Every Thursday quietly honours Thor, the Germanic god of thunder
Long before his pop-culture fame, Thor was a hammer-swinging protector of farmers whose name literally meant thunder. Vikings wore his hammer as a pendant, possibly in defiance of Christian missionaries, and names built on his flourished. English still keeps him in the calendar: Thursday began as Thunor's day.
Thor belonged to the wider world of Germanic paganism, linked with storms, strength, protection, fertility and agriculture. He went by related names across the languages: Thunor in Old English, Donar in Old High German, Thunar in Old Saxon, Þórr in Old Norse. All go back to a Proto-Germanic word meaning thunder, which in turn probably descends from an Indo-European root also seen in Tonans, a title given to Jupiter, and in a Vedic verb meaning it thunders.
Romans writing about Germanic tribes usually mapped him onto their own gods, calling him Jupiter or Hercules, a practice known as interpretatio romana. The weekday reflects the same equation. English Thursday, from Old English Þunresdæg, and German forms trace to a Germanic calque of Latin Iovis dies, the day of Jove. A runic inscription from Gotland, dated to around 700, preserves an early spelling that helps linguists reconstruct his name.
His popularity peaked in the Viking Age. Personal names containing Þórr appear in large numbers then, with no known examples earlier, and scholars suspect they were partly a pushback against Christianisation, much like the Mjölnir amulets people wore. Medieval Icelandic stories give him at least fifteen names. He is the son of Odin and Jörð, husband of golden-haired Sif, and father of Magni and of Þrúðr. Two servants attend him, and he rides a cart pulled by a pair of goats, one named Tanngrisnir.
He never vanished completely. Folklore across Germanic-speaking Europe kept his memory alive, his name marks many places, and personal names from pagan times containing it remain common in Scandinavia. Artists have returned to him repeatedly, and modern Heathenry has revived his worship.
Source: Thor
