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Early Society Contributions Old English Woden Books & CDs		In Norse mythology as it has come down to us in the works of Snorri Sturluson and the verse on which he based his accounts, the high god of the pre-Christian religion was Oðinn - chief of the gods, father of the Æsir clan. He is the god of magic, of knowledge, of war and death, of storms, the special favourite of kings and warriors whose ideal qualities he embodies: resourcefulness, cunning and guile. He travels among men wearing his broad-brimmed hat and copious cloak to hide his missing eye, pledged at the Well of Mimir in exchange for secrets. The Icelandic image dates from the 13th century. To what extent does this version of the High God match the evidence for him from earlier and elsewhere? What, indeed, is the origin of Oðinn? The earliest references to Germanic folk beliefs - Tacitus's Roman ethnographic work Germania - do not name the gods and other beings. Instead, the Roman writer interprets the native Germanic deities in terms of Roman gods. It is generally assumed that when he says of the Germans that they worship Mercury, that this refers to the pre-Oðinn figure whose name is reconstructed as *woðenaz. What they believed about this figure, what his myths said of him and how he interacted with men are the subject of many studies.		This image, taken from a die found at Torslunda, is widely accepted to represent Woden. The right eye was cast whole and then deliberately damaged.
		It seems fairly safe to assume that Oðinn took part in an early version of the creation myth. This is based on the evidence from Norse. In the Norse cycle of stories, Oðinn's presence is everywhere and it could be argued that he originally had no part in the creation story. Yet one factor weighs in his favour: in the myth he is said to act with his brothers Vili and Ve. The three brothers' names are mediaeval Icelandic, of course, but in the original myth they were *Woðenaz, *Wiliz and *Weihaz - all alliterating on 'w-'. This is the kind of detail that a later storyteller would be likely to edit out - to harmonise all three by changing the lesser brothers' into more transparent names also beginning with a vowel. The fact that the tradition stuck (and that the storytellers could probably not have invented such an incongruous detail) argues for some antiquity to this factor. So Oðinn's place in the creation myth seems to go back at least to the time when his name still began with 'W-'; this can be roughly dated to about the 8th century for the East Norse (Danish-Swedish) language but it is much harder to be so precise for the West Norse (Norwegian) regions from which the Icelandic dialect came. It is nonetheless safe to say that in broad terms the association of the three divine names must go back beyond the 8th century. In German dialects the name appears as Votan, Uotan and in English as Woden.
		The form of the name *woðenaz is interesting in itself. It can be roughly translated as 'master of mental excitement', based on the word *woðaz which has a range of meanings connected to inspiration, incantation, initiation into sacred mysteries. In Old English the cognate woþ is 'singing' and 'music' but a woþbora (bearer of woþ) is a 'prophet' or 'soothsayer'. The implication is that woþ relates to chanting and inspired mental activity, to ecstatic travelling, to the realms of the dream-warrior and shaman. The name *woðenaz then indicates one who is imbued with these qualities, who personifies and represents them. Many societies have a god or gods whose area of interest lies in the world of spirit travel; it is not clear that this is what Mercury represented to the Romans, but there are nevertheless points of contact between that god and the Germanic *Woðenaz. One is the connection of the god to secret knowledge and to writing; another is the adoption of his cult by the military. In the case of Mercury this was most noticeable in Gaul where the Gallo-Roman military authorities fostered the god's worship. In a recent study of the rise of the Germanic warband and its cult, Enright suggested that all attributes of Oðinn - including his single eye, his hat, his spear, his military background, his supernatural associations, his prophetic female companions - are directly attributable to the cult fostered by the Batavian governor Julius Civillis in an attempt to unite the Rhenish Germanic tribes into a cohesive military force to drive out the Roman authorities. His model, suggests Enright, was the Gallic Mercury cult adopted by Celtic warbands of the late La Tene culture who were responsible for the introduction of new fashions in armour and weapons to the lower Rhine.
