For the actual Vikings, Thor may have been admired for his great feats — but certainly not for his moral fortitude.
Today, the name"Thor" likely conjures up an image of a well-muscled Chris Hemsworth playing the Norse-inspired superhero on the big screen. For the actual Vikings, the god of thunder may have similarly been admired for his great feats — but certainly not for his moral fortitude.
"From the Viking perspective, there seems to be a number of supernatural beings that facilitate cooperation," said study author Ben Raffield, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. [Fierce Fighters: 7 Secrets of Viking Seamen] The study is part of an ongoing anthropological debate over whether supernatural beliefs form the scaffolding of complex societies. Some evidence from history and psychology studies suggests that a god or gods can keep people in line with the threat of punishment, thus increasing cooperation, even among strangers.
But the Viking gods did not seem to be"big" gods, Raffield said. They weren't supremely powerful — in fact, Norse mythology holds that they weren't even immortal, but were fated to die in a cataclysm called Ragnarök — and they weren't omnipotent. They weren't even the first beings: According to the Prose Edda, Odin and his brothers were born of the first man and the daughter of a frost giant. And, morally speaking, they were kind of a mess.
"You would have been wise not to anger any of them if you wished to live to old age, but, again, there is no evidence to suggest that these beings would hold you to any form of behavioral code, nor follow one themselves," Raffield said.
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