Odin

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Odin, also known as the Allfather, is the Norse God of War, Death, Wisdom, Poetry, and Magic, the ruler of Asgard, and the King of the Aesir Gods. He is the father of Thor, Týr and Baldur, grandfather of Magni and Modi and was a husband to Freya, Fjörgyn and an unnamed woman. Odin acts as the overarching antagonist in God of War (2018).

Norse Mythology

Odin, also known as Woden and Wotan, was the Chief God of Norse mythology.

Odin appeared in heroic literature as the protector of heroes; fallen warriors joined him in Valhalla. He had a mythical horse called Sleipnir, who had eight legs, teeth inscribed with runes, and the ability to gallop through the air and over the sea. Odin was one of the greatest wizards among the gods and was associated with runes. He was also the God of Poets. His outward appearance he was an old man, with flowing beard and only one eye (the other he gave in exchange for wisdom).

He was usually depicted wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat and carrying his spear Gungnir.

In the God of War Series

Prior to the Game

Odin was a grandson of Búri, the first of the Aesir gods, who had sprung from Ymir, the first Giant and father of all life. However, unlike Ymir, Odin felt that the Aesir were fit to be the supreme rulers of the Nine Realms and so he, along with his brothers Vili and Ve killed Ymir and anyone else who stood in their path, with Odin himself taking the place of the "Allfather". Odin would then create the realm of Midgard from Ymir’s torn flesh. Eventually Odin would create the first Humans; Ask and Embla.

At some point, Mimir came to Odin with a "Mystic Well of Knowledge" but was really a well laced with enough hallucinogenic mushrooms to give even a god as powerful as him visions. Odin was initially so impressed with this well that whatever he saw in his hallucinations made him start to tear out both of his eyes. Fortunately, he was stopped by Mimir from finishing the job and was convinced by Mimir that he had sacrificed his eye for knowledge. However, Odin instantly figured out that Mimir had fooled him but allowed him to become his advisor due to his immense intelligence. After he imprisoned his advisor, Odin removed one of Mimir's eyes and tortured him on a daily basis.

Around this time, Odin also began to wed women and expand his family, hoping to gain strong sons. Odin took at least two wives during this period, the first of which giving him Týr. Odin also wed the Giantess Fjörgyn, with whom he had Thor. Some time after Thor's birth, Fjörgyn died, leaving Odin heartbroken and lonely for many years.

Odin at one point met the stone giant Hrungnir and was so amused by the latter's gullible nature that rather than killing him immediately Odin invited him to Asgard and made him drunk and goaded him into all manners of boasts and antics, even taking the threat of Hrungnir killing all the Aesir and taking all the women of Asgard back to Jötunheim as a joke. However, it came to an end after another fit of laughter upon Thor killing the stone giant and being crushed by his corpse and Odin ordered all his men to remove it from Thor but none of the Aesir was strong enough to do so and Thor himself was too drunk to remove the stone giant off him until Odin's grandchildren Magni and Modi came and freed Thor.

After cementing his rule as the "Allfather," Odin continued to wage wars over the other realms. He did not encounter any difficulty until the Vanir, where the two forces fought to a stalemate. At this point, both sides grew tired of fighting, and Odin eventually agreed to marry Freya to end the fighting, and so that Odin may secretly learn her magic. Together, they produced Odin's youngest son, Baldur. For a time, the two appeared to have greatly cared for one another, with Mimir noting that their relationship seemed to echo that of Odin and Fjörgyn's, with Odin treating her in a loving manner and conceding to most of her wishes, giving the Valkyries some freedom when she wished it. However, Freya eventually abandoned Odin, having become distraught over his treatment of the Giants. This angered the Allfather greatly and left him with a strong sense of betrayal, which caused him to curse her to remain imprisoned in Midgard and to never harm another living thing, even in self-defense, out of petty revenge.

Odin also sought the secrets of Jötunheim and the Giants. However, he made an enemy of them, and he started a genocidal campaign to kill any Giant the Aesir could find. His son Týr attempted to bring a peace by inviting Odin to a summit with the Giants, but Odin only agreed to get the secrets of Jotunheim. The giants foresaw this and expelled Odin from their homeland. Týr then permanently opposed Odin's attempts to learn the Giants's secrets, which led to Odin killing Tyr.

