Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/364

 civilization. The collection consisted of personal ornaments, such as brooches, fibulæ, and torques, and also of pieces of money, to which were fastened rings in order that they might be strung on a necklace. Among these were two rude copies of coins of the successors of Constantine; but the others were of a class very common in the North. They were impressed with a four-footed horned beast, girthed, and mounted by a monstrous human head, intended, in barbarous fashion, to represent the rider. In front of the head was the sign of Thorr’s hammer, a cross pattée. Four of the specimens bearing this symbol exhibited likewise the name of Thorr in runes. A still ruder coin, discovered with the others, was deficient in the cross, whose place was occupied by a four-point star.

Among the flint weapons discovered in Denmark are stone cruciform hammers, with a hole at the intersection of the arms for the insertion of the haft (Fig. 10). As the lateral limbs could have been of little or no use, it is probable that these cruciform hammers were those used in consecrating victims in Thorr’s worship.

The cross of Thorr is still used in Iceland as a