Odin

Odin rules the Aesir from the high seat Hlidskjalf, from which he surveys all the nine worlds. He appears as a one-eyed wanderer in a broad-brimmed hat and dark cloak, carrying the spear Gungnir, which never misses its mark. Two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, fly across the world each day and whisper what they have seen into his ears; two wolves, Geri and Freki, crouch at his feet, and the eight-legged horse Sleipnir bears him between the worlds.

His hunger for knowledge borders on self-destruction. The Voluspa tells how he left one eye in the well of Mimir as the price of a single drink of its wisdom. In the Havamal he speaks in his own voice: wounded by a spear, he hung nine nights on a wind-swept tree, sacrificed 'myself to myself', and seized the runes as he fell. As god of war he sends the valkyries to gather slain champions into Valhalla, building an army for Ragnarok, though the prophecy has already told him he will die in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir.

Odin's cult flourished among warriors and poets of the Viking Age; picture stones across Scandinavia show a one-eyed rider with a spear. The English word Wednesday preserves his Old English name, Woden.