Analyzing Odin

“I trow I hung on that windy Tree

nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,
high on that Tree of which none hath heard
from what roots it rises to heaven.

None refreshed me ever with food or drink,

I peered right down in the deep;
crying aloud I lifted the Runes
then back I fell from thence.”1

On the face of it, the Odin resurrection myth is simply part of a larger
narrative that describes his quest for knowledge and power. Other myths told
how Odin gained the mead of poetry, and gave up an eye to Mimer in
exchange for a wisdom-infusing drink from the well she guarded.
Who would be surprised if Odin’s thirst for knowing all ultimately led him
to kill himself, travel to Hel to find the secret of the magical and powerful
runes, then raise himself again? Is there another story between the lines?

Sigmund Freud would have thought so. He believed that gods, like pets,
eventually come to resemble their owners (in deeds if not image), and that
the anxieties, repression, perversities and neuroses that plague humanity are
reflected in the myths it creates. Freud’s masterful dissection of the Moses
and Jesus myths 2 shows his approach can yield unique insights.

Psychoanalysis of Odin’s resurrection requires a deeper look at the god

himself, and even a cursory glance at Odin’s adventures suggests this deity
had serious internal conflicts.

1The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund's Edda, Part 1: The Mythological Poems, edited
and translated by Olive Bray, The Viking Club, 1908, pages 61-111.
2 Freud, Sigmund, The Origins of Religion, Penguin, London, 1990, pages 243-348
A man (or god) who is conflicted about his sexuality will often
overcompensate for his perceived inadequacies by, in the words of a person
known to the author, “trying to nail any moving or unmoving female”.
Odin’s behavior fits this pattern perfectly. Besides Frigg (his goddess-wife),
Odin’s conquests included the giantesses Jőrd and Gunnlőd, and Rind.
Interestingly, in few, if any, of these dalliances was pleasure Odin’s true aim.
In Gunnlőd’s case, Odin’s objective was the theft of the mead of poetry. The
conquests of Rind and Jőrd served to produce two sons, Vali and Thor.

The rape of Rind is worthy of closer examination. In Danish historian Saxo

Grammaticus’ version, 3 soothsayers informed Odin that the conception of
Vali was crucial to any plan for vengeance for the murder of Odin’s other
son, Balder. Three times Odin, first in the guise of a soldier, then a foreigner,
then a metalworker, attempted to win the favor of the “King of the
Ruthenians” and through him the heart of his daughter, Rind. Three times he
was severely rebuffed (by Rind, if not her father). Finally, he took the form
of a medicine woman and convinced the queen to appoint him as a lady-in-
waiting to the princess. When Rind fell ill Odin took his chance and under
the pretence of healing her, drugged and ravished her.
Odin remained the object of rumor and even ridicule despite these constant
attempts to highlight his priapism. But why was it so? His cross-dressing
alone was unlikely to have made him suspect; after all, in order to regain his
stolen hammer, Thor dressed as Freya and all but married the frost giant
Thrym, yet Thor’s masculinity was never questioned.

That Odin had to disguise himself as a woman and get to Rind only after
three earlier unsuccessful attempts at male impersonation is a possible
reason. How masculine was this god, people may have wondered, if he
couldn’t win a princess without passing for female? There is however, a
much more likely explanation for this suspicion about Odin. It was revealed
by his blood brother, Loki, during his taunting of the gods at Aegir’s feast:

“They say that with spells/ in Samsey once

Like witches with charms didst thou work;

3Grammaticus, Saxo, “The Danish History, Books I-IX,

Book Three”
Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #28a
 And in witch’s guise/ among men didst thou go;
Unmanly thy soul must seem.”4

The magic Odin used in the episode to which Loki referred was known as
seid, an art so strongly associated with women that it must have
subconsciously represented something intrinsically feminine. The 13th
century Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturlinsen wrote that, “…after such
witchcraft followed such weakness and worry, that it was not thought
respectable for men to practice it; and therefore the priestesses were brought
up in this art.”5

Something “powerful” that causes “weakness” and “worry” and should

remain within the realm of women? An honest analyst would conclude that
seid probably represented menstruation. The description of weakness and
anxiety, while possibly attributable to the iron deficiency, discomfort and
mood swings a woman may experience during her menses, was more likely
a projection onto women, by men, of male anxiety about menstruation.