		The English evidence for Woden is not great. From Old English literature there comes a handful of references, almost all in genealogies of royal lines where the name appears as a 'glorious ancestor' alongside many other names from the distant past. One medical manuscript preserves a charm in which the god is mentioned in his fight with the serpent (the apotropaic power of the god invoked against the powers of disease and misfortune). A gnomic verse refers to him: woden worhte weos 'Woden made idols' in contradistinction to Christ who wrought marvels. Iconographic evidence is perhaps more plentiful although identification is less certain: the metal image-bearing plates from the Sutton Hoo helmet and other treasures, the Gilton buckle and many other pagan period finds bear small figures which could plausibly be identified with the god. None of them appears to be one-eyed, which may be significant in itself. One apocryphal source of Woden lore is his association with landscape features and with the Wild Hunt. Woden's name is given to a major defensive earthwork on southern England - the Wansdyke, Wodnes dic, Woden's ditch - which served as both a military and political frontier between the Germanic polities of the southern coast and their neighbours, both British and Germanic, to the west. Other similar features in the east of England are ascribed to Grim - grima, the masked one, a probable by-name for Woden. The Wild Hunt is the name given to the tumultuous progress of spirits across the night sky at Midwinter. It is, in local legend, led by the Huntsman who is often identified with some legendary heroic figure (e.g. Robin Hood and Sir Francis Drake). The Hunt has its origins in the military and is always to be respected, even feared, although it is acknowledged that the passage of Hunt is necessary for the good of the community and the ripening of the crops. The link to Oðinn's band of chosen champions, the Einherjar, is self-evident. The Hunt is not necessarily a mythical or spiritual band, however: the ASC records one such group as a matter of historical fact in the East Midlands in the 12th century, long after Woden had faded into folk-memory. This evidence in combination with details from Tacitus's Germania and comparative evidence from elsewhere in Europe and Asia lead to the conclusion that the Hunt was originally a military structure, parallel to the Fianna in Ireland similar groups in Roman Italy and Vedic India. These groups represent the youthful, aggressive teenager boys whose energies are channelled into campaigning before they can take up their eventual position as dutiful husbands and fathers in society. Known as a *harjaz in Germanic, the group consists of young adolescents who are taken out into the wilderness - the land away from the agricultural settlements of the host society - where they learn to hunt, to fight, to forage and also receive instruction in the lore and legends of their tribe. During this time they live rough on whatever they can find, or may accept hospitality from a farmer; if the group's needs are not met, they may destroy farm buildings and drive off the livestock of their host. Dressed mainly in skins, with unkempt hair and unwashed, living rough on the land, they presented a fearsome sight to the settled farmers who supported them. During this period of life away from the settlement they were neither boys nor men; in terms of their social group, they did not exist, they were ritually 'dead' and as such their progression was heralded as the return of the ancestors to the lands of men. In time, these individuals must either achieve full adulthood and move back into human society or choose to remain in their adolescent state. The latter are the unkempt warriors of the Chatti in Germania and the berserkar of Norse tradition - skin-clad warriors without home or possessions. The leaders of these groups were called *harjanaz, being in the same relationship to their boys as a king (*þeuðanaz) is to his people (*þeuðo). The leader was himself a source of knowledge and wisdom, accomplished in verse and able to instruct. The god of the *harjaz was similarly accomplished and warlike. On returning to the tribe, the new adults renounced their allegiance to the reckless war-god and adopted the sky-god/justice-god *Tiwaz as their role-model.
		Many of the images identified as Woden/Oðinn from Migration Period Scandinavia - notably the iconography of bracteates - show a large head in profile, which therefore avoids the need to show whether one or two eyes are present. However, it is notable that none of them appear to show the 'one-eyed' feature, which is surprising if this was a recognition factor for the god. One would have expected the empty socket to be emphasised in the same way as Thor's beard or Freyr's genitals are portrayed. It may be, indeed, that the figure shown on the bracteates is not actually Woden/Oðinn; alternatively, it is the god, but he is not yet one-eyed because that is a later feature of his myth. In that case, Julius Civilis's promotion of the one-eyed god of war and magic would appear to reflect a separate strand in the development of Scandinavian Oðinn, parallel to the West Germanic deity. The main areas of interest for the god lie in knowledge (especially secret or hidden knowledge), in the Wild Hunt and in the military sphere.
		The origins of Woðenaz appear to lie in the *harjanaz figure, the source of knowledge and verse, traveller to the land of the dead. As the 'group leader' for the bands of youths, he embodied both the benefits of traditional knowledge and the destructive power of the lawless. The god of the warbands, *Woðenaz, inherited this duality. With the increasing militarisation of Northern European society in the last centuries BC, the role of military leader was more publicly visible for the god whose followers relied on armed strength, tactical advantage and sheer cunning to succeed against their better-organised foes (the slave-raiding states of the Mediterranean basin). Yet the association with knowledge and healing never entirely deserted the god, so that the English Woden was still remembered for his part in overcoming the inimical serpent, and the Scandinavian Oðinn was able to converse with the spirits of the dead. The god's character became yet more complex when his role extended to that of 'divine progenitor' in the royal traditions of many nations. That will form the topic of another essay.

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