It seems like a weird choice for a draft animal.
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3 Answers
Thor's "ride" fits with his role as god of the common people. While most of the gods ride horses, Thor drives a wagon, or walks. (He walks across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, according to the Prose Edda.)
As for the goats, I'm just guessing here, but there's a verse in the poem Havamal, which is supposed to be the widsom of Odin himself:
One's own house is best, though small it may be;
each man is master at
home; though he have but two goats and a bark-thatched hut
'tis better than craving a boon.
So a goat would be the least that a subsistence farmer could get by with - but Thor's goats are special, because he can eat them and use them for draft animals time and again. Also, anyone who can yoke a goat and make it pull a wagon is clearly possessed of supernatural powers.
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1Hmm... I do not disagree with the gist of this answer, but I can think of only four gods for which we know a means of transport except walking: Thor drawn by his goats, Odin on Sleipnir, Frey on his boar or his ship, and Freya drawn by her cats or (presumably) using her falcon shape.– andejonsCommented Aug 19, 2017 at 19:17
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1Heimdall and Freyr have horses, at least in the Prose Edda, but I take your point. However, Thor walks across Bifrost, and the whole point of the poem Harbardsljod is that Odin (disguised) can refuse to ferry Thor across a ford too deep to wade. But it's true that we don't know how most of them get around. Commented Aug 20, 2017 at 20:19
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2You might find this essay on why there's goats but no sheep in the myths interesting. I find it a little too speculative when there's only two uses of one and none for the other animal (and sheep as draft animals for Thor seems very odd), but it's interesting anyway.– andejonsCommented Aug 22, 2017 at 6:15
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1I'm glad I used the term "weird" per it's association with portentousness re: "anyone who can yoke a goat and make it pull a wagon is clearly possessed of supernatural powers."– DukeZhouCommented Aug 24, 2017 at 17:45
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1@andejons: In Wagner's Ring (specifically Die Walküre 2.1, stage direction by the poet/composer) Fricka arrives in a chariot drawn by two rams. Commented Aug 30, 2017 at 15:58
Snorri’s tale of the goats’ being being magically reconstituted after being eaten for meat is of a common type of mythic motif, a fantasy cherished by a people who know hunger intimately. (Compare Ojibwe myths featuring a tiny kettle that proves an inexhaustible cornucopia of manoomin [that’s “wild rice” to us chimooks]; a more specific match, though, is the myth of Tantalos and Pelops.) The socio-economic class associated with Thor’s cult was lower than that associated with Odin’s, after all.
At one level, one might say that even a god might have to settle for whatever species he could get with this rare magical property, if he felt it requisite. But on a very different level, one might ask if his “choice” of goats is any weirder than, say, the choice of a castrated blue lion to be the mount or “vehicle” of the Bodhisattva Manjusri. Quite possibly these pairings between divine personages and their familiar animals are holdovers from a stage of totemism.
It looks less weird in the context of a version of the Auriga mythology involving goats. Part of Auriga are the Haedi, the two goat kids.
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Welcome to Mythology! I took the liberty of linking your answer to the relevant wiki. Nice connection. (PS see Solsdottir's answer and the notes for the association of weirdness with portentousness.)– DukeZhouCommented Sep 18, 2017 at 21:09