This menophobia appears repeatedly throughout the world. It could be

found in an Australian aboriginal tribe in the nineteenth century, where a
menstruating woman was required to do everything within her power to
avoid crossing the path of men, lest her blood weaken them.6 It is obvious in
the Old Testament, which contains a set of rules for both women and men
for that time of the month-- rules so finicky and saturated with talk of
“cleanliness” and “defilement” that they border on the obsessive-
compulsive. 7 It is, however, commentary on menstruation by a Roman
historian of the first century AD that is most relevant to the subject of Odin.

Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, wrote that contact with menstrual
blood could turn wine to vinegar, destroy crops, dry up seeds, blunt the edge
of steel, turn ivory dull, kill bees and rust metals with supernatural speed. He
went on to claim that:

4“Lokesenna, or Loki’s Flyting, From The Elder Edda”, Online Medieval and Classical Library Release,
#12c,24
5Sturlinsen, Snorri, “Heimskringla
or
The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway”, Online Medieval and Classical Library Release, #15b, 7
6 Frazer , James George, “The Golden Bough”, MacMillan and Co; Limited, London, 1924, page 603
7 “Holy Bible (KJV 1611)”, Thomas Nelson Inc. , New Jersey, 1970, Leviticus 15: 18-33
"Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightnings, even, will be scared away by a woman
uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon
her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather…”8

Compare these ills to the magical powers attributed to Odin by Sturlinsen:

“Odin could make his enemies in battle blind, or deaf, or terror-struck, and
their weapons so blunt that they could no more but than a willow wand… With words
alone he could quench fire, still the ocean in tempest, and turn the wind to any quarter he
pleased.”9

The similarities between the words of these two scholars are undeniable. It
seems Odin menstruated. If he menstruated he must have had a vagina and
in England there is evidence that he did have one.

When a Neolithic wooden carving was discovered in Essex, England in

1922, its male physique, gaping vagina and mutilated left eye mystified its
discoverers. For decades it remained a little-known enigma, on display at the
Colchester Castle Museum at East Anglia. Only recently have archeologists
looked at it again and agreed it is almost certainly a very early representation
of Odin.10

The Dagenham idol, as it is now known, has become a sore point for some
self-styled modern-day male pagans, and they have suggested to this author
that the carving’s vagina is in fact an anchor point for a separately carved
phallus which has been lost to the past. This is an example of projection,
due, once again, to ever present but repressed castration anxiety—an
example so obvious it would be seen for what it is by a shortsighted Jungian
therapist in a darkened room.

If this “missing phallus” can still have such an effect on men today, it is only
reasonable to assume that a similar anxiety existed among the Norse in the
first millenium AD. As Odin’s importance increased, so increased the desire
to find a replacement penis. Fortunately a prosthetic was conveniently

8Pliny the Elder, “Natural History, Book 28”, Oxford University Press, 2003, Chapter
23
9Sturlinsen, Snorri, “ Heimskringla
or
The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway”, Online Medieval and Classical Library Release, #15b, 6
10 Viegas, Jennifer, “Bisexual Viking Linked to Seahenge”, Discovery Channel News, August 27, 2004
found for Odin in the form of Gungnir, a spear fashioned by dwarves and
handed over to the god as a gift. It was immensely strong and never missed
its target—an ever-ready organ that Odin would use in myth after myth in an
unsuccessful subconscious war to defeat his feminine aspect.

In this context the story of Odin’s sacrifice to himself and his subsequent
resurrection can be understood. He used his “spear” (phallus) to
“stab” (rape) his female self, killing his entire self in the process. Once in the
abode of the dead, Odin found the runes, a form of magical power that,
unlike seid (menstruation), was gender-neutral. Equipped with this new
magic, Odin no longer required a vagina and he was free to return to the
living world without the perceived source of his anxiety.

Of course critics will point out a problem with this hypothesis. According to
one account, Odin did not possess knowledge of seid until he gained it from
the goddess Freya in exchange for the secret of runes. This would mean that
he could not have had seid to leave behind when he came back from the
dead. However, this argument ignores the contradictions inherent in all
mythologies. Myths, like dreams, are often inconsistent, and the power and
truth of one myth does not necessarily supplant the truth and power of the
myths that preceded it.

That Odin once had, and in many ways always will have, both male and
female attributes should neither upset nor surprise the reader. After all, as
Freud discovered, all men start out as bisexuals and develop castration
anxiety, and whether this bisexuality and anxiety is sublimated or repressed,
it will always remain a part of men. Odin’s creators (and Odin) did not have
the benefit of psychoanalysis. Today’s repressed, conflicted men (and gods)
do.