Odin
Odin is the head of the Norse pantheon, and the god of wisdom, poetry, hosts, and the dead. Snorri calls him Alfaðir (‘all-father’), meaning that he is the father of the gods. His grandfather, Buri, has a particularly unusual origin:
As the icy rime dripped, the cow called Audhumla was formed… she licked the blocks of ice which were salty. As she licked these stones of icy rime the first day, the hair of a man appeared… on the third day [there emerged] the whole man. (Gylfaginning, 6)
Buri was the first god, carved by a gigantic cow’s tongue.
Odin and his brothers were responsible for the creation of the earth. They dragged the ancient giant, Ymir, into Ginnungagap, and ‘from his blood they made the sea and the lakes… the earth was fashioned from the flesh, and mountain cliffs from the bones’ (Gylfaginning, 8). The brothers also created people out of trees they saw growing by the sea: the first man created was called Ask (‘ash-tree’), and the woman Embla (‘elm’). Odin next built Asgard, having created the earth from the body of a giant, rather than the other way around as in the Abrahamic religions.
Odin is strongly associated with wisdom. His desire for knowledge is such that he willingly hangs himself on Yggdrasil in order to be granted knowledge of the runes he had seen the Norns using to determine Fate:
I know that I hung on a windy tree
Nine long nights
Wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
Myself to myself,
[…]
I took up [learned] the runes, screaming I took them. (Hávamál, 138; 139)
Odin says he sacrificed himself to himself, which only make sense when we remember that he is the Alfaðir and relate his sacrifice to an intellectual journey.
On another quest for knowledge, Odin travels to Mimir’s Well, which leads to the kingdom of the frost-giants at the root of Yggdrasil. Mimir’s Well contains wisdom and intelligence, and naturally Odin wants some: ‘All-Father went there and asked for one drink from the well, but he did not get one until he gave one of his eyes as a pledge’ (Gylfaginning, 15). He also disguises himself as a slave in order to obtain a mouthful of the Poetic Mead from the giant Suttungr, transforming into an eagle to make good his escape before spitting it into goblets at Asgard.
Odin’s 2 ravens, Huginn and Muninn (‘thought’ and ‘mind’), fly around the world, and whisper news into the god’s ears to improve his knowledge. He also goes on shamanic journeys himself, whilst his physical body appears to be dead or sleeping, according to Snorri’s Ynglinga saga. Thus in iconography Odin is usually depicted as a traveller with one-eye and ravens on his shoulders, emphasising his insatiable thirst for knowledge. Despite Snorri’s appellation, Odin is not the father of all the gods, but did sire the important deities Thor and Baldr. ‘Wednesday’ is a derivation of ‘Woden’s [Odin’s] Day’.