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Loading ...Why are so many days of the week named after Norse Gods?
Tuesday–named after Tyr (this is really anglo-saxon rather than norse) god of war and sky.
Wednesday–originally Woden’s Day or Odin’s day. Odin being the ruler of the norse gods.
Thursday– Thor’s day. Thor being the god of Thunder.
Friday– named for either Frigga, wife of Odin and mother of Thor, Goddess of married love or for Frejya goddess of love and fertility.
So I guess the question is how did all of these foriegn gods come to be used so commonly in English?
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Tags: anglo saxon, days of the week, god, god of war, norse, norse god of war, norse gods, sky, Tuesday--named, Tyr, war, week
2 Responses to “Why are so many days of the week named after Norse Gods?”
I just goes to prove that it was the Vikings and Leif Erickson that discovered America and not Columbus.
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All these days of the week are words which are left over from Old English, or Anglo-Saxon – instead of being borrowed into the language from Latin or French, which many words in modern English are. Very basic words, such as days of the week, or simple nouns like hill or stone, are less likely to be changed by contact with other languages, and so these words come down to us relatively intact. As to why they’re named for Norse gods, Old English is closely related to Old Norse. For a couple of hundred years (up until 1066 AD) Norsemen lived in and ruled the northern and eastern parts of England.
As for being foreign, Norse gods could be considered much less foreign to people of English descent than the Judeo-Christian God — Scandanavia is much closer to England than the Middle East is, and Norse or Anglo-Saxon religions are much older, and were practiced in England and elsewhere in Europe, long before Christianity came into being.
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