THOR'S HAMMER: Origins of Thundersley?

Thor's Hammer works a charm

Tessa Hallmann

Thundersley Bronze Age Axe Head

Robert Hallmann's Book

Thundersley Flint Dagger

Robert Hallmann's book

Edited from “The Star    Thurs. 4 Nov. 1880”

“A shapely flint axe of the later Stone Age, once possessed by an ancient Euskarian* chief”

 I have come at last across a genuine relic which repays me for the trouble and discomfort of grubbing in the loose surface-soil amid fog and drizzle. For, unless I mistake, the object which I now hold in my hand, rather grimed with clay and age but still showing traces of its polished surface through the thick crust of earth, is nothing less than the identical hammer of the great god Thor himself.
It is, in fact, a shapely flint axe belonging to the later Stone Age when men had learned to grind and smooth their tools or weapons and it once formed a possession of the ancient Euskarian chief whose remains still lie unmolested in the barrow which forms the central point of the earthwork.  If there were any doubt at all about the matter, this stone hatchet, which is thoroughly Euskarian in type, would set the question at rest in a moment.

But why should I identify this old neolithic weapon with the mythical hammer of the Scandinavian God Thor? The Euskarians* are separated in our island from the Anglo-Saxons and Danes by all the long interval of British and Roman times. How can a polished hatchet of the later Stone Age have anything to do with the chief deity of a race who peopled Britain a couple of thousand years after the hatchet itself had been safely buried beside the dead chieftain in yonder barrow ? Well, the connection is far closer than one would at first sight suppose.

Popular superstitions, in fact, do not as a rule gather about language at all, but about certain tangible and material objects, supposed to have a mythical virtue. It may be a crooked sixpence, or a horseshoe, or a blood-stone, or the charms on a watch-chain. It may be a standing stone, or an oak, or a mistletoe bough.  Now, objects dug up from the ground, and not known to be of human workmanship, are especially apt to meet with such superstitious reverence, among them the commonest, in Europe at least, are stone weapons.

It is a universal idea among the scientifically ignorant that lightning consists of a material weapon— the thunderbolt. Hence all large weapons, or objects which look like weapons, found underground, are popularly known as thunderbolts.  All over England, France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, and Italy, the polished stone axes of the Euskarian aborigines are known as thunderbolts;  believed to have fallen from the sky.

The great sky-god;  the Greek Zeus, the Roman Jupiter, whose main function it was to wield the lightnings and gather the clouds, became known and remembered among the Teutonic races as Thunder only. His Anglo-Saxon name of Thunor — from which comes our thunder — is in High German Donner, and in Scandinavian Thor.

The position of his sacred day in the order of the week shows his identity with Zeus ; for Thursday, originally Thunres daeg, answers of course to Jovis dies or Jeudi.
Among the Teutons,  Thunor or Thor is always armed with a hammer; and this hammer, I venture to suggest, is really the stone axe of the aboriginal Euskarians. Men who found such axes in the ground have everywhere leaped at once to the conclusion that they were thunderbolts.

What more natural, then, than to figure the god Thunder as armed with such an axe?  Thunder is described as threshing “with its fiery axe.”  When we put all this together, the author can hardly see how we avoid the inference that the early English and Norsemen formed their conception of Thor’s hammer from the stone hatchets which they knew as thunderbolts.

In Scotland,  these old weapons are superstitiously cherished in families as talismans for keeping away misfortunes and curing disease. They are also regarded by these very people as thunderbolts, and supposed to protect the houses in which they are kept against lightning. It is an interesting fact that such heathen superstitions still exist in Presbyterian Scotland more perhaps than in any other part of the British Isles.

Finally, I should much like to know whether stone hatchets have anything to do with those places in England which are still called after Thunor. There is a Thundersfield in Surrey, a Thundersley in Essex, a Thursfield in Staffordshire, a Thursby in Cumberland, and a Thursford in Norfolk, all of which take their titles from the Anglo-Saxon Thunor or the Danish Thor. Near Thursley, in Surrey, is a Thunder Hill.

Of course it is possible that the names may only be due to some old heathen temple or meeting-place; but it is also possible that they may be due to actual visible tokens of Thunor’s presence found upon the spots in question.
— St. James Gazette

{Ed:        Mjölnir was Thor’s Hammer,  Euskarian:  a Basque inhabitant.
The picture shows Peter Smith as a Saxon warlord. He demonstrates his helmet, shield, sword, (his self-made seax is not visible) and around his neck is Thor’s hammer as worn by followers of the God of Thunder.

The Thundersley Bronze age axe head and Thundersley Flint dagger are on loan to Southend Museum.}