Interestingly, the Norse equivalent is Tyr (once probably something like 'Twz' iirc) who was once the most senior member of the pantheon. Odin seems to be a later addition from another tradition.

April 11, 2026 - 09:45 UTC

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It should always be borne in mind that much of our perception of Norse Gods is from Snorri Sturlason, an aristocratic poet, and that may have influenced why Odin, the patron god of poets and aristocrats, featured so heavily on his treatise on aristocratic poetry and gods.
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It's not only in Snorri, though. Tyr makes little appearance in the Poetic Edda material either, for one. And perhaps more importantly, even centuries earlier, Tacitus claims that the Germanic peoples principally worshipped "Mercury" as their main god, with "Hercules" and "Mars" as less important.
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Also iirc Tyr/Zeus/Deus all have the same Proto-Germanic root. So based on that and all the place names in Norse Scandinavian with "Tyr" as an element, Tyr might have been much more important than Snorri implied.
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Yes, they do. I meant to imply that with the Twz (actually more like 'Tiwaz', having now looked it up) comment.
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One of my time traveling wishes is to see the moment the story of Deus Pater was first told. Like, is it just a campfire story that everyone thought was really good, was some guy hit by lightning and survived? There has to be *something* and it's irretrievably lost to time.
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I suspect it owes a lot to the original speakers of the Indo-European languages being a mix of pastoral nomads and early agrarian communities, for whom the weather (and the changing climate of the Eurasian steppe) was something of a preoccupation!
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