Discovered: Thor's Shattered Viking Army and their Sacred Hammer of the Gods

Ancient Origins

The mysterious origins of almost 300 violently broken bodies discovered in a mass grave in Derbyshire, England, are “the Viking Great Army!”, announced archeologist Cat Jarman this week.

 Jarman is Head of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the The University of Bristol and she explained that the initial dating of the skeletons discovered in the 80s found them to “span several centuries”. However, Jarman doubted this dating because “the previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.” Basically, the carbon in fish is much older than in terrestrial foods and this confused the radiocarbon dating tests. When this error was accounted for, says Jarman, the bodies all date to the 9th century.

Land-Hungry Warriors
Known to the Anglo-Saxons as ‘The Great Heathen Army’, these land-hungry warriors formed a united army from Norway, Denmark and Sweden. They invaded the four kingdoms of England in 865AD and according to Historian Thomas Charles-Edwards in his bestselling 2013 book Wales and the Britons 350–1064 “having taken East Anglia and then York the following year, they were paid to leave Wessex by Alfred the Great and marched on Northumbria and London.” They reached Mercia by 873AD and spent winter at Repton, where they dethroned King Burgred and installed Cleowulf as ruler of the kingdom.

Viking army in battle (public domain)

This Was No Ordinary Burial
This week’s University of Bristol report informs that “80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.” Strewn among the Viking skeletons were “axes, knives and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 AD.” And, among the bodies four children aged between eight and 18 years old were discovered “in a single grave with traumatic injuries.” Archaeologist Cat Jarman said of these burial irregularities “The grave is very unusual…they are also placed in unusual positions - two of them back-to-back - and they have a sheep jaw placed at their feet. All these obscurities suggest human sacrifice formed part of Viking funeral rites

One of the female skulls excavated from the Repton burial site. Credit: Cat Jarman / University of Bristol

A National Geographic article this week detailed the contents of another double grave containing two men, the older of whom was buried with a “Thor’s hammer pendant and a Viking sword and had received numerous fatal injuries including a large cut to his left femur.” Furthermore, a boar’s tusk had been “placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and the tusk positioned to replace what he had lost in preparation for the afterworld.”

Thor’s Hammer Pendant May Settle Long-Standing Debate
Rightly, this week’s headlines are focusing on the discovery of one of the most successful forces to have ever invaded Britain. However, to me, the presence of a “Thor’s Hammer pendant” stands sentinel above all other discoveries. Outshines the lot! This truly is a Norse cultural treasure and its discovery, among Norse warriors, settles a long-standing archeological debate.

Example of a Viking Thor’s hammer pendant (Swedish History Museum / flickr)

Fist-size stone tools resembling the Norse god Thor's Hammer are known as “thunderstones” and are found in Viking graves in Norway. While one faction of specialists hold that Viking warriors worshiped Thor with grave deposits, others argue that thunderstones actually belonged to earlier, lower burials, and get accidentally unearthed in Viking graves. To settle this debate, Archaeologist Eva Thäte of the University of Chester in the U.K., with fellow archaeologist Olle Hemdorff excavated hundreds of Viking graves in Scandinavia and trawled through thousands of grave deposits. They found “ten Viking burials containing thunderstones up to 5,000 years older than the graves themselves” indicating Vikings reused prehistoric stone hammers as talismans and good luck charms to assist them in the afterlife.

But even with this data, many archeologists still maintain Thor’s Hammers are accidental finds. This Thor’s Hammer debate was highlighted in a 2010 in a National Geographic feature which claimed it was generally “accepted that they (thunderstones) were actually purposely placed by Vikings in graves as good-luck talismans,” but there are still skeptics out there. This week’s announcement, that the skeletons belong to the “Great Viking Army” married with the fact that a “Thor’s Hammer pendant” was discovered, is the smoking gun - the hard evidence that Viking warriors did indeed worship Thor, and “Thor’s Hammers” were used in burial rites.

There are two things skeptics have to accept here. Neolithic people in England were not wearing Thor’s Hammer pendants, so it did not belong to an earlier, lower grave, and did not get “accidentally” dug up. And finally, deceased Viking warriors were stripped naked and buried with carefully chosen items, to help them in the afterlife, so the pendant was a deliberate placement within the Viking warrior grave. The pendant suggests that 9th century England was taken by a band of merciless warriors under the command of their ancient god of thunder and war - Thor. That accepted, I wonder what the battle cry of Thor’s Army sounded like? Thunderous I’d imagine.

Top image: Battered and broken bodies of Viking warriors unearthed in Derbyshire, England, now identified as soldiers of the Viking Great Army. Credit: Martin Biddle / University of Bristol

By Ashley Cowie

Wales and the Britons, 350-1064 (History of Wales) Hardcover – 1 Feb 2013 by T. M. Charles-Edwards. OUP Oxford (1 Feb. 2013)

The Story of Sif, Powerful Wife of Norse God Thor

Ancient Origins

The warrior god Thor is well known from Old Norse literature. He has become a popular cultural icon, but his wife seems to be largely forgotten these days. However, Sif was once recognized as an important Norse goddess and a powerful ''neck, which ruled the head''.

