Meredyth on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/meredyth/art/Odin-180122259Meredyth

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Odin

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My interpretation of Wotan/Woden/Odin, father of the Gods, here shown as the wanderer.
This was my Yuletide card for 2008 and was drawn in a rush within two hours without any sketch or conceptual planning.
For the background I used a photo of mine that I altered using standard photo software.

After this picture made a grand tour through all the internet - sometimes under circumstances I wasn't alltogether happy with - I decided to give it an update. You can find the new version here:

Odin is the ruler and the king, the wizard, story-teller and bringer of strife. As a storm-god, he brings inspiration and ecstatic trance. His names correspond to Old German Odem (Atem), meaning breath (of life), and Wut, meaning wrath. Odin knows the future and knows that death and doom will come over all! Because of that, he wanders the world cunningly weaving strife, so that the best warriors are taken by death in battle in their physical prime, to join his host in Walhall in the best possible condition for the future battle of Ragnarök, the doom of the Gods.
This is not a particularly nice God, and none you should pray to if you want to enjoy a long life!
Yet he is not mean either, but driven by necessity. There is no plain good vs evil in Norse Mythology, it's more the struggle to maintain order against the always threatening Chaos, and hard times may need hard decisions.
So Odin is the god of leaders and politicians.

:icondonotuseplz::iconmyartplz:
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© 2010 - 2024 Meredyth
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Eye-of-Tichodroma's avatar
I've seen this picture around a lot through the years, too bad people keep stealing art and not linking back to the original upload :( but now I found it. Even though it's a sketch, this picture always stood out to me for how expressive it is. Especially the way you drew Odin's face, you can see his cunning, his scheming nature, there's more than a hint of the fury that his name might be based on, it makes you wonder what is going on in his mind at this moment. I bet he's a great poker player.