Viking’s Protected Graves With Thor’s Hammer

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]