In Sami shamanism, Horagalles, also written Hora Galles and Thora Galles and often equated with Tiermes

Tiermes

Tiermes is a Sami god of thunder and rain, also called Aijeke or Ajeke and often identified with Horagalles.Tiermes is god of the sky and thunder and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans, and lakes and rules over human life, health, and well-being. He protects people and their animals from...

 or Aijeke (i.e. "grandfather or great grandfather"), is the thunder god. He is depicted as a wooden figure with a nail in the head, and with a hammer or occasionally on shaman drums, two hammers. His name is derived from that of the Norse god

Norse mythology

Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...

 Thor

Thor

In Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...

.

Characteristics and functions

Idols of Horagalles are made of wood and have a nail or spike and a piece of flint in the head. He has a hammer called Wetschera, Aijeke Wetschera, or Ajeke veċċera, "grandfather's hammer."

Horagalles is the god of the sky, thunder

Thunder

Thunder is the sound made by lightning. Depending on the nature of the lightning and distance of the listener, thunder can range from a sharp, loud crack to a long, low rumble . The sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding and within...

 and lightning, the rainbow, weather, oceans, and lakes and rules over human life, health and wellbeing. He punishes "hurtful demons" or "evil spirits" (i.e., trolls) who frequent the rocks and mountains; he destroys them with his lightning, shoots them with his bow, or dashes their brains out with his hammer. The rainbow is his bow, "Aijeke dauge".

Horagalles depicted on Sami shaman drums

On Sami shaman drums Horagalles was occasionally depicted with a sledgehammer in one hand and a cross-hammer in the other, or symbolized by two crossed hammers. He made thunder and lightning with one hammer and withdrew them with the other to prevent damage.

Name and relationship to other gods

The name Horagalles does not occur in older dictionaries of Sami languages, for instance in the mid-19th century. He is often equated with Tiermes; in 1673 Johannes Scheffer, who did not use the name Horagalles, wrote that when Aijeke thundered, he was called Tiermes. There is considerable regional variation in the names; Horagalles (with its various spellings, including Thoragalles) is characteristically southern Sami, and the rainbow is referred to by a variety of names referring to thunder.

Early scholars noted the similarities between Horagalles and the Norse thunder-god Thor and that some Sami called him Thoron or simply Thor, and were unsure which had influenced which. But the name Horagalles is now interpreted as a loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

 from the Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

 Þórr Karl, "the Old Man Thor," "Thor, the Elder," or "Thor fellow," "Thor Karl" (possibly from Norwegian Torrekall), or Swedish Torsmannen, "the thunder man."

Horagalles' consort is called Ravdna, and the red berries of the rowan

Rowan

The rowans or mountain-ashes are shrubs or small trees in genus Sorbus of family Rosaceae. They are native throughout the cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with the highest species diversity in the mountains of western China and the Himalaya, where numerous apomictic microspecies...

 tree are sacred to her. The name Ravdna resembles North Germanic names for the tree, such as Old Norse reynir, and according to the Prose Edda

Prose Edda

The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda or simply Edda, is an Icelandic collection of four sections interspersed with excerpts from earlier skaldic and Eddic poetry containing tales from Nordic mythology...

book Skáldskaparmál

Skáldskaparmál

The second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...

, the rowan is called "the salvation of Thor" because Thor once saved himself by clinging to it. It has therefore been theorized that the Norse goddess Sif

Sif

In Norse mythology, Sif is a goddess associated with earth. Sif is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the poetry of skalds...

, Thor's wife, was once conceived of in the form of a rowan to which Thor clung.

Further reading

• Axel Olrik
  Axel Olrik
  Axel Olrik was a Danish folklorist, and a pioneer in the methodical study of oral narrative.His Principles for Oral Narrative Research, recently translated by K. Wolf and J. Jensen, Bloomington, Ind., 1992, was first published in 1921, after Olrik's early death...
  
  . "Nordisk og lappisk gudsdyrkelse." Danske Studier 1905, pp. 39–63.
• Axel Olrik. "Tordenguden og hans dreng i lappernes myteverden." Danske Studier 1906, pp. 65–69.