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Post by durinnmcfurren on Oct 20, 2021 18:34:41 GMT
To answer Zen Hydra's question about whether Mjölnir is ever shown as anything but a destructive weapon:
In chapter 44 of Gylfaginning:
'in the interval before day he rose up and clothed himself, took the hammer Mjölnir, swung it up, and hallowed the goat-hides; straightway the he-goats rose up.'
Also, in Thrymskvitha, Mjölnir is brought in to bless the marriage, although that's not really creation per se.
However, it does seem that Thor only ever uses the hammer for whacking giants, otherwise. I do not recall him ever using it to build.
I seem to recall some discussion of whether originally Mjölnir might have been an ax in the original pre-viking religious conception, rather than a hammer. But I cannot now remember where I saw this.
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seth
Member
Just Peachy
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Post by seth on Oct 25, 2021 20:05:52 GMT
Well I went looking for what I was remembering. I found this website which goes into length about hammer as an instrument for blessing: norse-mythology.org/symbols/thors-hammer/That's most certainly not where I read it originally. Most likely it was from some ancient book in the library I read as a kid since I checked out every book I could find on vikings, spartans, knights, romans, etc. I suppose a lot is educated guessing on the part of scholars due to the lack of written records. One other thing I remembered was about Perrin's hammer in the Wheel of Time series. It was a magical hammer that he made which was named something similar to Mjolnir. He abandons his axe (which was made solely for war) and takes up the hammer that can both build and destroy. Maybe I got the stories conflated.
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