goddess Freyga, had
the hammer for his symbol. It was with this hammer that Thor crushed the
head of the great Mitgard serpent, that he destroyed the giants, that he
restored the dead goats to life, which drew his car, that he consecrated
the pyre of Baldur. _This hammer was a cross._[346:2]

The cross of Thor is still used in Iceland as a magical sign in
connection with storms of wind and rain.

King Olaf, Longfellow tells us, when keeping Christmas at Drontheim:

"O'er his drinking-horn, the sign
He made of the Cross Divine,
And he drank, and mutter'd his prayers;
But the Berserks evermore
Made the sign of the hammer of Thor
Over theirs."

Actually, they both made the same symbol.

This we are told by Snorro Sturleson, in the Heimskringla (Saga iv. c.
18), when he describes the sacrifice at Lade, at which King Hakon,
Athelstan's foster-son, was present:

"Now when the first full goblet was filled, Earl Sigurd spoke
some words over it, and blessed it in Odin's name, and drank
to the king out of the horn; and the king then took it, and
made the sign of the cross over it. Then said Kaare of
Greyting, 'What does the king mean by doing so? will he not
sacrifice?' But Earl Sigurd replied, 'The King is doing what
all of you do who trust in your power and strength; for he is
blessing the full goblet in the name of Thor, by making the
sign of his hammer over it before he drinks it."[346:3]

The cross was also a _sacred_ emblem among the _Laplanders_. "In solemn
sacrifices, all the Lapland idols were marked with it from the blood of
the victims."[346:4]

It was adored by the ancient _Druids_ of Britain, and is to be seen on
the so-called "fire towers" of Ireland and Scotland. The "consecrated
trees" of the Druids had a _cross beam_ attached to them, making the
figure of a cross. On several of the most curious and most ancient
monuments of Britain, the cross is to be seen, evidently cut thereon by
the Druids. Many large stones throughout Ireland have these Druid
crosses cut in them.[346:5]

Cleland observes, in his "Attempt to Revive Celtic Literature," that
the Druids taught the doctrine of an overruling providence, and the
immortality of the soul: that they had also their Lent, their Purgatory,
their Paradise, their Hell, their Sanctuaries, and the similitude of the
May-pole _in form to the cross_.[347:1]

"In the