Odin (; from ) 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 ( BCE), the Migration Period (4th–6th centuries CE) and the Viking Age (8th–11th centuries CE). 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 ("Carrion-hall" or "Hall of the Slain") 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 's husband . 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 (runic on the Ribe skull fragment) is a cognate of other medieval Germanic names, including Old English , Old Saxon , Old Dutch , and Old High German (Old Bavarian ).Ernst Anton Quitzmann, Die heidnische Religion der Baiwaren, , 1901W.J.J. Pijnenburg (1980), Bijdrage tot de etymologie van het oudste Nederlands, Eindhoven, hoofdstuk 7 'Dinsdag – Woensdag' They all derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic masculine theonym *Wōðanaz (or *Wōdunaz). Translated as 'lord of frenzy', or as 'leader of the possessed', *Wōðanaz stems from the Proto-Germanic adjective *wōðaz ('possessed, inspired, delirious, raging') attached to the suffix *-naz ('master of').
Internal and comparative evidence all point to the ideas of a divine possession or inspiration, and an ecstatic divination. In his (1075–1080 AD), Adam of Bremen explicitly associates Wodan with the Latin term , which can be translated as 'rage', 'fury', 'madness', or 'frenzy' ( : "Odin, that is, "). 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 (divine) possession" (ON: øðinn).Gustavsson, Helmer & Swantesson, Jan O.H. 2011. Strängnäs, Skramle och Tomteboda: tre urnordiska runinskrifter , in Fornvännen.
Other Germanic cognates derived from *wōðaz include Gothic ('possessed'), Old Norse ('mad, frantic, furious'), Old English ('insane, frenzied') and Dutch ('frantic, wild, crazy'), along with the substantivized forms Old Norse ('mind, wit, sense; song, poetry'), Old English ('sound, noise; voice, song'), Old High German ('thrill, violent agitation') and Middle Dutch ('rage, frenzy'), from the same root as the original adjective. The Proto-Germanic terms *wōðīn ('madness, fury') and *wōðjanan ('to rage') can also be reconstructed.; ; Early epigraphic attestations of the adjective include un-wōdz ('calm one', i.e. 'not-furious'; 200 CE) and wōdu-rīde ('furious rider'; 400 CE).
Philologist Jan de Vries has argued that the Old Norse deities Óðinn and Óðr were probably originally connected (as in the doublet Ullr–Ullinn), with Óðr (*wōðaz) being the elder form and the ultimate source of the name (*wōða-naz). 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' (cf. Gaulish wāteis, Old Irish 'prophet') and *wātus, meaning 'prophesy, poetic inspiration' (cf. Old Irish 'prophetic wisdom, maxims', Old Welsh 'prophetic verse, panegyric'). According to some scholars, the Latin term ('prophet, seer') is probably a Celtic loanword from the Gaulish language, making *uoh₂-tós ~ *ueh₂-tus ('god-inspired') a shared religious term common to Germanic and Celtic rather than an inherited word of earlier Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origin. In the case a borrowing scenario is excluded, a PIE etymon *(H)ueh₂-tis ('prophet, seer') can also be posited as the common ancestor of the attested Germanic, Celtic and Latin forms.
Other names More than 170 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.Simek (2007:248). Steve Martin has pointed out that the name Odinsberg (Ounesberry, Ounsberry, Othenburgh) in Cleveland Yorkshire, now corrupted to Roseberry (Topping), 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 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 (modern Dutch woensdag), Old Frisian Wērnisdei (≈ Wērendei) and Old Norse Óðinsdagr (cf. Danish, Norwegian, Swedish onsdag). All of these terms derive from Late Proto-Germanic *Wodanesdag ('Day of Wōðanaz'), a calque of Latin Mercurii dies ('Day of Mercury'; cf. modern Italian mercoledì, French mercredi, Spanish miércoles).Simek (2007:371)
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 (where characteristics perceived to be similar by Romans result in identification of a non-Roman god as a Roman deity)—as the Roman god Mercury. The first clear example of this occurs in the Roman historian Tacitus's late 1st-century work , where, writing about the religion of the (a confederation of Germanic peoples), 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 also venerate "Isis". In this instance, Tacitus refers to the god Odin as "Mercury", Thor as "Hercules", and as "Mars". The "Isis" of the Suebi has been debated and may represent "Freyja".Birley (1999:42, 106–07).
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.Simek (2007:244). Also, Tacitus's "among the gods Mercury is the one they principally worship" is an exact quote from Julius Caesar's (1st century BCE) in which Caesar is referring to the Gauls and not the Germanic peoples. Regarding the Germanic peoples, Caesar states: "[T]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" (iz Wōd[a]nas weraz).Brooks (2023). 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.Herbert (2007 :7).
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 (serpent, Germanic dragon) 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: