When I was a child and a thunderstorm passed overhead, I was told, ‘Thor is moving his furniture.’ This explained all the banging going on in the sky, and I imagined him dragging a huge wooden oak table between rooms in his Great Hall, somewhere up there in the celestial realm. Also, he was wont to throw his hammer Mjölnir about, causing flashes of lightning when it hit earth, even setting fire to trees and frightning animals as well as us humans.
So, Thor was to be respected. I was in awe of his power and imagined a long-bearded man with windswept hair pacing up and down his wooden floorboards very tempestuously. Another memory is of my grandma who told me that when she was a child it was the job of children to run around the house as a storm was brewing, turning all the mirrors to face the wall, thus preventing the house from being struck by lightning. The mirror, reflecting light, was no longer attracting the attention of the thunder god, or the electrical current of the lightning strike.
‘Thor’, ‘Thunar’ and ‘Taranis’ all etymologically mean ‘thunder’ so Thor is thunder, he doesn’t just create it by shuffling around his Hall and throwing his mighty hammer. He is also the god of protection, of the peasantry and community; of blessings and of warriors. He has many a battle with giants and throws Mjölnir, which returns back to his hand once the blow has been struck. Giants are known to create disorder and threaten well-being and prosperity.
Thunder is also created when Thor pursues giants in his chariot pulled by two goats, sparks flying from the wheels as he goes, which are seen as flashes of lightning. Thor is also an agent of death as lightning and storms can kill as well as create a fertile land.
The Celtic deity Taranis has a wheel as well as an ‘s’-shaped implement representing lightning that he carries with him. The wheel represents mobility and speed, one of the strengths of the Celtic peoples who settled across Europe and travelled even further afield. He is represented on the Gundestrup cauldron that dates from 150BC to 1BC, a silver and gold sacred vessel with iconography representing deities and constellations from this era.
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