From the Wikipedia: Thor

Thor, as you may know, is the god of thunder in Germanic and Norse mythology. Traditionally, he is depicted as a bearded redhead. Tales of his exploits dominated Germanic documents from the dawn of written language in the area until the late Viking age, because Vikings obviously recognized how awesome Thor was.

Thor is the son of Odin, the king of the gods, and Jörd, who was a Jötunn, or frost giant. He married Sif, a human female, but kept a Jötunn mistress named Járnsaxa, because Thor apparently had an Oedipal thing going on.

Thor’s weapon of choice was his Mjöllnir, which was way, way more than an ordinary hammer. In addition to performing the usual nail-driving stuff, it was capable of leveling mountains, plus featured a boomerang-like quality by which it would always return to Thor after he threw it at someone or something that had earned his wrath. Also, it could emit lightning bolts.

Thor traveled in style, of course, on a chariot pulled by regenerating goats from which Thor would eat whenever he got hungry. The goats were presumably stabled in the garage of Thor’s 540-room mansion at Asgard, not too far from Valhalla.

Thor’s Wikipedia page is positively rife with information, which makes perfect sense, as a Venn diagram of Wikipedia editors and Folklore and Mythology majors would yield concentric circles.

Thor’s life was replete with drinking contests, cross-dressing, competitive eating, and umlauts, and thus was not unlike my cöllege career. According to legend, he will die at Ragnarok, the Germanic-mythological equivalent of judgment day, but only after killing his arch-nemesis Jörmungandr the serpent.

I don’t want to delve too deeply into religion here, since obviously it’s a sensitive issue to a lot of people, but from a purely anthropological standpoint it always baffles me that monotheistic religions have so dominated polytheistic ones in the West. I feel like I’d get so much more geared up to go to church if I was going there to learn about a bunch of hammer-wielding, lightning-tossing badasses like Thor.

For that matter, it strikes me as at least a little bit strange that we read The Odyssey in high-school English classes but the Bible or Torah or Quran would obviously be off-limits, even just as historical texts. I’m not complaining because I thought The Odyssey was awesome, but it is so closely wrapped up with a religion, even if it is a mostly defunct one. Do we separate church and state or do we separate one specific type of church and state? And, if the latter is the case, isn’t that akin to the state endorsing that type of church?

I know that sounds ridiculous in the case of The Odyssey, but my 9th-grade class also read Siddhartha, which is most decidedly a book about a very active and popular religion.
I also enjoyed that book very much so I’m certainly not advocating denying it to our nation’s ninth graders. Don’t mistake anything here as any sort of political stance on anything. I’m just sayin’s all.

As for Thor, he is currently passing the time before Ragnarok as an NFL defensive coordinator. And my, has he let himself go.