 A Goddess of Wheat, Fertility, and Family
Sif is known as a Norse deity whose powerful position was dictated by her marriage. She appears in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, which are the best known 13th century traditional sources on Norse mthyology.

In these texts, Sif appears as a beautiful woman with long golden hair. She was described as the mother of the goddess Thrúd (meaning ''Might'', a goddess of the storm), and god Ullr (meaning ''The Magnificent'', a god of winter). Researchers suggest that she represented the fields of wheat, which had a golden color similar to her hair.

Since the beginning, Sif was associated with fertility and family caregiving, and she was connected to the rowan tree. Her name means ''relation to marriage''. She may also be represented in the Old English poem Beowulf. The number of references of the goddess suggests that she was very important to the Norse people until at least the early medieval period.

Sif (1909) by John Charles Dollman. (Public Domain)

The Legend of Sif
The story in both Edda's about Sif is similar. She appears in the poem Hárbarðsljóð, of the Poetic Edda, where she meets Thor. They two engage, but Harbaror refuses to ferry Thor to the bay. The action of the poem contains many insults from Thor. Harbaror punishes him by telling him that Sif has a lover. Thor gets angry, but tells his enemy that it's a lie.

Image from The Elder or Poetic Edda. (Public Domain)

In another part, Sif appears in a scene with Loki, another Norse god. It's a scene related to the crystal cup of mead, but also provides an example of Loki’s personality, as the god lies by swearing that Sif had a romance with him.

Sif sleeps while Loki lurks behind in an illustration (1894) by A. Chase. (Public Domain)

In the Prose Edda, Sif appears in the Prologue section and in chapter 31 of Gylfaginning, but also in a few more places. Analysis of these texts reminds one of reading an old alphabet in the dark, but some researchers have made interesting conclusions about her based on these accounts. According to Ellis Davidson, there are some explanations about her position in the pantheon of Norse deities:

''The cult of Thor was linked up with men's habitation and possessions, and with well-being of the family and community. This included the fruitfulness of the fields, and Thor, although pictured primarily as a storm god in the myths, was also concerned with the fertility and preservation of the seasonal round. In our own times, little stone axes from the distant past have been used as fertility symbols and placed by the farmer in the holes made by the drill to receive the first seed of spring. Thor's marriage with Sif of the golden hair, about which we hear little in the myths, seems to be a memory of the ancient symbol of divine marriage between sky god and earth goddess, when he comes to earth in the thunderstorm and the storm brings the rain which makes the fields fertile. In this way Thor, as well as Odin, may be seen to continue the cult of the sky god which was known in the Bronze Age.''

Sif from a Swedish translation of the Edda. (Public Domain)

Thor was her second husband; the first one was the Giant Orvandil. Sif seems to be a similar goddess to Freya, Fjorgyn, Jord and Gefjun. It is likely that the legends about these deities were inspired by each other. She was also sort of a Norse Demeter, who was associated with vegetation on the surface of the earth, as well as fertility.

Moreover, Sif is depicted as a prophetess who knew and could see more than those around her. She was believed to be a goddess who helped others to find solutions and peace in difficult times. It was once tradition for people to bake breads with many grains to honor this goddess and ask for her help.

A Goddess for All Times
Other themes associated with Sif are: kinship, the arts, summer, passion, and the sun. In iconography, her symbols are gold, a beautiful female with golden cascading hair, and the sun. She was an Earth goddess, whose long golden hair was described as shining brighter than the sun.

Sif was also able to dominate the sky with her light. Moreover, during the summer she supposedly liked to make love to Thor beneath the open sky in the fields. Sometimes people would say that if they heard a couple making love in such a place it could have been Sif with Thor, so they didn't disturb them.

The Norse people of Iceland always greet the first day of the summer with much joy and gratitude. It seems that Sif (as an Earth Goddess) played an important role in this celebration.

 In the 19th century, a researcher named Jacob Green wrote about Sif in his works, bringing her back to Scandinavian folklore. Her popularity rose with the resurgence of past folklore and the rise in the importance of old traditions and beliefs. Since Thor's temple has started to become a new reality in Iceland, his wife is also becoming one of the most popular deities of the Norse religion.

Sif became a main character of the Marvel Comics and in the movie Thor by Marvel Studios as well. Her name was also used to name a volcano on the planet Venus – the Sif Mons.

Artwork for the cover of Thor: Son of Asgard 3 (Jun, 2004). Art by Adi Granov. (Fair Use)

Top image: A depiction of the Norse goddess Sif. Source: Journeying to the Goddess

By Natalia Klimczak