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In contrast to the subtle and mysterious All-father, Thor was a simple-hearted and single-minded warrior whose lusty appetites could be understood and appreciated by the rank and file. Thursday bears his name; the Anglo-Saxons worshipped him as Thunor.

Thor is the acme of virility, with his luxuriant red beard, flowing hair, and hearty enjoyment of food and drink. In addition to his primary role as patron of warriors, Thor, like Freyr, was called upon as a fertility god. The 11th century Christian missionary Adam of Bremen, on noting the great temple of the gods in Uppsala, Sweden, wrote, "Thor, they say, presides over the air, he governs the thunder and lightening, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops...If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor."

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Their initial manifestation took the form of eighteen powerful charms for protection, increase, success in battle and love-making, healing, and mastery over natural causes. This story illustrates an important dynamic of the Northern pantheon, which did not allow for omnipotence: even Odin must pay his due. At Mimir's well, which lay deep under the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the god had earlier chosen to undergo an important forfeit.

Odin paid with one eye for a single drink of the enchanted water. His mouthful granted him wisdom and fore-sight.

It is due to this sacrifice that Odin's face is depicted with a straight line indicating an empty eye, or alternately, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the missing orb.

His quest for knowledge was never-ending. Upon his shoulders perched two ravens, Hugin ("Thought"), and Munin ("Memory"). These circled the Earth each day, seeing all, and then at night reported to Odin what they had learnt. He cherished them both, but particularly Munin, which seems to underscore the importance he placed on rune writing, record keeping, and honouring the heroic deeds of the past. There is another bird associated with Odin, the eagle. The god often transformed himself into this canny raptor, both to view the workings of the world and to intervene when an avian form was better suited to his ends.

An ancient wooden carving of the bisexual Viking god Odin suggests the prehistoric timber circle monument Seahenge and another, even older, structure might have included totem pole-like carvings, according to archaeologists who have excavated the over 4,000-year-old British wood monuments.

Because Odin was a mythological figure in prehistoric religion, the possible link between the carving and the monuments could mean that the mysterious circles held religious, funerary, or magical significance for the late Neolithic people who constructed them on Holme beach in Norfolk, England.

Archaeologists connected the unlikely object with the circles after the idol, found several decades ago in the Thames Estuary, recently was radiocarbon dated to 2,250 B.C. This year coincides with the construction of Seahenge, a wooden monument built out of a giant, overturned tree stump surrounded by a circle of timbers.

At first, the carved object puzzled scientists, who could not determine if it was a man or a woman, or why its left eye appeared to have been mutilated.

Because the idol indicates prehistoric East Anglians were representing humans through woodcarvings, Pitts thinks it is possible Seahenge and Holme 2 contained similar carvings, which since would have worn away.

"At Seahenge there was a thin pole just outside (its) entrance and five complete poles that seem to be significantly sited, and at Holme 2 there were four poles, in pairs at either end of a hypothetical bier or coffin that might have rested on the two dished logs that lay at the center," Pitts said. "These are all possible carved timbers."

While Pitts and Mark Brennand, who led the Seahenge excavation, liken the possible carved timbers to Native American totem poles, Pitts said this is due to "parallel invention," and not because of any kind of ancient cultural exchange.

As Woden/Odin gave his name to Wednesday, and Thunor/Thor to Thursday, so Frigg is remembered in Friday. Frige-daeg, Friday, is further equated with dies veneris, the day of Venus, the love-goddess so revered by the Romans.

Frigg was the direct daughter of Fjorgyn, the Goddess of Earth. She kept her own hall, called Fensalir. She was wife to Odin, All-Father, and is herself an All-Mother.

Women prayed to her for children and prayed again for safe labour and delivery.

Frigg gave birth to the perfectly good and beautiful Baldr, and tried to protect her son from death itself by requesting a pledge from every thing in the world not to harm him. She neglected however to ask the mistletoe, and it was with a small dart of this symbol of Winter resurrection that Baldr was felled. She is thus the Sorrowing Mother as well as the lusty bed companion. But when Frigg wept, her tears were of pure gold.

Freyja always wished to give her love freely.Her beauty and desirability often attracted the attention of those she did not want, such as the giant who offered to build an impregnable defensive wall around Asgard, the dwelling of the gods, in exchange for taking Freyja away as his wife. The goddess knew nothing of this agreement, and her outraged indignation at being so wagered grew the greater as the wall grew taller. Never believing they would have to forfeit Freyja, the gods grew more and more uneasy in their wager, until Loki ,who had urged the agreement, was forced to utilise his trickster ability to the fullest.

Three animals are associated with Freyja. She is pulled about in a cart to which two cats are harnessed. Their sinuous beauty and comfort-loving nature recall one side of the goddess. The other two animals are direct symbols of sexuality and strength. Her golden-bristled boar is called Battle Swine (Hildisvini), and recalls her role as the receiver of heroic dead. Battle helmets topped with iron and bronze images of boars have been found throughout England and Scandinavia, for the boar's savage and cunning nature was widely revered. The other animal is the mare, associated with night, unbridled sexuality, and dangerous magical power. To "ride the night-mare" meant then, as now, to have bad dreams.

The Valkyrie is, in the oldest strata of belief, a corpse goddess, represented by the carrion-eating raven. The name in Old Norse, valkyrja, as well as Old English wælcyrge means literally, "chooser of the slain." The word for valkyrie was used by Anglo-Saxon scholars to gloss the names of the Greco-Roman goddeses of vengeance and retribution, the Furies or Erinyes, as well as for the Roman goddess of war, Bellona.

The Valkyrie is related to the Celtic warrior-goddess, the Morrigan, who likewise may assume the form of the raven. The Irish badb is at one and the same time a seeress foretelling the fate of men upon the battlefield and is also the carrion-crow or raven. (Rooth 22 cool . At times the female seeress was replaced by the work of women's hands in the form of a Raven banner ...woven of the cleanest and whitest silk and no picture of any figure was found upon it. In case of war, however, a raven was always to be seen upon it, as if woven into it. If the Danes were going to win the battle, the raven appeared, beak wide open, flapping its wings and restless on its feet. If they were going to be defeated, the raven did not stir at all, and its limbs hung motionless.