les became a woman and took
to spinning to please Omphale, the Lydian queen, and Thor assumed a
woman's apparel to visit Thrym and recover his hammer, which had been
buried nine rasts underground. The hammer, his principal attribute,
was used for many sacred purposes. It consecrated the funeral pyre
and the marriage rite, and boundary stakes driven in by a hammer were
considered as sacred among Northern nations as the Hermae or statues
of Mercury, removal of which was punishable by death.

Thor's wife, Sif, with her luxuriant golden hair, is, as we have
already stated, an emblem of the earth, and her hair of its rich
vegetation. Loki's theft of these tresses is equivalent to Pluto's rape
of Proserpine. To recover the golden locks, Loki must visit the dwarfs
(Pluto's servants), crouching in the low passages of the underground
world; so Mercury must seek Proserpine in Hades.

The gadfly which hinders Jupiter from recovering possession of
Io, after Mercury has slain Argus, reappears in the Northern myth
to sting Brock and to endeavour to prevent the manufacture of the
magic ring Draupnir, which is merely a counterpart of Sif's tresses,
as it also represents the fruits of the earth. The fly continues to
torment the dwarf during the manufacture of Frey's golden-bristled
boar, a prototype of Apollo's golden sun chariot, and it prevents
the perfect formation of the handle of Thor's hammer.

The magic ship Skidbladnir, also made by the dwarfs, is like the
swift-sailing Argo, which was a personification of the clouds sailing
overhead; and just as the former was said to be large enough to
accommodate all the gods, so the latter bore all the Greek heroes
off to the distant land of Colchis.

The Germans, wishing to name the days of the week after their gods,
as the Romans had done, gave the name of Thor to Jove's day, and thus
made it the present Thursday.

Thor's struggle against Hrungnir is a parallel to the fight between
Hercules and Cacus or Antaeus; while Groa is evidently Ceres, for she,
too, mourns for her absent child Orvandil (Proserpine), and breaks
out into a song of joy when she hears that it will return.

Magni, Thor's son, who when only three hours old exhibits his
marvellous strength by lifting Hrungnir's leg off his recumbent father,
also reminds us of the infant Hercules; and Thor's voracious appetite
at Thrym's wedding feast has its parallel in Mercury's first meal,
which consisted of two whole oxen.

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