Of all the Norse gods, Odin is the strangest and the most complex. He is the chief of the Aesir, the lord of Valhalla, the patron of warriors and poets, kings and outcasts. He is the god of war, death, wisdom, magic, runes, frenzy, and poetry. He is also the god who gave an eye for a drink from the well of cosmic knowledge, who hanged himself for nine nights on the world tree to win the secret of the runes, and who dies at Ragnarök swallowed by the great wolf Fenrir — a fate he knows is coming and cannot prevent.
Where Thor is the god of straightforward strength and clear skies, Odin is the god of ambiguous gifts: cunning, prophecy, sacrifice, and the long, cold road of wisdom that often costs more than it returns. To the Vikings he was the most powerful of the gods, and yet also the most dangerous to bargain with.
Names and Epithets
Odin is referred to in the Eddas and the skaldic poetry by more than two hundred kennings — periphrastic compounds such as Yggr (“the terrible”), Grímnir (“the masked one”), Hárr (“the high one”), Bölverkr (“the worker of evil”), Hroptr (“the roarer”), and the famous Aldafaðr — Allfather. The Hávamál, the collection of wisdom-poems attributed to him, opens with the words “All-vísir spakr / ok alsnotr / of rúnar hverjar…” — “All-wise and all-knowing / about the runes…” His name in Old English, Wōden, gives us the English Wednesday; in German, Wotan; in Old Norse, Óðinn.
Attributes: The One Eye
Odin is most often depicted as a tall, one-eyed man, cloaked in a wide-brimmed hat or hood, a long blue or gray cloak, and carrying the spear Gungnir. The single eye, deep and brooding, is his most famous attribute — and the mark of his great bargain. He sacrificed his eye, by his own choice, at the Well of Mimir, drinking from the spring of cosmic wisdom beneath one of the three roots of Yggdrasil. With that eye, he sees everything that happens in the world. He knows, too, all the secrets of the past, of the runes, and (in part) of the future. The other eye lies at the bottom of the well.
The Two Ravens and the Two Wolves
Odin is accompanied by two ravens: Huginn and Muninn, “Thought” and “Memory.” Each morning they fly out from his shoulders and circle the world, and at evening they return to whisper into his ears all that they have seen and heard. The image of the god who knows everything through his ravens is one of the most striking in Norse art, and it appears on countless carved runestones and amulets.
Two wolves sit at his feet: Geri and Freki (“the ravenous” and “the greedy”). Odin gives them all the food set before him at his table; he himself lives on wine, or, in some versions, on nothing at all. The wolves are sacred to him, and the Viking warrior bands known as ulfhéðnar — “wolf-shirts” — took their names from the beasts of the Allfather.
Sleipnir and Gungnir
His horse is Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed born of the trickster god Loki and the stallion Svaðilfari. Sleipnir is the swiftest of all horses, equally at home in the world of the living, the world of the dead, and the air between. Sleipnir carries Odin across the rainbow bridge Bifröst and into the cold realms of Hel.
His spear is Gungnir, forged by the dwarves — like so many of the great weapons of the gods. It never misses its mark, and the oath sworn upon it cannot be broken. When Odin hurls it over an army, the war has already been won.
Wives and Children
Odin is unusual among the Norse gods in being explicitly polygamous, and he is the father of most of the major Aesir. His principal wife is Frigg, the queen of the gods, with whom he had a son, the radiant Baldr. With the earth-goddess Jörð (Earth) he fathered Thor. With the giantess Gríðr he fathered Víðarr, the silent god of vengeance who will avenge him at Ragnarök. With the goddess Rindr he fathered Váli, born for the single purpose of avenging the death of Baldr. He is also credited with the fatherhood of Höðr (the blind god who killed Baldr), Týr (in some genealogies), and Hermóðr the Bold, who rode to Hel to try to bring Baldr back.
Through his many sons, Odin is the patriarch of an entire cosmic family — and through his grandchildren, including the great hero Sigurd Fáfnisbani of the Völsunga saga, he is the ancestor of the great heroic lines of Norse legend.
