Odin
Odin is a widely revered god in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism. Most surviving information on Odin comes from Norse mythology, but he figures prominently in the recorded history of Northern Europe. This includes the Roman Empire's partial occupation of Germania, the Migration Period and the Viking Age. Consequently, Odin has hundreds of names and titles. Several of these stem from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic theonym Wōðanaz, meaning "lord of frenzy" or "leader of the possessed", which may relate to the god's strong association with poetry.
Most mythological stories about Odin survive from the 13th-century Prose Edda and an earlier collection of Old Norse poems, the Poetic Edda, along with other Old Norse items like Ynglinga saga. The Prose Edda and other sources depict Odin as the head of the pantheon, sometimes called the Æsir, and bearing a spear and a ring. Wider sources depict Odin as the son of Bestla and Borr; brother to Vili and Vé; and husband to the goddess Frigg, with whom he fathered Baldr. Odin has many other sons, including Thor, whom he sired with the earth-goddess Jörð. He is sometimes accompanied by animal familiars, such as the ravens Huginn and Muninn and the wolves Geri and Freki. The Prose Edda describes Odin and his brothers' creation of the world through slaying the primordial being Ymir, and his giving of life to the first humans Ask and Embla. Odin is often referred to as long-bearded, sometimes as an old man, and also as possessing only one eye, having sacrificed the other for wisdom.
Odin is widely regarded as a god of the dead and warfare. In this role, he receives slain warriors—the einherjar—at Valhöll in the realm of Asgard. The Poetic Edda associates him with Valkyries, perhaps as their leader. In the mythic future, Odin leads the einherjar at Ragnarök, where he is killed by the monstrous wolf Fenrir. Accounts by early travellers to Northern Europe describe human sacrifices being made to Odin. In Old English texts, Odin is euhemerized as an ancestral figure for royalty and is frequently depicted as a founding figure for various Germanic peoples, such as the Langobards. In some later folklore, he is a leader of the Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession of the dead.
Odin has an attested history spanning over a thousand years. He is an important subject of interest to Germanic scholars. Some scholars consider the god's relations to other figures—as reflected, for example in the etymological similarity of his name to the name of Freyja's husband Óðr. Others discuss his historical lineage, exploring whether he derives from Proto-Indo-European mythology or developed later in Germanic society. In modern times, most forms of the new religious movement Heathenry venerate him; in some, he is the central deity. The god regularly features across all forms of modern media, especially genre fiction, and—alongside others in the Germanic pantheon—has lent his name to a day of the week, Wednesday, in many languages.
Name
Etymological origin
The Old Norse theonym Óðinn is a cognate of other medieval Germanic names, including Old English Wōden, Old Saxon Wōdan, Old Dutch Wuodan, and Old High German Wuotan. They all derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic masculine theonym *Wōðanaz. Translated as 'lord of frenzy', or as 'leader of the possessed', *Wōðanaz stems from the Proto-Germanic adjective *wōðaz attached to the suffix *-naz.Internal and comparative evidence all point to the ideas of a divine possession or inspiration, and an ecstatic divination. In his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, Adam of Bremen explicitly associates Wodan with the Latin term furor, which can be translated as 'rage', 'fury', 'madness', or 'frenzy'. As of 2011, an attestation of Proto-Norse Woðinz, on the Strängnäs stone, has been accepted as probably authentic, but the name may be used as a related adjective instead meaning "with a gift for possession".
Other Germanic cognates derived from *wōðaz include Gothic woþs, Old Norse óðr, Old English wōd and Dutch woed, along with the substantivized forms Old Norse óðr, Old English wōþ, Old High German wuot and Middle Dutch woet, from the same root as the original adjective. The Proto-Germanic terms *wōðīn and *wōðjanan can also be reconstructed. Early epigraphic attestations of the adjective include un-wōdz and wōdu-rīde.
Philologist Jan de Vries has argued that the Old Norse deities Óðinn and Óðr were probably originally connected, with Óðr being the elder form and the ultimate source of the name Óðinn. He further suggested that the god of rage Óðr–Óðinn stood in opposition to the god of glorious majesty Ullr–Ullinn in a similar manner to the Vedic contrast between Varuna and Mitra.
