A strange contradiction sits at the heart of the Prose Edda, the 13th-century Icelandic text that remains the most complete source for modern understanding of Norse mythology. In one passage, the mighty thunder god Thor is described as a mortal king from Troy, an ancestor of Odin. Elsewhere in the same work, Thor is identified as Odin’s son. Both accounts were written by the same man, the Icelandic historian, poet, and statesman Snorri Sturluson.
In his prologue, Snorri wrote that there was once a king in Troy named Munon, or Menon, whose wife was the daughter of King Priam. Their son was named Trór, known to us as Thor. Raised in Thrace by a chieftain named Lórikus, Thor reportedly took up his father’s weapons at age ten. He was said to be strikingly handsome, with hair that shone brighter than gold, and by age twelve he possessed enough strength to lift ten bear skins at once.
The account adds that he killed his foster father and took control of Thrace, which came to be known as Thrudheim. He was then said to have traveled widely, conquering berserkers, giants, and even a dragon. In that same prologue, Thor is said to have married a prophetess named Sibyl, and the text claims that Odin descended from his line twelve generations later. Yet in the main body of the Prose Edda, Snorri describes Odin as the All-Father, the father of all gods and men, and names Thor explicitly as Odin’s son.
This version gives Thor the name Ása-Thor to distinguish him. The inconsistency raises a question that scholars still debate: did Snorri present two different figures with the same name, or was he intentionally blurring the line between mortal and divine? The prologue’s framing suggests a larger purpose. Snorri was a Christian living in a Christian society roughly two centuries after Iceland converted.
When he composed the Prose Edda, the worship of the old gods had largely faded, though their stories survived in skaldic poetry. His stated aim was to preserve those fading traditions, but recording pagan myths openly could have carried risks. To avoid trouble, he framed the ancient gods not as divine beings but as powerful men and kings who had once lived. Over time, he suggested, their descendants came to revere them so deeply that they were remembered as gods.
That approach appears again in the Ynglinga Saga, also written by Snorri, where Thor is described as a pagan priest given a mythical piece of land in what is now Sweden. In the Heimskringla, another of his works, a saga recounts that King Óláfr Tryggvason, a devout Christian ruler, struck a statue of Thor in a temple with a gold gleaming ceremonial rod, knocking the god figure from its pedestal. That episode was written as part of the glorification of the king’s efforts to spread Christianity in Norway. Historians note the event likely never happened, and if it did, the king would have struck only a depiction of the god, not a living being.
Still, it reflects a broader narrative in Snorri’s work in which idols and gods could be humbled by mortals. The idea that Thor might have ancient, non-divine origins finds some support in older sources. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the late first century, described the religion of the Germanic tribes in his work Germania. He noted that the Suebi mainly worshiped a figure he compared to Mercury, typically identified as Odin, and also offered sacrifices to a deity he likened to Hercules, generally identified as Thor.
That comparison likely came from the similarity between Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, and Hercules’ club. In his later work Annals, Tacitus again mentioned Germanic devotion to Hercules and described a sacred grove in northwestern Germany dedicated to him. Thor’s influence among the Germanic peoples extended even to the calendar. Thursday derives from Thor’s day, replacing the Roman dies Jovis, the day of Jupiter.
That association with Jupiter contrasts with the earlier Roman interpretation linking Thor to Hercules. Medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen, writing before 1050, mentioned under his interpretatio germanica that Thor may have led the pantheon, at least in some times and places. Some scholars, including Rudolph Simek, have suggested that a deity called Hercules Magusanus mentioned in inscriptions may have been an epithet for the proto-Germanic god who became Thor. Thor’s name itself means thunder, which has led scholars such as Jacob Grimm to regard him as a sky and weather god.
In Norse mythology, his battles against monsters show traits shared with other Indo-European gods, especially Hercules, the hero of strength. The earliest accounts of Germanic religion come overwhelmingly from Roman writers, and most detailed myths about Thor are found in Scandinavian sources written well after Christianization. Whether those accounts fully reflect how Thor was understood across the older Germanic world remains uncertain. Snorri’s prologue presents Thor as the grandson of Priam of Troy, a figure with some of the same hallmarks as the Norse god, including immense strength and victories over giants and beasts.
He also connects the Æsir, the family of gods, to Asia, with Asgard described as an Asian city sometimes equated with Troy. Snorri even wrote that Thor founded a new city called Asgard in the region then known as Scythia. The central question persists: was Thor an ancient king of Thrace, an ancestor of Odin, a son of Odin, or a figure comparable to Hercules and Jupiter? Snorri’s own writings offer different answers, reflecting both his Christian perspective and his determination to preserve what remained of Norse tradition.
What is certain is that Thor was one of the most widely worshiped gods of the Viking Age, and that the stories surrounding him were shaped by centuries of oral tradition long before Snorri set them down in writing. His work provides the clearest window into those ancient beliefs, even where the details remain tangled and contradictory.