“Thor”, the Imperfect Norse god?

1910 version of Thor & Chariot

A good-natured, careless god, always ready for adventure, who seldom tired of displaying his great strength, Thor could shoulder giant tasks with little effort and slay the mightiest of bulls with his bare hands. For sport he sometimes rode among the cloud-veiled mountains, hurling his hammer at their peaks, thus splitting them in half creating twin peaks no less.

Thor was the god of war, thunder and strength. He destroyed enemies of the gods with his magic hammer called Mjollnir (pronounced myol-n-ee-r), which caused lightning flashes when put to use. It was he who chased away cold frosts and called upon gentle winds and warm spring rains to release the earth from the bondage of ice and snow.

He was the god of the household and of the common people. Rolling thunder resulted by the rumble of his fiery chariot which was pulled by two goats.  Since the 5^th day of the week was sacred to Thor, it was named for him, Thor’s day or as we know it, Thursday.

Thor is usually portrayed as being a large, powerful man with a red beard, un-kept hair, and eyes that flashed lightning. Despite his ferocious appearance, he “out shined” his father Odin in popularity because, unlike to Odin, he did not require human sacrifices. In his temple in Uppsala, Sweden he was shown standing with Odin (his father) by his right side; the opposite stance applies for typical father and son representations (the son is usually on the right of the father). Unfortunately, this temple was replaced by a Christian church in 1080.

With all that Thor had available to him, times were still difficult at best on occasion, but luckily he could do almost anything, for example as reported in a Norse Mythology Poem, “Prose Edda”, which derived from an earlier account, Thor found it necessary to slay and cook both his faithful flying goats as a meat source for himself and a peasant family on one such evening.

No worries, the next morning Thor proceeded to use his magic hammer to resurrect the animals but with limited success; you see, one of the peasant sons had broken one of the animal’s bones the night before so as to recover the tasty bone marrow, the result was that one of the revived goats was forever after lame.

In all fairness, Thor had placed emphases upon the necessary act of treating the bones with care before the meal, which obviously included the simple task of not breaking the bones.  In hind-site, I guess he should have been more specific in describing his plans to bring the animals back to life the next morning.

What, you may ask, has this to do with anything?  In my view, this clearly demonstrates that even Thor, with all his skills, was fallible!

Sources …                                                                                http://thenorsegods.com/thor/                                               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanngrisnir_and_Tanngnj%C3%B3str