“Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go, Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for a living, but the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.”  This was the Mother Goose nursery rhyme on a scroll mounted in my bedroom.  As a kid, I recall hoping that I was not born on a Wednesday and would have preferred not to have been born on a Saturday.  When I asked my mom about the actual day of my birth, all she could remember was that it was the longest hottest day of the summer and that there was definitely no air conditioning in the hospital.  My mom being of absolutely no help, I analyzed several consecutive calendars, calculated in for leap years and figured out that I was born on a Tuesday.  I was relieved that I had not been born on a Wednesday.  But it got me to thinking what do these days of the week really mean anyway?

The seven days of the week were named after the seven planets visible to the naked eye in the ancient world.  In Rome, the days were named: Dies Solis, Day of the Sun; Dies Lunea, Day of the Moon; Dies Martis, Day of Mars; Dies Mercuri, Day of Mercury; Dies Joves, Day of Jupiter; Dies Veneres, Day of Venus; and Dies Saturni, Day of Saturn.

England was a Roman outpost, so the English used the same names for the days of the week as the Romans.  After the Romans withdrew from England, German tribes, the Anglos and later the Saxons, invaded England.  These Germanic tribes preferred to use the names of their own gods for the days of the week rather than the gods of the Romans.  So they renamed the days of the week according their gods that were comparable to the Roman ones.  So Dies Solis and Dies Lunea became Sonntag and Montag (Sunday & Monday).  The day of Mars became the day of the Norse war god Tyw (Tuesday).  The day of Mercury became the day of Woden (Wood Odin)(Wednesday), The day of Jupiter became the day of Thor their most powerful god (Thorsday).  The day of Venus became the day of Frigga goddess of married love (Friday).  The day of Saturn stayed the same, perhaps because Saturn was the god of the harvest and the Norse did not have a god of the harvest.

Thor was not the father of the Norse gods like Jupiter, but, like Jupiter, he was the most powerful.  His power came from his magic hammer and magic belt.  They were the ultimate tools and magnified his strength. Unlike the Roman gods, the Norse gods were mortal and did not embody the forces of nature.  They were kind of like really strong and really long lived humans.  Like the Roman gods, they too roamed the earth.

One day while traveling, Thor and his companions became hungry and thirsty and stopped at the castle of the king of the giants to rest and be refreshed.  The king said, in order to sit at the table with us you must demonstrate a talent that you do better than others.  Thor said, “I can drink with the best of them” So the king gave him a mead horn which Thor tried three times to empty but to his chagrin he failed each time.  Failing that, the king gave him another seemingly easy task which he also failed to everyone’s great laughter and amusement. Lastly, he wrestled an old woman to whom he also lost.  After losing, the king told him that he had been tricked because the horn was anchored in the ocean which can’t be emptied and the old lady was “old age” which beats us all.

The Norsemen knew that nothing, not even the gods could defeat the forces of nature.  Those same forces of nature have created a very hot winter for us this year.  On a hot day like today, I feel like I could definitely down an ice cold ocean of mead. Cheers!