Unlike those deities, Odin played many roles.
While this makes Odin seem similar to “father” deities from other mythologies such as Zeus and Ra, he is different from them in several aspects. He created the universe by killing the proto-being Ymir whose flesh became the Nine Realms. Odin is half-god and half-giant as his mother is the giantess Bestla and his father is Borr. In these texts, Snorri describes Odin as “the father of all of the gods” and while that’s not technically true in a literal sense, Odin does assume the position of everyone’s father.
The moniker “Allfather” or Alfaðir in Old Norse was given to Odin by the Icelandic author of Poetic Edda and Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson. The English weekday name Wednesday derives from the Old English word wōdnesdæg, which meant ‘day of Woden’.
Some of these are Woden, Wuodan, Wuotan and Allfather. Overall, the large number of names used for Odin makes him the only Germanic god with the most known names. These include various monikers and descriptive terms. Odin was one of the most highly-respected and worshipped gods of the ancient Germanic people. He is a god of contradictions, creator of the world and the one who made life possible. When viewed from the context of Norse mythology, Odin is quite different from what most people imagine today. Odin is best-known as the Allfather God of Norse mythology – the wise ruler of Asgard, lord of the valkyries and the dead, and a one-eyed wanderer.