God of War (2018)

While not actually making an appearance in the game, he is frequently mentioned by several characters. He is the one who imprisoned Mimir in the past and personally tortured him every day for many decades. He also sent Baldur to gain knowledge of Faye's whereabouts, as the Giantess has been a thorn in the Aesir's side for quite some time.

He employs a large number of icy ravens (known as Eyes of Odin) to observe the world and gather information for him. Kratos can destroy all of these ravens. Odin also has secret vaults scattered throughout the world that contain murals depicting legends, and an entrance to a Valkyrie's prison.

Personality

“	Ruthless? Barbaric? Heartless? That's Odin.	”
–Mimir, speaking about Odin

According to Mimir, Odin is extremely paranoid about anything he believed would threaten his rule and that of the Aesir, much like how his Greek counterpart Zeus was before Kratos killed him. This included the Giants, the Vanir and even the beloved Týr, his own son. Also, Mimir said that Odin is extremely clever, almost as clever as Odin believes himself to be, as he was able to figure out that Kratos and Atreus had an important role in the coming of Ragnarök, possibly due to Gróa's prophecy. It is implied that he has an intense fear of Kratos as well like how Zeus had, however unlike the Olympian he knew nothing about him except that he is extremely powerful, having faced and killed Modi, Magni, and Baldur.

In addition, Odin jealously guards all the knowledge and secrets he collected. He betrayed and deceived many revered figures in Norse mythology who possessed knowledge that he did not and once he obtained them, he disposed of them cruelly. Mimir stated that Odin is obsessed with prophecies of the future, stylizing himself to be "all-knowing and all-seeing" but more importantly, motivated to control the future, his fate, and every realm. Mimir exploited this to become his adviser when he offered him a "well of knowledge" that allowed him to see visions.

It is also stated that Odin is very cruel, as seen by his having tortured Mimir during his imprisonment every day. He also ordered his strongest son Thor to kill every Jötunn he could find and betrayed the Jötunn, Ymir, at the beginning of all things under the self-righteous belief that he and the Aesir were bringing order to the realms. In truth, he and his brothers believed that they were superior and deserved to be as such. Additionally, Odin initially feigned affection for Freya during their marriage just so he could learn to use her Vanir magic for his own purposes. Once he got what he wanted and Freya started to rebel against him, even going as far as to break off the marriage; out of rage, Odin banished her to forever remain in Midgard, as well as robbing the goddess of her warrior spirit; therefore, rendering her unable to directly harm anything, even to defend herself. To add insult to injury, he wrongfully corrupted the Valkyries into monstrous beasts by condemning them to physical forms out of his spite for Freya's rebellion, an act which dangerously overflowed Helheim with souls of the departed in the process. Finally, he left the Nine Realms to suffer during the Desolation, closing Asgard's gates.

Odin is also shown to hold petty grudges, as he never forgot that Mimir had outwitted him when they first met. When Mimir finally fell out of favour, Odin removed one of his eyes. In addition, when he lost the arrangement he made with the disguised Hrimthur in finishing Asgard's walls, he feigned to keep his end of the bargain to allow the builder to speak with his queen, Freya, only for the Allfather to then double-cross the Giant and have Thor kill him. In addition, when Skaði spurned his affections, he deceived her into killing her own father during a hunt.

Many individuals, such as Freya and Mimir, state that Odin is driven by fear of his own fate which is said to be at the hands of Giants, resulting in his paranoia and hatred of them. However, he is also envious and desirous of the Giants's abilities of precognition, wishing to use such abilities to alter his fate when Ragnarok occurs. Perhaps this is the one thing that the Allfather and Kratos, who doesn't believe in fate, have in common and would agree on.

Overall, Odin's depraved actions throughout the centuries have led him to be wholly despised by many figures; such as the Vanir, Freya, The World Serpent, Mimir and even the Valkyries.

However, Odin is not complete without the ability to feel love and trust others. He was known for having genuinely fallen in love with Fjörgyn despite his subsequent hatred for the Giants and eventually married her and conceived the mightiest of his sons Thor with her. Her death caused such grief and sadness to Odin that even Mimir acknowledges that Odin was distraught and lonely after the death of his great love.

