Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/74

 THE SUN-GOD'S AXE AND THOR'S HAMMER.

seeking in the cottages of Sweden of to-day for stone implements, ought to ask whether any thunderbolts or Thor-bolts (Thorsviggar) have been found, rather than to enquire for stone axes (Stenyxor). The former term implies just what is wanted, while the cottagers generally imagine that stone axes are axes used for working stone.

In the different countries of Europe, and in other parts of the world, such as Brazil and Japan, there is a current belief amongst the people that the stone axes which are found in the ground, and the use of which is forgotten, are thunderbolts, weapons by means of which the god of thunder kills his enemies, when it looks as if they had been struck by lightning. Only three years ago a man in the northern part of Sweden dug a hole in the ground where he hoped to find a thunderbolt; there had just been a lightning stroke in this place.

On looking backwards we find that in ancient times there was a widespread belief in Greece, more than 2000 years ago, that stone axes had the character of thunderbolts. But we also find,—and this is closely connected with what has been said above,—that the axe has from time immemorial been considered, both in Greece and elsewhere, a symbol of the thunder or sun god. It soon becomes evident that the god of the sun and the god of thunder have originally been one and the same deity, although the ancients had not learnt to understand as we