Where Did Odin Come from?
The main god of the Asir, a shaman, and a king of the dead
- Thor Heyerdahl tried to prove that Odin and the other Nordic gods had come from the Sea of Azov, based on one of Snorri Sturluson’s stories in Heimskringla, the sagas of the old Norse Kings. Snorri Sturluson wrote that a people migrated from the east to Scandinavia when the Romans expanded their empire. According to him they made such a forceful impression on the indigenous population that they started to treat them as gods.
- English monks wrote quite extensively about the Nordic gods during the time when Vikings attacked England. They were persuaded that the Nordic gods were originally kings from the East. Some even claimed that they had been chased northwards after the battle of Troy as portrayed in Homer’s Iliad.
- In the Poetic Edda from the early 13th century CE, Snorri Sturluson describes the world of the pre-Christian gods, underlining that Christianity is the only true faith. The interesting part is that he refers to the Asir as the people from Asia that had arrived from Troy and the Turkish lands and moved up through Europe. Odin left one son after the other to reign over countries along the way, among them ‘Reidgotaland’, today Jutland from where I am writing this. He moved north, establishing further kingdoms for his sons, all of them supposed to reign according to the rules of Troy, with twelve governors and a high court, and all of them founding royal houses. Odin continued to Norway, again with sons to reign over the areas, and the Poetic Edda underlines that the language throughout the countries he passed was the one of the Asians.
There are many other theories, but this is what the mythology tells us about the arrival of Odin and the Asir or Asians.
The Asir-Vanir War: This War is included in the Poetic Edda and is often seen as a reflection of the invasion of an aggressive, warlike cult into local fertility cults in regions inhabited by Germanic/Nordic tribes, and this is often interpreted as an analogy to the westward migration of Indo-European tribes.
One of the interesting parts of the Asir-Vanir War is the story of Gullveig, a völva , a seeress — her part of the story is told in the Völuspá, the “Prophecy of the Völva”, the text about the War and probably the best-known part of the Poetic Edda. Gullveig is caught by the Asir, speared and burnt three times in Odin’s hall, but is reborn three times and then begins to prophesise. Her name refers to gold, and after her third rebirth her name is changed to Heiðr, which means ‘the bright one’, maybe to indicate that her role from now on is to function as a völva. As far as researchers have established, the War was mainly about gold or riches, basically the tributes offered by men.
The Vanir: the currently accepted theory is that the Vanir were the original and old gods of the North, gods of fertility, of home. There are older deities that appear now and again, but they are not presented with a consistent myth. The Vanir are described in the Poetic Edda, with Njord as the father of gods and the god of the sea, seafaring, wind, fishing, wealth, and crop fertility. He lived on Noatun in Vanaheim and was the father of Freyr and Freya, both fertility gods — Freyr of the sea, Freya of the land. Their mother is supposed to have been his unnamed sister, and nobody knows what happened to her. He had a troubled marriage with the goddess Skaði, who refused to bed him. They were later divorced, and she married the Asir Odin. Skaði was a ‘jötunn’, a witch or a troll, perhaps, but she was a goddess associated with bowhunting, skiing, winter, and mountains — once again a person from an older belief than both Vanir and Asir, now wed to the Asir.
The Asir: In English, they are usually called ‘Æsir’, but I have used the version closest to the Danish word. Some have suggested that the name Asir could allude to ‘those from Asia’. The Asir were warriors, a bellicose lot. Some have even speculated that Attila could be the model for Odin. Which I do not believe, but Odin was definitely the king of the Asir, although he also has characteristics that are far older than the warrior-type god that is supposed to have intruded on the Vanir, the old beliefs. There are several instances throughout the Poetic Edda and the Völuspá where Odin is almost indistinguishable from a shaman.
Heiðr underlined the wisdom of a truce in the War, and Odin makes a pact with her and thus ends the War. Hostages were exchanged, Njord went to the Asir (and Odin marries his estranged wife) together with his son Freyr. Mimir was sent to the Vanir, but was later beheaded although Odin kept his head, embalmed it and used it to reveal secrets to him. There are so many layers in the Völuspá and many ways of interpreting the characters and the Asir-Vanir War, but I see it mainly as a way to understand how different cultures intermingled and created their own universe.
There is another clue to the origin of the two groups in the names of where they lived, with ‘Vanaheim’ for the Vanir, i.e., the home of the Vanir, whereas the Asir live in ‘Asgard’, the homestead or house of the Asir — with Valhalla as the centre.
As suggested by Snorri Sturluson and the English monks, the tribes associated with the Asir came from the East, but whether they had been chased from Troy or were kings is less certain if not downright improbable. The fact is that the migration period between the expansion of and the end of the Roman Empire saw several different peoples moving from the east and even from the north towards western parts of Europe that created changes, displacements and fear throughout the continent.
Early in this period, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes sailed west from the north-western coast of what is today Germany and south-western part of what is today Denmark, and today they are called the Anglo-Saxons. At the same time, other peoples from Jutland, the Cimbrir, the Goths from the island of Gotland, Burgundians and others in north-eastern Europe, marched southwards. It is claimed that there are still people living in the mountains in northern Italy that have blue eyes and blond hair and that they are descendants of the Cimbrir after the defeat to the Romans.
But mostly, when we think of the migrations, they were those coming from the East and they were by far the largest migrations during this period, hence the idea that the warrior Attila with all his victories could have been a live model for Odin.
What I have found of interest related to the early migrations, the ones from the north, are the various archaeological finds in eastern England, notably the Sutton Hoo treasure, as the helmet found in the grave there is similar to helmets found in Sweden and in several other places.