To alleviate his pain and put an end to the Aesir-Vanir War, Mimir suggested that he married Freya. During this time, Mimir noticed the same happiness Odin had with Fjörgyn resurfaced and while he married her partly to end the war (as well as to learn her seiðr magic), Odin treated Freya in a loving manner and conceded to most of her wishes, in fact fulfilling so many of Freya's desires that Mimir said that even he lost count of how many wishes that Freya made to Odin that he willingly granted. He was willing to give the Valkyries some measure of freedom because Freya wished it. Their relationship eventually became strained when Odin became increasingly obsessed with Ragnarök and the Jötnar, which caused Freya to break off the marriage. From Odin's reaction to Freya's betrayal, it is obvious that he did have romantic feelings for her and felt a strong sense of betrayal from their divorce.

He is also known to have a great deal of confidence and trust in his sons Baldur and Thor unlike with his other son Tyr, likely as he knew that Tyr's peaceful nature was unfit for an Aesir. Odin was confident Thor could single-highhandedly eradicate the Giants and considered Baldur his finest tracker. Although he apparently could not lift the invulnerability spell that Freya placed on Baldur, Odin promised his son he would find a way to lift the spell if he found the Jötunn Guardian. It is unknown if Odin's promise was sincere or just a lie to motivate Baldur, but as Baldur went along with it anyway, it can be assumed that Odin is willing to go to great lengths to reward and keep promises he made to his children should they remain loyal and achieve a significant enough deed.

He also seems to be willing to take mercy on his enemies should they provide amusement for the Allfather, as shown when rather than killing Hrungnir, one of the Giants, Odin instead was highly amused by his gullible nature and chose to have him amuse him and his court, as well as forget any personal offences as long as said offender would willingly prove to be a value to him, as shown when he allowed Mimir to become his advisor despite knowing all along that Mimir had fooled him into removing his eye and even Mimir acknowledged that Odin trusted him for a long time until Odin eventually took Mimir's advises of peace as disloyalty and bound him to his prison tree.

Powers and Abilities

As the King of the Aesir Gods, Odin is incredibly powerful, the most powerful of his kind.

• Immortality: Odin, as a Norse God, is immortal, having lived for many millenia. Only a sufficiently powerful weapon or an extremely powerful being like Fenrir can kill him.
• Superhuman Strength: Odin must have tremendous amounts of superhuman strength as the King of the Aesir. He is at least stronger than Baldur and Tyr. It is even possible that his strength rivals and/or surpasses that of his son Thor, the God of Strength. The only known beings to surpass his strength are Starkaðr, Fenrir and Surtr, the latter of whom would take both Odin and Thor to defeat in Ragnarok and the former being the one destined to devour Odin to death.
• Master Combatant: As the King of Asgard, Odin must be an extremely proficient fighter with centuries worth of battle training and experience. Alongside Thor, Odin would be capable of defeating Surtr, the Primordial Fire Giant and also an highly exceptional fighter during Ragnarok.
• Magical Prowess: Odin is an extremely powerful and skilled sorcerer, being the only one out of all the Aesir to use magic, being a master of many magical arts including ancient magics. He also learned Seiðr, the magic of the Vanirs, from Freya, a prominent factor in his marriage to her, which he mastered enough that Mimir stated that Odin used it to perform dangerous experimentation. He is capable of casting a variety of extremely powerful curses, enchanting Freya to never leave Midgard or harm others. The spell was so powerful that Freya was unable to lift the curse despite her own highly stated Vanir abilities. He also cast a curse to transform the Valkyries into monstrous, physical versions of themselves, an act that made them unable to carry out their duties of transporting those slain in battle to Valhalla, and can summon a corruption of magic called the Black Breath strong enough that even Freya could not dispel it. Odin can perform many other unique powerful spells, as he used his magic to gain control over the wolves Sköll and Hati and was able to cast them into the heavens and make them chase the moon and sun while preventing them from doing so endlessly, as well as conceal Aurvandil’s death from his seer wife Gróa and somehow absorb Gróa's knowledge into himself using magic. He also can cast extremely powerful protection enchantments on objects, as he used his magic to bind Mimir to the tree he was trapped in for 109 winters and made it to be unbreakable to even Thor's mighty hammer as well as prevented the travel runes on Tyr's temple from granting access to Asgard, Svartalfeheim, and Vanaheim.
• Summoning: As the Raven God, Odin is able to summon ravens to observe and gather information from across the realms.
• High Intellect: Odin is extremely intelligent and clever, as even Mimir, the smartest being alive in all the Nine Realms, acknowledged his cleverness, saying that he is almost as clever as he believes himself to be. From having heard the prophecy of Ragnarok, he was able to figure out that Kratos and Atreus will play a part in it. Odin was also not fooled by Mimir's lie that he had sacrificed his eye for knowledge, correctly deducing that Mimir had fooled him and the well of knowledge was actually just filled with hallucinogenic mushrooms to give even a god visions.
• Master Torturer: Odin was known to be a very creative and skilled torturer, as he personally tortured Mimir for many centuries to the point that Mimir said that he would rather die than continue to be tortured by Odin.

