ABSTRACT
For any study of Þórr, a natural starting place is with the god’s name, which has its root in PGmc *Þunra- ‘thunder’. However, these semantics may have been irrelevant to everyday use of the theonym in Scandinavia and Iceland. Other names related to Þórr in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and onomastics are combed for further connections with thunder, though without definite success; moreover, the deity’s association with chariots may be weaker than normally thought, even though the vision of Þórr’s wagon causing thunder (from the Norwegian poem Haustlǫng) does offer one of the strongest surviving links between Þórr and that phenomenon.
