| Summary: | Recent scholarship has indicated that the conception of the Old Norse god Þórr as a thunder god may have been unfamiliar to Viking Age and medieval Icelanders and even to some Scandinavians. This throws much of the mythological poetry concerning the deity into a new light, and, in this article, I focus on the consequences for the interpretation of images of shaking and fire in two poems, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða. These images are compared with similar portrayals of natural calamities, also related to Þórr, in Hallmundarkviða and Haustlöng. The perspective suggested is that, in some contexts, poets and audiences associated quite conventional cosmological imagery of disruption with specific natural phenomena, including volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and that the turmoil in Hallmundarkviða, Lokasenna and Þrymskviða may attest to an extra-literary – if still weak – connection between Þórr and these other phenomena. Thereafter, I analyse the textual function of this seam of cosmological imagery and conclude that its primary function is to advertise the strength of the supernatural being causing it, in keeping with the persistent characterisation of Þórr in terms of his physical power in Old Norse-Icelandic literary traditions. By drawing out the cultural and textual significances of these motifs, this article aims to demonstrate the competing demands of genre, characterisation, and environment in the composition of Old Norse myths centring on Þórr and to elucidate the extent to which these images mediate responses to the terrains of Iceland and Norway.
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