Odin
;)
also known as Woden or Wotan, was the chief god of Germanic mythology, the son of Bor and grandson of Buri. He was particularly favoured by the Vikings and rose to prominence in the eighth and ninth centuries. These seafarers and raiders were attracted by Odin's love of battle as the 'father of the slain' for in Valhalla, an immense hall in the divine fortress of Asgard, the one-eyed god was said to preside over the Einherjar ('glorious dead'). At this period it seems that Odin displaced Tyr, whom the Romans had identified as the sky god of the north European peoples. Tyr retained his interest in war, but Odin was looked upon as the inspiration for hard-bitten warriors. He alone had the power to inspire men in battle to a state of berserk rage in which they feared nothing and felt no pain. The terrible berserkers would rush naked into the fray, biting the edges of their shields in a maddened frenzy. Odin's name means something akin to 'fury' or 'madness'. It indicates possession, as in the battle-frenzy exhibited by the Irish hero Cuchulainn.
That Odin became the foremost god shows how important warfare always was in Germanic tradition. It should be noted, however, that he did not embody martial esctasy himself; rather he inspired it in a devious manner. Odin was ever ready to stir up strife, and on one occasion commanded the fertility goddess Freyja to 'find two kings and set them at each other's throats' so that their vassals would wade through torrents of blood on the battlefield. The Danish King Harald was supposed to have been instructed in tactics by the god and granted many victories. In his final battle, though, Odin took the place of the king's charioteer and drove Harald to his death. When asked about such withdrawals of luck, Odin used to reply that 'the grey wolf watches the halls of the gods'. Gathering to Valhalla heroic warriors slain in battle was the only policy he could adopt under the constant threat of Ragnarok, the doom of the gods. These Einherjar were desperately needed for the final battle on the Vigrid Plain, where nearly all would fall in a struggle between the gods and the frost giants. Odin himself was to he killed by the wolf Fenrir, the monstrous offspring of the fire god Loki and the frost giantess Angrboda.
Besides his authority over the battlefield and the glorious dead, Odin was a god of magic and wisdom. As the oldest of the gods, the first-horn son of Bor, he was treated by the other gods as their father. Shifty-eyed and flaming-eyed he might he, but Odin also had a strongly positive side to his character as the most learned god. His conflicting negative and positive aspects are indeed very similar to hose of the Hindu god Shiva, the great destroyer-saviour of Indian mythology. For Odin's love of wisdom was so profound that he was prepared to sacrifice himself to plumb its depths. Odin was often portrayed as a grey-bearded old man with one eye, his face hidden a hood or a broad-brimmed hat, because he had cast an eye into Mimir's well in return for a drink of its 'immense wisdom'. He gained insight in another way by hanging himself for nine days from Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree. This voluntary death, and his subsequent resurrection by means of magic, gave Odin greater wisdom than anyone else.
It is possible that the obvious parallel between this myth and the Crucifixion gave Christianity a head-start in northern Europe. Odin's own worship appears to have gone into decline in the early eleventh century, at the close of the Viking age. Violent times were passing as Viking colonists settled down as peaceful farmers and traders. But during the Vikings heyday, hanging formed an important part of Odin worship, even being regarded as a shortcut to Valhalla. The great Viking raid of 842 on Nantes in north-western France can thus be seen as the outcome of a barbarous pledge to the god. Most of the city's inhabitants were slain and hanged naked or clothed from trees. It was 'an axe-age, sword-age' a violent interlude prior to the end of the world that would come at Ragnarok.
In addition to Frigg, his wife in Asgard, Odin had many other wives, and he fathered a number of children. Among those said to be his sons were Thor, Balder, Hodr, and Vali.
Odin kept himself informed about the affairs of the nine worlds with two faithful ravens. As Vikings at sea sent out ravens in search of land, Odin's own ravens Huginn and Muninn flew about and then 'whispered into his ears every scrap of news which they saw or heard tell of'. The birds names mean 'thought' and 'memory' respectively. Because of his wisdom and his knowledge of events, Odin was oppressed by the approach of Ragnarok. Just as the cycle of Germanic mythology started with a cosmos awash with the blood of the original frost giant Ymir, when Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve carved the world of men out of his dead body, so the final scene was to be a battlefield, where the gods were predestined to gush out their own blood. Ragnarok, the doom of the gods, began with the death of Odin's son Balder and the realization by the gods that in Loki, the god of fire, they had tolerated the growth of evil. There was nothing that Odin could do to prevent the catastrophe. His only consolation was the foreknowledge that his resurrected son Balder would he worshipped in his stead in a new age and a new land which would rise from the sea.