Viking’s Protected Graves With Thor’s Hammer

Posted by on August 11th, 2010

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If this is an elaborate viral campaign to promote the upcoming Thor movie, color me impressed.

Long dismissed as accidental additions to Viking graves, prehistoric “thunderstones”—fist-size stone tools resembling the Norse god Thor’s hammerhead—were actually purposely placed as good-luck talismans, archaeologists say.

Using fire-starting rock such as flint, Stone Age people originally created the stones to serve as axes. But the Vikings, whose Iron Age heyday lasted from about A.D. 800 to 1050, saw the primitive tools as lightning repellent.

As yet unreported, the underside of the hammerhead features a picture of Natalie Portman and a prequel comic that leads into the events of the film. Not really.

[Nat Geo]

One Response to “Viking’s Protected Graves With Thor’s Hammer”

  1. Josh Bulloc Says:

    Maybe a better campaign to get people interested in the movie would be to connect hammers to bridges and then get on the news for trying to take down a bridge with a hammer.

    Josh Bulloc
    Kansas City, Mo