Odin
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
o'din, in northern mythology, the ruler of the earth. In partnership with two brothers, he made the earth and the mountains and the heavens. Odin regulated the periods of day and night and established the seasons. He gave life and soul to man. He dwells in Asgard, a city of golden and silver palaces. His own palace is Gladsheim, home of gladness. Valhalla is his banquet hall. He site on a throne holding a spear, the scepter of the world. Two wolves lie at his feet. A pair of familiar ravens, Thought and Memory, perch on the back of his chair, one at each shoulder. They fly to all parts of the world and bring tidings of what man is doing. The hall is filled with heroes who love to fight and feast. In the morning they go out to hack and hew each other. At evening, they return to the hall to feast. Their wounds are made whole. When Odin himself goes forth he rides upon his horse Sleipnir. Sleipnir has eight feet. He uses four for traveling like other horses. When he is weary Odin turns him over and he travels on his other four feet. Each day Odin sends his messengers, warlike virgins with helmets, shields, and spears, to bring to Valhalla the souls of mortals who have distinguished themselves in fight. When these messengers, the Valkyrior, ride forth, the northern sky is filled with a flickering light which mortals call Aurora Borealis . Odin is the father of Thor, the Thunderer. Odin is identical with Woden of the Saxons and Wuotan of the Old High Germans. See Wednesday ; Mythology ; Scandinavian; Valkyrior
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The myths Aiton's summarised in 1910 are still told the same way, since they come from the same two medieval Icelandic sources — the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda of about 1220. What has moved is how scholars read those sources: Snorri was a Christian writing two centuries after Iceland's conversion, and much of the tidy cosmology is now treated as his literary shaping rather than a straight record of pagan belief. Some of the picturesque touches in the 1910 account are later embellishment rather than Norse text — the eight-legged Sleipnir being flipped over to run on his other four legs, and the aurora as the flicker of riding Valkyries, are not found in the Eddas. Odin also has living worshippers again: Ásatrú was recognised as a religion by the Icelandic state in 1973, and he is now known to millions through Marvel's Thor films as much as through Asgard's golden halls.
Written for this edition, 2026.