Óðins nǫfn. Gli epiteti di Odino nelle þulur dell’Edda di snorri Sturluson

Abstract

Whether right or wrong, Odin’s name (OIC Óðinn, OE Wōdæn, OHG Wuotan, OS Wōdan, Lat-Germ Godan < *Wðanaz) is traditionally associated with gloomy images arising from battlefields, bloody rituals or terrifying storms of Viking marauders, as reported in medieval chronicles and hagiographies as well as in recent movies. *Wōðanaz was originally identified by the Romans with the less prominent classical god Hermes-Mercury. At any rate, as results from epigraphic evidence, during the 3rd century he seems to have gained a position of predominance within the Germanic enoteistic religion, which reaches its climax in Scandinavian mythology.

Here, 13th-century Icelandic literary sources depict him as the patron of war and of fallen warriors, as well as the promoter of ecstatic poetical inspiration; he is the old Norse renowned Father-god, though his actions seldom match high ethical standards – as witnessed by his many poetical epithets. These form the core of this study, which concentrates on some hypothetical aspects of Odin arising from a specific onomasiological cathegory of old Norse poetry: the heiti, a rhetorical figure which, less celebrated than the kenningar of the skalds, is transmitted in long metrical lists within certain exemplars of Snorri Sturluson’s Edda.