No horse draws the chariot of the strongest god, but two goats: Tanngrisnir („teeth-barer") and Tanngnjóstr („teeth-grinder"). When their cart rolls across the sky, the thunder rumbles – and their master Thor has an uncanny trick with them.
In the evening Thor can slaughter, roast and eat his goats – and next morning bring them back to life with a swing of his hammer Mjöllnir. Only one condition holds: no bone may be broken. The hides and bones are laid aside and hallowed; in the morning the animals rise again, as good as new.
On this a farmer’s son once comes to grief: when Thor lodges with a poor family and shares his goats for the meal, Thjálfi secretly splits a leg-bone to reach the marrow. In the morning one of the goats limps. Thor’s wrath is terrible – yet instead of vengeance he takes the children Thjálfi and Röskva as servants. So the thunder-god gains his faithful companions.
That goats and not noble steeds draw the thunder-god’s chariot is no accident. Thor is the god of the common people, of farmers and freeholders – and the goat is the poor man’s animal. When his cart rumbles over the rocks of heaven, the thunder is born; the lightning he hurls with his hammer. So the team joins the everyday to the cosmic: the strongest of the gods travels not high on horseback but down-to-earth in a goat-cart.
The motif of the animal that is eaten and yet lives again next morning is among humanity’s oldest images. It mirrors the hope of pre-modern farmers whose herd had to last the winter: food that never runs out is the finest dream of a world on the edge of hunger.
Thor · Thjálfi & Röskva · Mjöllnir · Thor and Utgard-Loki.
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning (21, 44), Skáldskaparmál; Hymiskviða (Poetic Edda). Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.