Who Was Odin in Norse Mythology?

Odin ruled Asgard and presided over the gods, but his associations are unusually wide: wisdom, poetry, magic, war, death and the runes. He is a god of the mind rather than of any single natural force.

He is usually pictured as a one-eyed old man in a broad hat and cloak, carrying the spear Gungnir, accompanied by two ravens and two wolves. That travelling disguise appears constantly, because Odin spends much of his time moving among people unrecognised, asking questions.

Two sacrifices define him. He gave one of his eyes to drink from Mimir's well, which granted deep wisdom. The trade is permanent and unglamorous, and it is the clearest statement of his priorities in the whole mythology.

The second is stranger. He hung himself from the world tree Yggdrasil for nine nights, pierced by his own spear, offering himself to himself, and in that state grasped the runes and the power they carried. Odin does not receive knowledge, he pays for it.

Odin's ravens are named Huginn and Muninn, usually translated as thought and memory. Each day they fly across the world and return to tell him what they have seen.

There is a line in the old poetry where Odin admits he fears the ravens might not return, and worries more for memory than for thought. It is a small moment, but it captures the anxiety underlying his character better than any battle scene.

Odin gathered slain warriors into Valhalla, where they fought and feasted daily. This is often read as a straightforward warrior paradise, but there is a purpose behind it.

Odin was assembling an army for Ragnarok, the end of the world, which he knew was coming and knew he would lose. Everything he does is preparation for a battle he has already foreseen the outcome of, which is one of the strangest and most compelling ideas in Norse mythology.

Odin is recorded under an enormous number of names in the old sources, reflecting his different roles and disguises:

• •All father, as the chief of the gods
• •Wanderer, for his travels in the world of humans
• •Raven god, for his messengers
• •Grimnir, meaning the masked or hooded one

Odin's name survives in English every week. Wednesday comes from the Old English for Woden's day, Woden being the Anglo-Saxon form of the same god, and the pattern repeats across Germanic languages.

This is a useful reminder that Norse mythology is not exclusively Scandinavian. The Anglo-Saxons who settled Britain worshipped closely related gods under slightly different names before conversion to Christianity. Most of the surviving written material happens to be Icelandic, which gives the impression of a purely Norse tradition when the underlying beliefs were far more widespread.

Almost everything written about Odin was recorded after Scandinavia had become Christian. The two main sources are Icelandic. The Poetic Edda is a collection of older poems preserved in a manuscript from the thirteenth century, and it includes the Havamal, the poem in which Odin describes hanging on the tree to win the runes. The Prose Edda was written by the Icelandic scholar and politician Snorri Sturluson in the same century, partly as a handbook for poets who needed to understand the old references.

Historians therefore read these texts with care. Snorri was a Christian writing about a religion that had faded, and he sometimes organised and explained the myths in ways that may not reflect actual belief. Other evidence helps fill the gaps: earlier skaldic poetry, runestones, archaeological finds, place names containing the god's name across Scandinavia and England, and much older Roman writing. Roman authors described the Germanic peoples honouring a god they compared to Mercury, which is why the Latin name for Wednesday, the day of Mercury, lines up with Woden's day.

Odin's link with poetry comes from one of the oddest stories Snorri records. After a war between two groups of gods, the Aesir and the Vanir, peace was sealed by both sides spitting into a vessel, and from that spit a wise being called Kvasir was made. Two dwarves murdered Kvasir and mixed his blood with honey, brewing a mead that turned anyone who drank it into a poet or a scholar. The mead eventually passed to a giant, Suttungr, who hid it inside a mountain guarded by his daughter Gunnlod.

Odin set out to win it in typical style, through disguise and cunning rather than force. Working under a false name, he had a hole bored into the mountain, slipped through it as a snake and spent three nights with Gunnlod, who let him take three drinks. He emptied the vessels, turned into an eagle and flew back to Asgard with Suttungr chasing him, spitting the mead into containers the gods had set out. Some fell short along the way, and this was said to be the share left for bad poets.

Odin was honoured as a giver of victory, but the stories make him a dangerous patron. In the Saga of the Volsungs, a mysterious one-eyed stranger thrusts a magnificent sword into a tree trunk at a feast, and only the hero Sigmund can pull it free. Years later, in Sigmund's final battle, a one-eyed man in a hood and cloak appears and raises a spear, and the sword shatters against it. Sigmund falls. Odin has simply decided that the time has come, perhaps because he wants the hero among his warriors. His favour was real, but it could be withdrawn without warning.

His fellow gods said as much. In the poem Lokasenna, the trickster Loki insults each god in turn at a feast, and he accuses Odin of often granting victory to the cowardly. Odin answers with an insult of his own rather than a denial. Loki also mocks him for practising seidr, a form of magic associated mainly with women, which by the standards of the time cast doubt on a man's honour. These accusations show that Odin's knowledge came partly from crossing boundaries that other gods and men would not cross, and that the source of his power was also what made people uneasy about him.

One poem in the Poetic Edda, Vafthrudnismal, is built entirely around a battle of knowledge. Odin decides to visit Vafthrudnir, a giant famous for his learning, even though his wife Frigg warns him that it is dangerous. He arrives in disguise under a false name, and the two agree to stake their heads on the outcome. They trade questions about how the world works and how it began: how earth and sky were made from the body of the first giant, Ymir, where day and night come from, and what will happen when the world ends.

The giant answers everything, including the grim forecast that a wolf will swallow the father of men and that Odin's son Vidar will avenge him. Odin wins only with his final question: what did Odin whisper into his son's ear before the young god was laid on his funeral pyre? The son is Baldr, and only Odin could know the answer, so the giant realises who his guest is and admits defeat. The poem never reveals the words. It presents knowledge as a weapon in Odin's hands, and ends on one more secret that he keeps to himself.

Odin in Norse mythology is the chief of the gods and a relentless seeker of knowledge who sacrificed an eye and hung himself from the world tree to gain it, all in preparation for an end he knew was coming.