Odin
In Germanic mythology, Odin (; from , ) is a widely revered god. In Norse mythology, from which stems most surviving information about the god, Odin is associated with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, battle, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet, and is the husband of the goddess Frigg. In wider Germanic mythology and paganism, Odin was known in Old English as ', in Old Saxon as ', and in Old High German as ' or ', all stemming from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic theonym .
Odin
The Old English rune poem is a rune poem that recounts the Old English runic alphabet, the futhorc. The stanza for the rune reads as follows:
The first word of this stanza, (Latin 'mouth') is a homophone for Old English , a particularly heathen word for 'god'. Due to this and the content of the stanzas, several scholars have posited that this poem is censored, having originally referred to Odin. Kathleen Herbert comments that " was cognate with in Norse, where it meant one of the , the chief family of gods. In Old English, it could be used as an element in first names: Osric, Oswald, Osmund, etc. but it was not used as a word to refer to the God of Christians. Woden was equated with Mercury, the god of eloquence (among other things). The tales about the Norse god Odin tell how he gave one of his eyes in return for wisdom; he also won the mead of poetic inspiration. Luckily for Christian rune-masters, the Latin word could be substituted without ruining the sense, to keep the outward form of the rune name without obviously referring to Woden."