The adjective *wōðaz ultimately stems from a Pre-Germanic form *uoh₂-tós, which is related to the Proto-Celtic terms *wātis, meaning 'seer, sooth-sayer' and *wātus, meaning 'prophesy, poetic inspiration'. According to some scholars, the Latin term vātēs is probably a Celtic loanword from the Gaulish language, making *uoh₂-tós ~ *ueh₂-tus a shared religious term common to Germanic and Celtic rather than an inherited word of earlier Proto-Indo-European origin. In the case a borrowing scenario is excluded, a PIE etymon *ueh₂-tis can also be posited as the common ancestor of the attested Germanic, Celtic and Latin forms.
Other names
are recorded for Odin; the names are variously descriptive of attributes of the god, refer to myths involving him, or refer to religious practices associated with him. This multitude makes Odin the god with the most known names among the Germanic peoples. Steve Martin has pointed out that the name Odinsberg in Cleveland Yorkshire, now corrupted to Roseberry, may derive from the time of the Anglian settlements, with nearby Newton under Roseberry and Great Ayton having Anglo Saxon suffixes. The very dramatic rocky peak was an obvious place for divine association, and may have replaced Bronze Age/Iron Age beliefs of divinity there, given that a hoard of bronze votive axes and other objects was buried by the summit. It could be a rare example, then, of Nordic-Germanic theology displacing earlier Celtic mythology in an imposing place of tribal prominence.In his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner refers to the god as Wotan, a spelling of his own invention which combines the Old High German Wuotan with the Low German Wodan.
Origin of ''Wednesday''
The modern English weekday name Wednesday derives from Old English Wōdnesdæg, meaning 'day of Wōden'. Cognate terms are found in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Low German and Middle Dutch Wōdensdach, Old Frisian Wērnisdei and Old Norse Óðinsdagr. All of these terms derive from Late Proto-Germanic *Wodanesdag, a calque of Latin Mercurii dies.Attestations
Roman era to Migration Period
The earliest records of the Germanic peoples were recorded by the Romans, and in these works Odin is frequently referred to—via a process known as interpretatio romana —as the Roman god Mercury. The first clear example of this occurs in the Roman historian Tacitus's late 1st-century work Germania, where, writing about the religion of the Suebi, he comments that "among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship. They regard it as a religious duty to offer to him, on fixed days, human as well as other sacrificial victims. Hercules and Mars they appease by animal offerings of the permitted kind" and adds that a portion of the Suebi also venerate "Isis". In this instance, Tacitus refers to the god Odin as "Mercury", Thor as "Hercules", and Týr as "Mars". The "Isis" of the Suebi has been debated and may represent "Freyja".Anthony Birley noted that Odin's apparent identification with Mercury has little to do with Mercury's classical role of being messenger of the gods, but appears to be due to Mercury's role of psychopomp. Other contemporary evidence may also have led to the equation of Odin with Mercury; Odin, like Mercury, may have at this time already been pictured with a staff and hat, may have been considered a trader god, and the two may have been seen as parallel in their roles as wandering deities. But their rankings in their respective religious spheres may have been very different. Also, Tacitus's "among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship" is an exact quote from Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico in which Caesar is referring to the Gauls and not the Germanic peoples. Regarding the Germanic peoples, Caesar states: "hey consider the gods only the ones that they can see, the Sun, Fire and the Moon", which scholars reject as clearly mistaken, regardless of what may have led to the statement.
There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated. Richard North and Herwig Wolfram have both argued that the Goths did not worship Odin, Wolfram contending that the use of Greek names of the week in Gothic provides evidence of that. One possible reading of the Gothic Ring of Pietroassa is that the inscription "gutaniowi hailag" means "sacred to Wodan-Jove", but this is highly disputed.
The earliest clear reference to Odin by name is found on a C-bracteate discovered in Denmark in 2020, part of the Vindelev Hoard. Dated to as early as the 400s, the bracteate features a Proto-Norse Elder Futhark inscription reading "He is Odin’s man". Although the English kingdoms were nominally converted to Christianity by the end of the 7th century, Woden is frequently listed as a founding figure among the Old English royalty.
