Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Wednesday is full of color!

Two separate blogs today are celebrating a specific color theme just because it's Wednesday... so I thought I'd have my own Wednesday party and celebrate my favorite thing about this day...

Odin!

I've always been a fan of Norse Mythology... and with Halloween coming up... well, one can't help but think of old pagan gods. Admittedly though, I think of Odin every Wednesday.

Odin, as far as I've ever seen, seems to be the principal god of Norse paganism... He gave up his left eye for knowledge, he travels with two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, whose names mean Thought and Memory, and a pair of wolves named Geri and Freki, whose names mean Ravenous and Greedy... he is the All Father, associated with everything from Wisdom to War.

The word Wednesday comes from (I think) proto-germanic spellings in which it was Woden,... in which the old English became
Wēdnes dæg... eventually leading to Wednesday.

It's interesting to me that our days of the week find origin in Norse Mythology (Mostly).
Monday is the Mani's Day
Tuesday is Tyr's Day
Wednesday is Odin/Woden's Day
Thursday is Thor's Day
Friday is Freyja and Frigg's Day (are they the same, aren't they? Let's not take chances)
Saturday is Saturn's Day - ok, so maybe Saturn isn't a Norse god... we'll come back to this.
Sunday is the Sol/Sunna's Day

Now, I know all of these are in relation to planets and in turn, Roman/Greek Gods:
Monday: Luna, Selene
Tuesday: Mars, Ares
Wednesday: Mercury, Hermes
Thursday: Jupiter, Zeus
Friday: Venus, Aphrodite
Saturday: Saturn, Kronos
Sunday: Sol, Helios

And that leads me to wonder two things:
1. Why mostly Norse name origins for our days of the week? Why aren't we shuffling through Lunaday, Marsday, Mercurday, Jupiteday, Venusday, Saturday and Solday? Yeah it might look silly... but Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday would probably look silly too if we'd always been calling the days something else.

2. Why Saturday? Is there no true Norse equivalent to Saturn? I couldn't really find one, but the truth is, chances are I'm just missing it. (happens to me a lot :) )

Anyhow, it's always just been a bit of a mystery to me how Pagan gods are hiding throughout our week :) If anyone knows the answer, please share!



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