dwc@hou2b.UUCP (D.CHEN) (02/15/85)
>I am glad that the discrepancy between Odin's two origins has at least >been mentioned. Are we just going to discard the Odin's-eye version of >Odin's origin as the fusion of elder gods? I'd like to dismiss everything >that the eye said as a fairy tale, but the eye told Thor that his mother was >the Earth-spirit, which Mother Earth herself verified in Thor #301. there is a somewhat far fetched way of tying together the two origins. (not that anyone would want to. i too am in favor of throwing out the whole celestials fiasco. but i do this as a mental exercise) both the origins could be true. we can infer from odin's words and actions in the past ten or so issues (and from the words of tiwaz) that most of odin's existence has been spent preparing for the return of surtur. what if the young odin that was presented was actually the grandson of tiwaz? then how could our odin who is the fusion of four elder gods be related to him? perhaps the previous ragnoraks and their ~2000 year cycle were self-imposed by odin himself! looking back it is curious that none of the previous ragnoraks ended with surtur's 'cleansing' of the world. they simply resulted in a new set of gods and more importantly, a new odin. recall that when the 'origin of odin' was presented, it showed how he recreated all the asgardians. including the midgard serpent and hela but he did not recreate surtur! this could mean that these ragnoraks were just a creation of odin and that since many of the asgardians were really just creations of odin, their fusion didn't result in anything new: odin in, odin out. maybe odin did this as a way of getting a new body to prepare for his confrontation with surtur. maybe odin just did it so he could have two eyes every once in a while (or maybe so that he could keep yanking eyes out without going totally blind--masochistic point of view). the theory is far-fetched and full of holes but its a start. >In the AMAZING HEROES 1985 PREVIEW, Simonson has this to say about Tiwaz: > > "...[Thor] will meet Tiaaz (possibly under a different > name), one of the ancient sky gods of Indo-European > culture, who preceded the Norse gods and the Germanic > gods." > >So, apparently (I haven't been up on my mythology for many, many moons, I'm >afraid), this Tiaaz (renamed Tiwaz by WS) is more of a *literary* ancestor >than a *real* ancestor of Odin, but Simonson has made him into the latter in >the mythology of the Marvel Universe. what is intriguing is that the marvel universe already had a name for odin's grandfather: buri. is that name unique to the marvel universe? if so, then by doing this, simonson has once again brought the marvel universe thor closer to the mythological thor. (unless of course i am letting my chauvinism show and buri was female.) an observation: i just went over my old world book encyclopedia (i couldn't afford the brittanica) and guess what? thursday comes from "thor's day", wednesday comes from "wodin's day" (wodin is odin's other name), and tuesday comes from "tiw's day". now tiw was supposed to be another name for tyr the god of war, but do you think that this is how simonson came up with tiwaz? well, i'm going to write and find out. (i once got a letter printed, i think it was issue 293.) danny chen ihnp4!hou2b!dwc