They date from the 6th century CE and are therefore from a period in between the migration and the Viking Age three centuries later. The helmets are the so-called crested helmets, and one of the interesting things about them, in particular the one from Sutton Hoo because of its fairly good condition, is the way the eye protection is formed. A recent suggestion has been that the wearer of the mask could impersonate Odin as eyes will be deep inside the helmet and in the right light, only one eye would be visible.
If this interpretation is correct, then Odin was certainly part of a warrior king mythology long before the Viking Age, so how far back can we go to find him?
One of the significant characteristics of Odin is his shamanic prowess. This is often referred to as part of the Asian heritage, or at least the eastern European heritage, maybe Finno-Ugric, cf. The Kalevala, Kalevipoeg or Hungarian mythology. Shamanism is still widespread among the Sami people and related tribes and cultures throughout the northern part of Europe, even stretching into Siberia. It is also one of the characteristics of the Huns, e.g., as seen in the elongated skulls found of both Huns and the peoples they conquered — it is supposed that forcing children’s skulls into the elongated form from the earliest age would make them more receptible to the spirits.
Shaman and völva
I have always seen the völva as part of an even older world even than that of the Vanir. The völva of the Völuspá recites the ancient lore and the creation myth to Odin.
Some researchers have suggested that Odin could be linked to the Indo-European pantheon with functions like those of the Hindu god Varuna, god of fury and magic; others have linked him to south-eastern European Bronze and Iron Ages. He is in many ways more of a shaman in spite of his clear function as head of the gods. Tacitus calls him Mercury in his Germania (98 CE), interesting as the word for Wednesday, Odin’s day, is ‘mercredi’ in French, Mercury’s day. Also Julius Caesar referred to Mercury as the most popular god of the Gauls and Britons and as the inventor of all the arts. And there are those that refer to the shamanic traditions of the Huns and refer to Attila as the origin of Odin.
It is also interesting to look at his name. According to ‘Wikipedia’, the various language versions of his name “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’)”.
His horse Sleipner, the eight-legged horse has been suggested to have connections to shamanic practices among the Norse pagans by some researchers. And it has connections to the world of the dead.
And there is his sacrifice, hanging from Yggdrasil, the sacred tree, for nine nights and days. It is described in Hávamál, the ‘Word of the High One’ in stanza 138:
“I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.
No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there.” *
There are also etymological interpretations of the name of the sacred tree indicating that the meaning of the name of the tree could be ‘Odin’s horse’ or ‘Odin’s gallows’.
Older than the Viking religion
Finally, to try to find out when the belief in Odin and the Asir became the main religion, I have to go back to a gold treasure found in Denmark, in Jutland, where one of the gold bracteates includes a runic inscription, “He is Odin’s man”. This is from a treasure buried in the mid-500s CE.
Research of tree rings from a period of five years, from around 536 CE to 540 CE, shows that there was hardly any growth in trees, at all, throughout those five years. Geologists confirm that there were several volcanic eruptions in both Iceland and South-East Asia during that period — resulting in no sun, no growth, a true Fimbulvetr, the ‘awful, mighty’ winter preceding Ragnarök, ‘the doom of the gods’, the great battle where everyone, including the gods, die. Only Odin’s son and Thor’s sons arrive back from Hel together with Baldr and Höðr, and a male and a female human appear to have survived in the woods, Líf and Lífthrasir. The rebuilding of the world can commence. In this respect, researchers have speculated whether Ragnarök could be seen as one development among many other Proto-Indo-European parallels.
This is as far as I have been able to trace the roots of Odin, as the main god of the Asir, a shaman and a king of the dead, and at a point in the history of Europe when everything changed. The old cult places and power centres disappeared, harvests dwindled, trade stopped, people died, and the new religion gave hope. This is the trust that the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons brought with them when they migrated westwards and produced the fabulous treasures in East Anglia. And the new religion produced a rich culture that four centuries later developed into the Viking Age. And at its centre, Odin in all his different forms, formed in an age of profound change with migrations from the east rupturing all known structures, making a warrior class the rulers of societies, followed by one of the worst periods in history with years of volcanic winter, loss of crops, loss of life, loss of cultural landmarks. The Iron Age is aptly named, an age of weapons, warriors, and iron-hard winter. Odin emerged as the one who could save people with all his worldly and otherworldly powers, and the promise of a new world after Ragnarök.
A final note: ᚢᚦᛁᚾ — Odin and Runes: the runic alphabet is native to most Germanic peoples. The earliest secure runic inscriptions date from around 150 CE, with possibly an earlier inscription dating to 50 CE and Tacitus’s potential description of rune use from around 98 CE. The oldest clear inscriptions are found in Denmark and northern Germany. The ‘alphabet’ is called fuþark after the first six runes. And of course, the runes had magic properties, in particular when including Odin’s name.
Sources:
Snorri Sturluson, Poetic Edda and Prose Edda — 13th century. Both exist in various translations. Direct reference is made to the Völuspá and to Hávamál, both in the Poetic Edda.
“The Conundrum of Odin”, Danish television series (Gåden om Odin, only available in Danish): https://www.dr.dk/drtv/serie/gaaden-om-odin_370324
Odin article in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin — especially chosen for the etymological references.
Elongated skulls: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/barbarian-huns-dna-germany-migration-antiquity-skull
Sutton Hoo helmet: https://sagasfromthesea.blog/2021/02/20/worn-wielded-the-sutton-hoo-helmet/
*Odin hanging from Yggdrasil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnuvf8cgfRE
Odin origins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhPtIVitAnA — the discussion is interesting for its references to the Old Norse Creation Myth and its links to Indi-European mythology
I have used the illustrations of Lorenz Frølich (1820–1908) throughout as they are the ones I grew up with.