The Quest for Knowledge
Odin is, above all, the god of knowledge — and the cost of his knowledge is the central narrative of his mythic life.
The Well of Mimir
At the base of Yggdrasil, in the realm of the giants, lies the Well of Mimir. Its waters contain the memories of the first ages of the world, and the wisdom hidden from gods and men. Mimir, the wise giant who keeps it, will not let just anyone drink. Odin paid for his drink with an eye, and from that moment he sees only with his inner eye — the eye of the mind, the ravens, and the runic signs.
The Hanging on Yggdrasil
The Hávamál describes how Odin won the secret of the runes:
I know that I hung on the windswept tree
nine long nights,
wounded by spear, given to Odin,
myself to myself.
He hanged himself on the world ash, stabbed with his own spear, fasting and wounded, for nine nights, until the runes — the secret signs of magic, fate, and writing — rose up out of the trunk of the tree. This is the central myth of Norse magic, and it is the source of the runic tradition. The runes are Odin’s marks, and every rune carved in stone or wood after this act carries his signature.
The Mead of Poetry
Odin also stole the mead of poetry — the magical drink that gives the gift of skaldic verse. According to the Skáldskaparmál of the Prose Edda, the dwarves Fjalar and Galar killed the wise being Kvasir and distilled his blood into a mead. The giant Suttungr guarded it in the mountain, and Odin, by a long series of deceptions and sexual encounters, made his way to the mountain and drank the whole vat. He escaped in the form of an eagle, and in doing so transmitted the gift of poetry — and the curse of the ill-spoken word — to the human race.
The Wild Hunt
In the medieval folklore of northern Europe, Odin survived the conversion of Scandinavia as the leader of the Wild Hunt — a spectral procession of the dead, the hounds, and the warriors, riding through the winter sky. The Anglo-Saxons knew him as Wōden leading the Wild Hunt through the cold dark of November. In Scandinavia he is still sometimes known as Åsgårdsreien, “the ride of Asgard,” or by the names of the leaders of the host. The Wild Hunt is a folk memory of the pagan god, and it is a reminder that Odin is not a tame deity. He is the lord of the dead, the chooser of the slain, and the wild wanderer who comes for those whose time has come.
Death at Ragnarök
Odin knows that he will die. He has seen the signs, heard the prophecies, and prepared as best he can. He gathers the slain warriors in Valhalla to fight beside him at the last. He sires Víðarr for the very purpose of avenging him. And yet when the day comes, on the plain of Vígríðr, Odin rides out to face the wolf Fenrir, and the wolf swallows him.
The death of Odin is one of the most poignant moments in Norse myth. The all-knowing Allfather, the god who saw the beginning and the middle, is devoured at the end. He is avenged — Víðarr steps into the wolf’s mouth and tears him apart — but Odin does not return. Like his son Baldr, he will reappear only in the new, green world that rises from the sea after the fire, where, perhaps, he will meet his sons Víðarr and Váli again.
Cultural Influence
Odin has been one of the most influential mythological figures in modern European culture. Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen features Wotan, a version of Odin who trades power for wisdom and ends in ruin. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet may preserve a faint memory of him in the figure of the ghost-king who walks the battlements. J.R.R. Tolkien borrowed Odin’s ravens, his one-eyed all-seeing wisdom, and his brooding melancholy in the figure of Gandalf, and more strongly still in the cosmic rebellion of Morgoth (Melkor), the most powerful of the Ainur in Tolkien’s Ainulindalë and the original Dark Lord of The Silmarillion. In Marvel’s Thor and the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, Odin is the stern, white-bearded father of Thor and Loki, played memorably by Anthony Hopkins.
In the modern revival of Heathenry (Ásatrú), Odin is worshipped as the Allfather and the lord of the rune-workers, of the poets, and of those who pursue wisdom at great cost. He is, perhaps, the most complex of all the Norse gods — at once wise and terrible, generous and dangerous, knowing and doomed. He is, in short, a mirror of the world he presides over.
Last reviewed: June 2026.