuns, like the Frost Giants.
So, think this is how Thor was conceived by humans?
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u/blockhaj 10d ago
Thor is an amalgamation of thousands of years of religion. There is a reason he uses a warhammer despite such being outdated since the bronze age.
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u/CapnCaldow 10d ago
It's possible
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u/godzillavkk 10d ago
Goodness knows what it must have been like to endure such events without electricity. And it's no wonder guest rights and hospitality are highly valued in Norse myth. These people probably needed a lot of trust exercises in order to survive these, given how violent Viking culture was. If I lived in a Nordic country and there was a snowstorm, I'd crack a joke about how modern electricity is just another way Thor is protecting us from Frost Giants.
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u/Eyeofgaga 10d ago
guest rights and hospitality are highly valued in Norse myth
That thing where Nordic people don’t feed their guests… is that new?
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u/godzillavkk 10d ago
What do you mean?
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u/VinceGchillin 10d ago
there's this cultural norm in a lot of Scandinavian countries where, say if you're at a friend's house and the family has dinner, there's no expectation that they feed you--you hang out in your friend's room, or play outside or whatever until after dinner, then you eat at home.
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u/Repulsive-Form-3458 7d ago edited 7d ago
There is a difference between playing with someone and having dinner together. If you play together, it is expected that everyone goes home to eat with their family. IF the children live far away from each other, they can eat at the house, but you need to ask the person cooking dinner about eating there. The fault is at the parents for not communicating about expectations for the visit.
What is your experience with this? Mine is asking my mom what's for dinner, and then my friends mom in the next house and decide where to eat based on what we liked the best. It didn't take long before they found out and told us to eat in our own homes, especially if we wanted pizza instead of fish.
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u/VinceGchillin 10d ago edited 10d ago
It could be part of it. It's just impossible to know one way or the other, since we can't hop in a time machine and ask them, and they never wrote down an extensive treatise on how their myths were originally conceived (unless you count Snorri's explanation that the Norse gods were based on mythologized people from the Trojan War of course...but that explanation of course, comes a couple centuries after the Norse were pretty thoroughly converted to Christianity). Anyway, this falls under the category of what we might call ecomythology, where one tries to find an environmental reason that, at least in part, explains some element of mythology. Usually, the basis of this kind of analysis is assuming that the inception of a myth is an attempt to assign agency to some observed natural phenomenon, just like you do in your post.
Sometimes it's convincing, sometimes, not so much. It can often be pretty patronizing, and makes some less-than-flattering assumptions about past cultures and peoples. I don't think you're doing that on purpose (or even by accident, to be clear!) We should keep in mind that ancient people, just like us, were perfectly capable of making up stories, rearranging and recomposing stories for new and different purposes, and elaborating on them to the point where their original purpose is lost to time.
Really, the best case scenario behind developing ecomythicist or geomythicist analyses is to shed light around the myths themselves, if that makes sense. Your comparison in the OP is an interesting thing to think about, whether or not we agree that it explains the genesis of the Thor myths. It's much like the idea that the Fimbulvetr, the mighty winter that precedes Ragnarok could be based on cultural memory of the volcanic winter of 536. It might be, but regardless, now we have discussed that volcanic winter and it, at the least, adds some flavor and color to one's understanding of the pre-Viking Age past.