MJÖLLNIR

The hammer of the god Þór was among the most popular symbols in Viking culture, and is still widespread and easily recognizable among enthusiasts today.

In it the myth is founded with precise ritual and social purposes.

Its legendary origin comes from Snorri, who in his Skáldskaparmal writes of how "Loki, son of Laufey, bet his head with the dwarf Brokkr that his brother, Eitri, would not have been able to produce three objects as portentous as they were. those produced by Ivaldi's sons.

When they got to the forge, Eitri placed a pigskin on the forge and told Brokkr to blow and not stop before he had removed from the forge what he had placed there. But as soon as he left the forge, while the other blew, a fly landed on his hand and stung him. But he continues to blow as before until the blacksmith took the work out of the forge, and it was a boar and his bristles were gold.

Then he put the gold in the forge and begged his brother to blow up and not stop until he came back and left. But the fly came and landed on his neck and stung him twice as hard as before. But he kept blowing the air until the blacksmith took the gold ring called Draupnir from the forge.

Then he put some iron in the forge and begged his brother to blow it up and said that it would all be useless if the work of the bellows came to an end.

Then the fly landed between his eyes and stung his eyelids. And when the blood ran into his eyes so that he could no longer see, the dwarf waved his hand as fast as he could, and the bellows went limp, and chased the fly away.

He returned the blacksmith and said that everything in the forge was about to be ruined in moments. And he took a hammer from the forge and handed the three precious objects to his brother Brokkr and told him to take them to Ásgardhr and to participate in the bet.

When he and Loki brought those objects, the Aes took their seats as judges and the verdict expressed by Ódhinn, Thórr and Freyr would be valid.

Loki gave Thórr the hammer and said that with it he could strike as hard as he wanted and against whatever was in front of him and the hammer would not fail and if he threw it at anyone he would never miss and never would be so long his flight that it did not return to his hand; and if he had wanted it, he would have become so small that he could be kept in his garment. He had only one flaw, that the handle was rather short.

The verdict was that the hammer was the best of all those precious objects, the strongest weapon against the frost giants, and it was decided that the dwarf had won the race."

This weapon was not only a symbol of the destructive power of the storm and fire from the sky, but also a protection to ensure safety and uphold the rule of law in society.

The symbolism of which this object was permeated extended to many aspects of the community, in Iceland, for example, there is evidence of how its ritual use was widespread: tracing the sign of the hammer created a magical bond against thieves and marked the boundary between two landholdings.

It covered ceremonies of birth, marriage and death, burial and cremation, weapons and banquets, travel, land grabs and the making of oaths between men. It was also a clear phallic symbol and, in this, its beneficial and fruitful function appears clear to us when we discover that it was placed in the wombs of the brides to consecrate the conjugal union.

As Gianna Chiesa Isnardi writes: "The hammer is a symbol that in the intersection between the two arms joins the vertical plane and the horizontal plane of the cosmos and captures the energy of both. When Thor spins it, this energy takes on dynamic force and manifests the god's beneficial and destructive power. It is the instrument that causes thunder and makes lightning: it kills or brings fruitful rain. "

The great diffusion and popularity of this object among the Vikings can be fully seen during the period of conversion to Christianity, when it became a symbol at times of opposition to Christianization, at times worn at the same time as the crucifix, at times a symbol similar to the cross literally merging with it in some finds.

All this has allowed, over the years, to find about 1,000 of these Viking-era amulets that symbolize the Mjöllnir, scattered in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Russia and the Baltic countries, often unearthed in women's graves.

Despite this, however, it took a long time to understand what they actually were, for a long time they were cataloged as "T-shaped finds" and the definitive proof came only in 2014, when a small amulet was found in Købelev, on the the Danish island of Lolland which bore a seven-character long runic inscription on one side of the hammer's head.

This was the first Thor's hammer amulet ever found engraved with runes.

Examining it under a microscope, the runologist Lisbeth Imer was able to translate the inscription: the runes read "Hmar is x", or simply, "This is a hammer".