Weapons

• Gungnir: In Norse mythology, Odin possesses the Dwarven made spear, Gungnir, which always hits its target.

Trivia

• According to a lore marker, Odin was responsible for creating Ask and Embla, much like his mythological counterpart.
• His Greek equivalent (in terms of being the king of the gods) is Zeus.
  • In terms of attributes, however, Odin encompasses multiple roles shared by different Greek Gods (e.g. Ares, Athena, Apollo, Hermes and Thanatos).
  • Odin is much like Zeus, both are paranoid toward anything that they considered a threat to their reign even their own sons. Odin killed Týr after he suspected him plotting with the giants to overthrow him, while Zeus killed Kratos out of fear of The Marked Warrior prophecy. The difference however was Týr never thought of overthrowing Odin and only prevented him from accessing Jötunheim, whereas Kratos had intentions of vengeance against Zeus for killing him and previously torturing his mother and brother and for betraying him.
  • They also treated their progenitors wrongly due to their desire to reign over others, Odin killed Ymir because he believed that he and his brethren the Aesir are bringer of order and deserved to be such, while Zeus imprisoned the titans because of his desire to rule over the mortal world.
  • Both are destined to die at the hands of Kratos and his family in certain prophecies, Odin is destined to die at the jaw of Fenrir which is technically Kratos' grandson, while Zeus was destined to die at the hands of the Marked Warrior which is Kratos himself.
  • Both requested one of their children to kill powerful beings. Odin commanded Thor to kill the Jötnar, while Zeus ordered Kratos to kill Ares.

• In nearly all the murals Odin appears in, he is riding his mythological mount, Sleipnir. This is odd, seeing as Sleipnir in the Norse Mythos, is the offspring of Loki and Svadilfari who was the stallion who helped the disguised Jötunn build the walls of Asgard.
  • Despite being Loki in this universe, it's unlikely that Atreus is the mother of Sleipnir, seeing as the horse was alive thousands of years before even the World Serpent's first appearance, being with Odin when he and his brothers slew Ymir.
  • Another piece to support this claim is that in the Prose Edda, Loki distracted Svadifari from his task of helping the builder complete the wall in time by taking the form of a mare and the intercourse that followed produced Sleipnir. In the God of War universe however, Hrimthur was able to complete the wall in time and gain an audience with Freya.
• In an ironic twist of fate, Odin's efforts to prevent Ragnarok and his death from occurring could be argued to be the very reason to it, as this led many inhabitants in the 9 realms to be very hateful toward him and his brethren including the Vanirs, the Wolf Fenrir, and the giants.
• In mythology, his mother is the Jötunn Bestla, though it is unknown at this time if she will fulfil this role in the series.
• Tacitus, a Roman historian and senator, associated Odin with Hermes's Roman equivalent Mercury due to their status as a psychopomp.
• Throughout the game, Kratos and Atreus encounter Odin's ravens. A side mission includes killing 51 of these ravens.
• According to Mimir, one of Odin's primary obsessions was finding a way to Jötunheim to learn the Giants' secrets. He continues to search for a way to the realm to this day.
• Despite his hatred of the Jötnar, and they him, one of Odin's great loves was the Giantess Fjörgyn, who bore him a son, Thor. In addition, before or after her, Odin sought the affections of Skaði, Queen of the Hunt.
• As of the events of God of War (2018), Odin is responsible for the desolation of five of the nine realms, those being Midgard (through his corruption of the Valkyries), Niflheim (By intervening in Ivaldi's creations), Asgard and Vanaheim (through the Aesir-Vanir War) and Jötunheim (through Thor's genocidal campaign).
• Seeing as Odin is credited in some of the mythos as being the oldest of the Gods and given his cruelty in God of War, it could be possible that Odin killed his father, grandfather and brothers to assume total control over the Nine Realms and claim the title of Allfather. This is however unconfirmed
  • If this is the case, then it would give precedent to The Cycle of Patricide and Familicide so prevalent in the God of War franchise.