Tag Archive for: ancient germans

TYR – Father, Protector, Provider

TYR has often been misunderstood and even more often misrepresented. The Romans simplistically equated him with their god of war, mars. Consequently Tiw, as the Anglo-Saxons called him, has the honour of giving his name to Tuesday, but is otherwise neglected by many as being embarrassingly militaristic.

Yggdrasil and the Cross

THERE is an amazing parallel between Odinism and Christianity which I believe in either faith owes nothing to the other. It is that Odin and Christ both suffered torture on a tree. In the northern European tradition that tree is Yggdrasil, the ever-living tree that supports the cosmos. In Christianity it was a dead tree, a man-made instrument of public execution, the cross.