Mercury – Wotan – Óðinn: One or Many?

Abstract

The article is about the historical development of the god Oðinn, addressing such questions as continuity and breaks in relation to other deities with other names. The basic idea is that a god is never a stable entity but will change from time to time and from one area to the next. On the other hand nothing comes from nothing, so that we should accept that the Oðinn of Scandinavia in the Viking Age clearly has roots going far back to a Germanic and even an Indo-European past. A response to the chapter has been submitted by Peter Jackson Rova.