Odin is also either directly or indirectly mentioned a few times in the surviving Old English poetic corpus, including the Nine Herbs Charm and likely also the Old English rune poem. Odin may also be referenced in the riddle Solomon and Saturn. In the Nine Herbs Charm, Woden is said to have slain a wyrm by way of nine "glory twigs". Preserved from an 11th-century manuscript, the poem is, according to Bill Griffiths, "one of the most enigmatic of Old English texts". The section that mentions Woden is as follows:
The emendation of nan to 'man' has been proposed. The next stanza comments on the creation of the herbs chervil and fennel while hanging in heaven by the 'wise lord' and before sending them down among mankind. Regarding this, Griffith comments that "In a Christian context 'hanging in heaven' would refer to the crucifixion; but there is also a parallel, perhaps a better one, with Odin, as his crucifixion was associated with learning." The Old English gnomic poem Maxims I also mentions Woden by name in the phrase Woden worhte vé,, in which he is contrasted with and denounced against the Christian God.
The Old English rune poem recounts the Old English runic alphabet, the futhorc. The stanza for the rune ansuz reads as follows:
The first word of this stanza, ōs is a homophone for Old English os, a particularly heathen word for 'god'. Due to this and the content of the stanzas, several scholars have posited that this poem is censored, having originally referred to Odin. Kathleen Herbert comments that "Os was cognate with As in Norse, where it meant one of the Æsir, the chief family of gods. In Old English, it could be used as an element in first names: Osric, Oswald, Osmund, etc. but it was not used as a word to refer to the God of Christians. Woden was equated with Mercury, the god of eloquence. The tales about the Norse god Odin tell how he gave one of his eyes in return for wisdom; he also won the mead of poetic inspiration. Luckily for Christian rune-masters, the Latin word os could be substituted without ruining the sense, to keep the outward form of the rune name without obviously referring to Woden."
In the prose narrative of Solomon and Saturn, "Mercurius the Giant" is referred to as an inventor of letters. This may also be a reference to Odin, who is in Norse mythology the founder of the runic alphabets, and the gloss a continuation of the practice of equating Odin with Mercury found as early as Tacitus. One of the Solomon and Saturn poems is additionally in the style of later Old Norse material featuring Odin, such as the Old Norse poem Vafþrúðnismál, featuring Odin and the jötunn Vafþrúðnir engaging in a deadly game of wits.
Image:Wodan Frea Himmelsfenster by Emil Doepler.jpg|thumb|Odin and Frea look down from their window in the heavens to the Winnili women in an illustration by Emil Doepler, 1905.
Image:Wodan Frea Himmelsfenster II by Emil Doepler.jpg|thumb|Winnili women with their hair tied as beards look up at Godan and Frea in an illustration by Emil Doepler, 1905.
The 7th-century Origo Gentis Langobardorum, and Paul the Deacon's 8th-century Historia Langobardorum derived from it, recount a founding myth of the Langobards, a Germanic people who ruled a region of the Italian Peninsula. According to this legend, a "small people" known as the Winnili were ruled by a woman named Gambara who had two sons, Ybor and Aio. The Vandals, ruled by Ambri and Assi, came to the Winnili with their army and demanded that they pay them tribute or prepare for war. Ybor, Aio, and their mother Gambara rejected their demands for tribute. Ambri and Assi then asked the god Godan for victory over the Winnili, to which Godan responded : "Whom I shall first see when at sunrise, to them will I give the victory."
Meanwhile, Ybor and Aio called upon Frea, Godan's wife. Frea counselled them that "at sunrise the Winnil should come, and that their women, with their hair let down around the face in the likeness of a beard should also come with their husbands". At sunrise, Frea turned Godan's bed around to face east and woke him. Godan saw the Winnili and their whiskered women and asked, "who are those Long-beards?" Frea responded to Godan, "As you have given them a name, give them also the victory". Godan did so, "so that they should defend themselves according to his counsel and obtain the victory". Thenceforth the Winnili were known as the Langobards.
Writing in the mid-7th century, Jonas of Bobbio wrote that earlier that century the Irish missionary Columbanus disrupted an offering of beer to Odin "" in Swabia. A few centuries later, 9th-century document from what is now Mainz, Germany, known as the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow records the names of three Old Saxon gods, UUôden, Seaxnēat, and Thunaer, whom pagan converts were to renounce as demons.
A 10th-century manuscript found in Merseburg, Germany, features a heathen invocation known as the Second Merseburg Incantation, which calls upon Odin and other gods and goddesses from the continental Germanic pantheon to assist in healing a horse: