Who, "in bloody Hell" was the guy, with a hammer, name Thor?

It is not a long time ago I jumped to a discussion about Thor and it was not just a regular discussion. It was during a trial, where I was questioned (and in accordance to low I had a right to question back) about my photo showing me wearing necklace with Thor’s hammer. Nothing illegal, is it? Well, in my homeland Czech Republic where the trial took place, you never know.

The juridical expert was 100% sure that I’m wrong about Thor and his hammer (even he has never studied Scandinavian and Baltic culture). It is funny that people in central Europe can believe that Thor should be some kind of blood thirsty creature, even around whole Europe Thor’s figure was existing as part of paganism or mythology and legends and he was really not anybody “born to be a killer”.

Thor, in ancient Nordic and Asian mythology well known also as Indra, in Baltics and Finland known as Perkunas or (Ukko) Perkele and among Slavonic nations Perun, was a simple good minded “god” or rather mythological person, patron of farmers, workers and slaves. He was a god of thunder, tempest, harvest and fertility. He had been traveling on his coach from dawn to sunset, if he didn’t have anything else to do. That’s why almost half year there is dark like at night in the North according to this myth, since Thor has something else to do so he didn’t ride around the sky, so there was no sunrise and no sunset – funny, isn’t it? Well, Thor’s stories are mostly funny, unlike Odin the ancient Nordic “philosopher”, Thor was using his easy common sense (and even humor sense) to solve his problems. Usually his hammer wasn’t actively used as weapon but just a tool. The hammer was otherwise his weapon against giants, who represented frost, cold and bad harvest (as they were walking on the fields and everything got frozen under their feet, and their breath was freezing wind).

Good example of Thor way of problem solving is the story about the stolen hammer. In Edda it is serious incident but the story is quite funny for us now. Imagine: One morning Thor cannot find his hammer and through the people talks he finds out that giant Trym took it. Since Trym was in love with goddess Freya Trym could do anything possible to get married with her. When Trym had the hammer he could threaten and blackmail Thor and his people in Walhalla to push Freya to marry Trym.

Now you probably wait how Thor reacts. According to the Central and Western Europe understanding of Nordic mythology and Thor, he should go to fight with him he should call his best einherjers (dead warriors who passed to Valhalla* since fall in a battle as heroes) and go to fight. But Thor did something very different. He asked his sly friend Loke for help and together they made up a plan. Thor dressed himself to women wedding dress and covered his face with a Veil. The Loke accompanied him to Trym. In Trym’s place Loke presented Thor to Trym as Freya who is “shy so that she cannot speak but she will marry Trym”. Trym doesn’t see anything strange and prepare a wedding feast. Although Freya was a tiny woman with golden hair and slim legs and Thor had long red hair and beard and his body was shaped by the farmer works, Trym was certain that the bride coming to him was Freya. Feast starts and Trym get drunk. Thor gets out from the women clothes takes his hammer from Trym and hits Trym with his hammer. And as the hammer is a weapon against giants no more fight is necessary one hit is enough to make Trym powerless. Then Thor and Loke return back to Valhalla where Freya is waiting upset that Thor destroyed one of her beautiful dresses.

And that’s the point my friends. Do you still believe that thunder god Thor is some kind of symbol of violence, war or terror?**

So, why Thor and his hammer should represent something bad? Let me remind you that to Thor’s honour a day in a week: Thurs day means Thor’s day in at least 6 European languages (English inclusive). Thor (or Tor, and its women version Tora) has always usual given name in Scandinavia and sometimes in UK and USA as well. (E.g. Norwegian ethnographer Doctor Thor Heyerdahl or British philosopher Thor Magnusson)

The Thor’s hammer as a jeweler can be easily bought as a souvenir in Nordic countries and even top quality jewelries such as Kalevala Koru© have Thor hammer in their collections. Reporters, hosts in TV shows, athletes or musicians, models, professors, scientists and others are happy to wear Thor’s Hammer. Since there is nothing wrong and there has never been nothing wrong with this jeweler and nothing wrong with Thor, he was just little bit crazy. But who isn’t? ;-)

Thor's hammer in Kalevala Koru (c)
Tomi Joutsen - the solist of Amorphis band, photomodel of Kalevala Koru(c) Thor's hammer campaign

*Valhalla in Nordic mythology was the place "hall with golden" roof where hereos live forever and also Nordic "gods" lived there.

**(I skip the fact that the 6 feet tall Thor with a well-trained muscled could wear 5 feed tiny Freya’s dress and not be revealed by Trym despite his long curly red hair and red beard; I need to point out that Thor and Idun are the only two in the Nordic mythology who should have red hair. And when the incident with the stolen hammer occurred, Idun hadn’t yet been born).*

“Invisible” killers and threats we might don't carry in our minds

People are often asking me why in bloody hell I like to watch the NatGeo’s documentary series “Air Crash Investigation”.  Since they do not believe that I enjoy watching people die (well maybe somebody does…) they cannot understand how interesting is to see and understand potential threats and its solutions.

In fact many people use to deny threats and or any bad luck, they are feeling like “It happens to the others but I will not happen to me” and they putting themselves to a jeopardy every day. However people are still somehow afraid of flying or they usually not enjoying it same way as they can enjoy driving a beautiful modern car. And guess what, the threat that of danger in a car is bigger than in the plane. The fact is that usually the plane crash is a bigger catastrophe due to the amount of victims in the same occasion.

I do really prefer the ACI episodes when there are no victims however the investigation and after that the edification is the real point why I like the ACI/Mayday series.

People are so naive and blind in a regular life (without flying) so I decide to remind about real killers and threats which we usually do not see or deny – not because we cannot but we don’t want to see them. Here is my top three list:

Mainly the insidious sly and really powerful killer is obesity. I do not need to remind you that obesity is a condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems. Obesity is in fact a global epidemic if concerned as a medical condition. It causes serious health problems and diseases such different heart diseases, diabetes, stroke, migraines, poor mobility, osteoporosis, birth defects or death during delivery etc. Most of the diseases caused by obesity are not curable and even fatal. Despite these facts about 40-49% of modern world population is obese/morbidly obese. Obesity is in fact a killer number one in UK and on the top of killer list also in USA. Imagine that it kills more often than cancer or AIDS.

Next one tasty killer is alcohol. Compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships and social standing is well known “medical” condition of alcoholism. Identifying alcoholism is difficult for the individual because of the social role of alcohol associated with socializing in all levels from the purest up to the elite society.  The social aspect causes people with alcoholism to avoid diagnosis and treatment for fear of shame or social consequences. The evaluation of responses to a group of standardized questioning is a common method for diagnosing alcoholism. These can be used to identify harmful drinking patterns, including alcoholism, but the individual condition of the patient should always be considered. In general, the individual’s problem drinking is considered alcoholism when the person continues to drink despite experiencing social or health problems caused by drinking alcohol. However the whole thing is very tricky. Even some person is not experiencing social or health problem cause by alcohol drinking it can be the sly threat or worse a killer. I don’t mean the alcohol poisoning but fatal diseases caused by alcohol consummation such as heart attack, stroke or kidney and liver diseases.  Alcohol is a number one women killer in Finland (breast cancer is number two) and number one killer in Russia.

At last but not least I would like to highlight a killer which the most of modern and developed nations’ population likes, uses almost every day, it is sometimes treated better then family pets. It is a mark of social status and a hobby. Yes, it is a car. I don’t need to speak about symptoms or anomalies which cars cause. But I need to say that it is always the car and the individual driving it or at least stars it to make a potential to kill. Do you think that I perform like a small child, of course we all know how cars works and we know their highly important position in nowadays society.

But since people are afraid travel by plane (in less cases by boat/ship) I would to point out here that more people die or are seriously injured by car crashes or car accidents then by plane accidents. The other think is also the awareness of the danger. In the plane before take-off you are always get a security demonstration which is there to help but negative effect is that it pointing out the danger. You do not get any security demonstration in a car or a bus (to be absolutely clear, a bus is also a car). That makes the situation of accidents more dangerous as many people are seriously injured or died as people don’t know or they don’t care to prevent the accident, do help, to give the first aid. Let’s have a moment to remember where in your car is the first aid set if there is some, if your airbags are functioning if they are there, or worse remember if you ever have bribed the vehicle inspector to get your car through it to be able to drive etc. etc.  

In fact the car accident is number one killer in Poland, within top 3 in Czech Republic, Germany and Italy and probably France, Spain and USA will not be so far from that list as well.

I wonder why there is no documentary series Car Crash investigation. Maybe because there is an uncountable number of car crashes in a history and the number of victims is more than shocking.

In the aircraft when accident strikes the pilots fight for everybody’s lives more or less successfully to end – whatever the end is. Sometimes it is incredible to see what they can do, how much power and performance a human being can deliver under stress.

This is a great story of an aircraft accident with a happy end.

Update on 28.10.2013

Update to ”Invisible” killers:

I have seen something shocking and I have to say, that I wasn’t so exact about obesity.  It can kill itself. I have seen photos of organs which collapsed due to the press of the oversize fat inside the body; there were lungs, heart and kidney.

But that’s true that the opposite of obesity is a killer as well. Mental anorexia, mental disorder leading to starving and morbid underweight, is the number one killer among mental diseases. Mental anorexia or anorexia nervosa is fatal directly if not treated as the patient is starving to death.

One of such stories is the story of Isabelle Caro. She was a French model suffered from mental anorexia from her age of 13. Even she was a successful photo model she terminated her carrier when she joined the controversial campaign “No Anorexia” she was posing without clothes and make up, showing here bones under skin.  She was 165cm tall and her most recent weight was 33kg, her lowest adult weight was 25kg. She died on 17. November 2010; the cause of was a result of her anorexia.

Mental anorexia is result of modern society and desire of slim body or rather skinny body which has been an ideal for models from almost 70’s in 20’s century and culminating in late 90’s when also anorexia started to spread as an epidemic among girls and young women. The ideal of skinny body without any curves was devastating for many of them. Mortality of anorexia patients has reached up to alarming 20%.

Yet there is a still a lot of beauty and modeling contests where the skinny body is preferred. However the biggest international “Miss” contest and events has improved since year 2000 and there doesn’t seem to be any eating disorders among the contestants anymore.

I will probably come back to this topic later again.

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