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.
Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr – "teeth-barer" and "teeth-grinder" – are the two goats that draw the chariot of the thunder god Thor across the sky. Their din is the thunder, their path draws the lightning after it.
The wondrous thing: Thor can slaughter and eat his goats – and wake them to life again the next morning with his hammer, as long as the bones remain intact. An image of abundance and renewal.
But once the farmer's son Thjalfi secretly breaks a bone to get at the marrow. In the morning one goat is lame. In atonement Thjalfi and his sister Röskva must henceforth follow Thor as servants – thus they enter his retinue.
The goats link Thor with fertility, food and rural life. The goat was an important animal of the north – no coincidence that it of all animals draws the down-to-earth thunder god.
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.
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