>>19780420>In like manner he founded, through his son Sceming, a new dynasty in Norway; and besides these many sovereign families of Northern Germany, including the Anglo-Saxon princes, traced theirtdescent to Odin. As it has been found impossible to refer to one individual all the mythical and historical elements which group themselves around the name of Odin, Wodin, or Wuotan, it has been suggested by Suhm and other historians that there may have been two or three ancient northern heroes of the name; but notwithstanding the conjectures which have been advanced since the very dawn of the historical period in the North in regard to the origin and native country of the assumed Odin, or even the time at which he lived, all that relates to him is shrouded in complete obscurity. It is much more probable, however, that the myth of Odin originated in nature-worship. See also Clarke, Ten Great Religions; Thorpe, Northern Mythology, 1:164, 229, .274 sq.; Westminster Rev. Oct. 1854, art. 1; Smith, Ancient Britain; Anderson, Northern Mythology (see Index)Odin doesn't have a PIE equivalent (Hermes/Mercury is Pelasgian/Etruscan) and remained completely and conspicuously absent in the religion of Southern and Eastern Germanics (i.e., Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals) prior to their Christianization in the 5th-6th centuries. Even within what little is known of Odin's character verified diegetically, none of it corresponds to a sky-father figure; everything that gives Odin characters of a chief deity akin to a PIE Sky-Father is a Christian interpolation by Snorri Sturlusson in the 12th-13th centuries, a -long- time after the conversion of the Danes and Norse.
Despite not having a Proto-Indo-European equivalent, WODANAZ, comes from the PIE Root "-odr" which means "to howl (furiously), whose name comes from this root is Rudra (a God of Howling Storms, Hunting, and having a "special eye"), Rudra is seen as the benign form of the (later) Shiva.
