Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/100

 74 Thor hammers made of copper or bronze, with which the claps of thunder could be imitated, and which from olden times had been objects of worship.

It is true that Thor is now-a-days thought of merely as the god of thunder, but that he, like other gods of thunder, really was a sun god, we gather partly from the fact that he was called upon, as Adam tells us, when famine was threatening,—(it belonged to the sun god to grant a good harvest),—and partly from the peculiarly important part he played at Yule, that great festival of midwinter. The buck, Thor's sacred animal, is still of great significance at Christmastide. Many a Christmas cake, or julkuse, has even now the shape of a buck, and most of us have seen as children the fur-clad jule-buck on Christmas Eve. Formerly it was dressed up in a real buck's head, and in some parts of Scandinavia it carried a wooden hammer (!), whereby its connection with Thor becomes still more obvious.

The worship of Thor was not abolished even when Christianity, after a hard struggle, had finally conquered. Its roots were too deep to be pulled up at once,—indeed, they were so deep that much survives even until this day.

Thor experienced the same fate as many other heathen gods. He lived on partly under his own name, and partly under that of a saint. In saintly attire he moved from his hof (temple) into the Church.

Thor's worship was continued in the Church by that of Saint Olaf, who had the fortune to be slain with an axe at the battle of Sticklastad in 1030. That is why he is figured with an axe in his hand (Fig. 28). The people, who had always been accustomed to worship a god armed with a hammer, recognised in the image of Saint Olaf with the axe the mighty Thor. In another respect, also, the likeness was or became very great. Thor, the sun god, is described as a red-bearded man. Olaf also had, or it was imagined that he had, a red beard, and he was represented with one. Moreover, the images