The Aesir.—­The number of the Aesir is not fixed. Hyndluljod says there were twelve ("there were eleven Aesir when Baldr went down into the howe").  Snorri gives a list of fourteen Aesir or Gods (Odin, Thor, Baldr, Njoerd, Frey, Tyr, Bragi, Heimdal, Hoed, Vidar, Vali, Ullr, Forseti, Loki), and adds Hoeni in another list, all the fifteen occurring in the poems; and sixteen Goddesses (Asynjor), the majority of whom are merely personified epithets, occurring nowhere else.  Of the sixteen, Frigg, Gefion, Freyja and Saga (really an epithet only) are Goddesses in the poems, and Fulla is Frigg’s handmaid.  In another chapter, Snorri adds Idunn, Gerd, Sigyn and Nanna, of whom the latter does not appear in the Elder Edda, where Idunn, Gerd (a giantess) and Sigyn are the wives of Bragi, Frey and Loki; and two others, the giantess Skadi and Sif, are the wives of Njoerd and Thor.

A striking difference from classical mythology is that neither Tyr (who should etymologically be the Sky-god), nor Thor (the Thunder-god), takes the highest place.  Tyr is the hero of one important episode, the chaining of the Wolf, through which he loses his right hand.  This is told in full by Snorri and alluded to in Lokasenna, both in the prose preface ("Tyr also was there, with only one hand; the Fenris-wolf had bitten off the other, when he was bound”) and in the poem itself: 

Loki.  “I must remember that right hand which Fenri bit off thee.”

Tyr.  “I am short of a hand, but thou of the famous wolf; to each the loss is ill-luck.  Nor is the wolf in better plight, for he must wait in bonds till Ragnaroek.”

Otherwise, he only appears in connexion with two more popular Gods:  he speaks in Frey’s defence in Lokasenna, and in Hymiskvida he is Thor’s companion in the search for a cauldron; the latter poem represents him as a giant’s son.

Thor, on the other hand, is second only to his father Odin; he is the strongest of the Gods and their champion against the giants, and his antagonist at Ragnaroek is to be the World-Snake.  Like Odin, he travels much, but while the chief God generally goes craftily and in disguise, to gain knowledge or test his wisdom, Thor’s errands are warlike; in Lokasenna he is absent on a journey, in Harbardsljod and Alvissmal he is returning from one.  His journeys are always to the east; so in Harbardsljod:  “I was in the east, fighting the malevolent giant-brides....  I was in the east and guarding the river, when Svarang’s sons attacked me.”  The Giants live in the east (Hymiskvida 5); Thor threatened Loki:  “I will fling thee up into the east, and no one shall see thee more” (Lokasenna 59); the fire-giants at Ragnaroek are to come from the east:  “Hrym comes driving from the east, he lifts his shield before him....  A ship comes from the east, Muspell’s sons will come sailing over the sea, and Loki steers” (Voeluspa 50, 51).  It would not, perhaps, be overstraining the point to suggest that this is a reminiscence of early warfare between the Scandinavians and eastern nations, either Lapps and Finns or Slavonic tribes.