The History Of Asgard God's and Godesses

All about Thor

Thor is the blood son of Odin, Lord of the Asgardian Gods, and Jord, who is also known as Gaea, the elder goddess of Earth.. Odin sought to father a son whose power would derive from Earth as well as Asgard, and he sought to mate with Jord. Odin created a cave in Ancient Scandinavia that would become part of modern Norway where Jord would give birth to Thor. Months after the infant Thor was weaned, Odin brought him to Asgard to be raised. From that time onward Odin's wife Frigga acted as Thor's mother. It is not until recent years that Thor discovered Jord was his mother.

A severed eye of Odin once grew to great size, achieved sentience and informed Thor that he had existed before on a previous Asgard. This previous Thor had red hair instead of the blonde hair of the current Thor and had two sons by Sif. This previous Thor is said to have killed the Midgard Serpent and to have been killed himself by the dying monster's venom at a previous Ragnarok, the destruction of the previous Asgard. Odin was himself killed, but was restored to life after the few surviving gods of this Asgard, among which was this Thor's sons Modi and Magni and a daughter Thrud, gave up their lives to restore him to life, and it was this new Odin who sired the current Thor.

Possibly these previous versions of Odin and Thor were earlier physical incarnations of the Odin and Thor of today. However, this account of Thor's origin by the severed eye of Odin may well be completely false. The eye's motives for constructing such a story, if it is false, are unknown.

The young Thor was raised alongside Loki who had been adopted by Odin after Loki's father, the Frost Giant Laufey, had been killed in battle. From, childhood, Loki was jealous of Thor and his hatred of him grew over the years to a wish to destroy him. Thus began Thor's enmity of Thor, which exists to his day.

When Thor was eight, Odin sent him to Nidavellir, the land of the dwarves, to bid the dwarves, Brokk and Eltri, to create three treasures for Asgard's ruler. Among the three treasures that Brokk and Eltri created was the enchanted uru hammer Mjolnir (although Loki sabotaged the creation of the hammer so that the hammer would be too short). Odin bestowed various enchantments upon the hammer including one that made it impossible for anyone to lift it except someone who was truly worthy of wielding it. Odin then declared that he was reserving the use of the hammer for Thor who would receive it on the day that great selfless valor had proved him worthy of it.

For years, Thor strove to become strong and worthy enough to wield the hammer and was responsible for many great deeds. Finally, when Thor was sixteen, Odin presented him with the hammer, declaring that he was indeed worthy of it. Thor became Asgard's greatest warrior.

Before Thor was twenty, Thor had fallen in love with Sif. However, in a previous incarnation of Asgard, he actually took her as his wife, siring two daughters named Lora and Thrud and adopting her son, Uller. In the current incarnation of Asgard, their romance came to an end, but they briefly renewed it in recent years. His best friends as he was growing up were Sif and Balder.

Sometime in the 9th century A.D., Thor journeyed to Earth for the first time and regaled in his adventures with the Vikings. They raised him to the level of a god and started worshipping him as such. Both the Norsemen and the Germans, who called him Donner, came to worship Thor among all the other Asgardians. Thor actively encouraged the adulation of his Viking worshippers for years and also encouraged them to find glory in battle. But finally, Thor discovered that a party of his Viking worshippers had attacked and slaughtered the inhabitants of a Christian monastery. Shocked, realizing that some of his more zealous worshippers were committing other atrocities like this one in his name, Thor started to gradually withdraw from Earthly activities altogether and allowed worship of the Asgardian gods to die out.

According to the severed eye of Odin, Odin himself caused Thor to live on Earth in the mortal guises of the Germanic heroes Siegmund and his son Siegfried. In these two roles, Thor played a major role in Odin's efforts to regain the dangerously powerful Ring of the Nibelung. Siegmund was killed by the warrior Hunding, but Thor was reborn as Siegfried, the son of Siegmund and his lover Sieglinde. Siegfried took possession of the ring after killing the giant Fafnir who had guarded it for years in the form of a dragon. Siegfried then fell in love with the Valkyrie Brynhilda, but was murdered by Hagen, the son of Alberich, the dwarf who had created the ring and had placed a curse upon it. Odin, however, resurrected Siegfried as Thor, who again had his full godly powers, but wiped out Thor's memory of these events of his mortal identities. It is unclear how much, if any, of this account by Odin's severed eye is true.