Declan Taggart - How Thor Lost His Thunder: The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God

6 The Jewish-Christian Encounter in Medieval Preaching

Edited by Jonathan Adams and Jussi Hanska

7 Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England

Sara M. Butler

8 Wonder and Skepticism in the Middle Ages

Keagan Brewer

9 Medieval Hostageship c.700-c.1500

Hostage, Captive, Prisoner of War, Guarantee, Peacemaker

Edited by Matthew Bennett and Katherine Weikert

10 New Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Poland and Prussia

The Impact of Gdansk

Edited by Beata Moejko

11 The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region

Evolution and Transformation

Evgeny Khvalkov

12 The Plow, the Pen and the Sword

Images and Self-Images of Medieval People in the Low Countries

Rudi Knzel

13 Family, Work and Household in Late Medieval Iberia

A Social History of Manresa at the Time of the Black Death

Jeff Fynn-Paul

14 How Thor Lost His Thunder

The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God

Declan Taggart

Formal thanks are due to the editors of Scripta Islandica and Saga-Book for their permission to reproduce material modified from my articles All the Mountains Shake ( Scripta Islandica , 67 [2017]) and Stealing his Thunder: An Investigation of Old Norse Images of rr ( Saga-Book , 41 [2017]). I am also grateful to the various organisations who funded and supported me in various crucial ways during the PhD that this book is based upon: the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, the Viking Society for Northern Research, the Royal Historical Society and the Spalding Trust. More recently, I am obliged to the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and Stockholm Universitys Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender studies, who funded and hosted me respectively during the productive and happy stay in 2016 when I began work on this book. And I would like to thank Laura Pilsworth and Morwenna Scott, my editor and her assistant at Routledge, who have been unfailingly gracious and supportive.

When I finished my PhD, my acknowledgements were already lengthy. Now that I have re-worked my thesis, too many people to mention are due my gratitude for their advice, friendship and good humour. Needless to say, this books defects and errors are my responsibility.

I remain enormously indebted to my doctoral supervisors at the University of Aberdeen, Stefan Brink, Tarrin Wills and Karen Bek-Pedersen, who have not stopped sharing with me stories of bovine resurrection, metaphorically walking me through arcane poetic structures and literally walking me through Scandinavias sacral landscapes, even though theyre not getting paid for it any more. I owe almost as much to my many unofficial supervisors and proofreaders at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies in Aberdeen. Many of the ideas of this book arose in conversation with them, and I have learned so much more from their friendships about dvergr sexuality, jtunn emancipation, magical bishops, medieval Eucharistic rites and the domestic lives of goats than I ever thought possible or probably desirable.

I am newly indebted to Olof Sundqvist, my mentor at Stockholm University and one of the nicest people I have ever met. His insights into Old Norse religion have become a great influence. The same is true of the thoughts of Lisa Collinson and Alaric Hall, my PhDs examiners, without whom this book would be much inferior. I have been lucky enough to receive assistance and friendship from a number of scholars. In particular, it is a pleasant duty to thank David Braine (greatly missed), Terry Gunnell, Carolyne Larrington, Maths Bertell, Edith Marold, Peter Jackson, Egil Asprem, Erik stling, Torun Zachrisson, Gunnar Ternhag, Ingrid Lyberg, Filip Missuno, Jens Peter Schjdt, Jesper Srensen, the attendees of the Comparing the Medieval North workshop, Johnni Langer, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers at Aarhus University, and Connor and Leithan Organ. Without my earliest teachers in Old Norse literature, John McKinnell, David Ashurst and Matthew Townend, I would never have considered this career path. They are among the small number of people who I have found truly inspirational.

Thank you too to the friends I grew up with, like Damian Maguire, Michael McLaughlin, John Bradley, Niall McEnhill, Stephen Maguire and Patrick Griffin, and to newer friends and family, like Francisco Garca, Consuelo Losquio, Elena Garca and Fidel Tobas, for making up some of the rest of that number.

Finally, I owe much to Irene Garca Losquio, who is still the same precious source of creative thinking, energy and advice on how to be kinder in criticism that she was when I finished my PhD, and to my parents, siblings and wider family members, who no matter where I have travelled, have always remained my home. I cant imagine how difficult it would be to do this or anything else without all of them.