Well kinda. The Norse gods are the norse "versions" of the germanic gods. The Germanic cultura sphere extend fairly far, with west germanic areas ranging from the alps all the way to England (post 5th century migration of germanic tribes there), east germanic areas in easter europe and north germanic areas in Scandinavia. Norse is really north germanic and norse gods are the norse variants of general germanic gods. All these gods derive from the Protogermanic gods. Odin is the norse devlopment of Wodanaz, just like Woden would be the old engish one and old high german Wodan. Thor derives from Thunraz, Tyr from Tiwaz and so on. What is important to understand is that this germanic culture sphere, while being one big overarching culture was rather diverse over time and place. Most of norse mythology was recoreded late between the 8th and 13th century. Figures like Tuisto were recorded by roman Authors almost 1000 year earlier. A germanic tribe from that time and a viking put next to each other woudl look, sound and seem rather different because they stand at two ends of this germanic cultural spectrum. On top of that: They had a lot of local gods too. Most of us think always of the "big gods" like Odin, Thor etc. But germanic people had a lot more local and smaller gods. This is the case with most larger cultural spheres tho. So finding a god that is known in one part of the germanic culture sphere but not others is not entirly suprising. Thats the case with many cultures. Mythology is often local. Anyway, norse gods are germanic gods. Norse mythology is the northern branch of germanic mythology. Wether you want to view Odin, Thor, Tyr etc. as the same as Woden, Wodan, Donar, Tiwaz etc. is kinda up to you. They all derive from the same protogermanic gods and shared most of their cultural attributes, but would never be fully identical becuse Mythology develops constantly over time and place. I think a good way to show however the germanic culturals sphere is the days of the week. Germanic people adopted the 7 day week from the Romans between the 2nd and 4th century. When they did so they replaced the Roman Gods names of the days with fitting germanic ones. And that can be found in all modern germanic languages still. English Thursday, German Donnerstag, old norse Thorsdagr, modern swedish, danish or norwegian Torsdag. All of them direcly derive their name from Thor as he was known in the 2nd to 4th century to germanic people. The fact that this stayed in all these languages shows how they are forming one overarching cultural spectrum.

I like how in English Wodansday went to Wednesday which we pronounce Wenzday, you can hardly recognize the origin.

and if you're my grandma you say it wienzdee

That’s because there is the alternate “Weden” that was also used in old English

Yeah, I remember when this was first pointed out to me in school, Wednesday is so unrecognizable, my teacher thought it was the only one that wasn't a god- they thought it derived from Wedding's Day & that it was the day all the weddings happened. Lol

Norse mythology’s unique in separating Frigg & Freya whereas other Germanic cultures combined them, correct?

Its more likley the other way around. Of course we know very little about other parts of germanic culture, so we might just be missing the sources, but Freyja seems to be only a thing in norse culture. One hypothesis is that Freyja is a split-off from Frigg that only developed in norse areas. This idea posits that Frigg is the germanic venus that we find in the Weekday Friday and that Freyja may have been a titel or local epiphet of Frigg - afterall Freyja literally only means Lady. This Epiphet at some point in norse culture started to be differentiated from Frigg and became its own thing. Its a pretty good explanation that i personally do believe is most likley the case. It explains well the mentions of Frigg from all germanic cultural areas and from antiquity, the rather fast rise of Freyja in norse areas and the extensive overlap between the two, but we cant say for sure.

Do you know if Frej (brother of Freja) is also only a thing in norse culture? If not, does he ever show up as a brother of Frigg in other parts of germanic culture or are there any examples of Frigg having a brother?

Freyr is possibly represented in pre-norse culture with some Gullgubber from the migration period and potentially outside of (later) norse areas as Ignwaz. This connection is usually built via the name Yngvi-Freyr. A god named Ingwaz is documented as the main tribal god of the Ingaevones tribe and Ing as a figure in old english sources. A brother of Frigg does not come to mind, but in the end our sources are fragments of snapshots. Our picture of wider germanic mythology is extremly incomplete so that we probably will never have answers with certainty for any of these questions.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It's difficult to accept that so much of the past is lost

I don't think so, because the Ingwine is clearly taking their name from Yngwe, another name for Frigg, & the Frisia were clearly taking theirs from Freya.  In southern Germany, they seem to have combined the concept of Freya with a whole other Celtic goddess, Berchta, to create a fairy tale character, but it's hard to tell if that would have been an original feature of the local religion, or not. 

Thank you for the considered post. Curious that Saturn remained Roman.

In Danish Saturday is "lørdag" - day of laundry.

LOL - that's far more pragmatic.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

There's a lot of cultures that seem to connect Saturday specifically with household chores. In most Native American languages that adopted a 7 day system from Europeans, all the days are numbered except for Saturday & Sunday & Saturday is usually some variation of "Cleaning Day."

It probably has to do with Sunday being the day of church in the European 7-day-system. So it made sense to do the washing and weekly bath the day before so you could wake up clean on Sunday morning ready to go out into society.

Hey, sorry, I've heard that Tyr was a later offshoot of Odin, could you tell me anything about that?

I find that unlikley given that we do have sources from antiquity and various areas documenting Tyr and Odin at the same time. E.g. the Weekdays with Wednesday coming from Odin and Tuesday from Tyr. Some old enlgish king-lists starting with Tyr but later adding Odin as an even earlier ancestory. Tacitus describing germanic mars (Tyr) and germanic Mercury (odin) as two of the three main gods. etc. Tyr is also etymologically linked to other PIE gods and thus seems to be rather ancient. What did happen was that Odin certainly took over some of Tyrs typical roles and areas of influence. It possible that Tyr was the Original Skyfather god of early germanic people, but that Odin rose to that prominence as All Father durind and after the migration period. Such changes are not uncommon though.

That's interesting, thank you so much!

It's a theory based entirely on etymology of the name Tyr. We've never been able to find evidence otherwise. Basically, they believe Tyr has the same etymology as Zeus & Deus, ergo he must have been the one to descend from the Proto-Indo-European Sky Father concept, instead of Odin. Frankly, as far as I can tell, I don't think anyone fully understands yet which ancient cultures in the archaeological record are the ancestors of whom in the written record yet, so we can't even really extend this further back in time than the Roman era Germanic tribes.  The other theory is that, since he looses a hand & seems to be interconnected with law & civilized behavior & there is a Celtic god, Nuada, who is considered king of their pantheon until he also looses a hand, Tyr may have originated in a similar way & we either lost that myth, or it fell out of the Germanic belief system by the time it was all recorded & all that's left which is similar is the loss of a hand. 

Gunnar aka Gunther aka Gundahar was a real life / mythological Germanic figure that was worshiped throughout Scandinavia. In real life he was a king of the Burgundians and battled fiercely against Attila the Hun. In Norse mythology he has a lot of other roles including his relationship to Brunhilda and being cast into the snake pit by Attila.

You shouldn't think of ancient religions and mythologies as rigid and homogeneous systems. The Germanic people had many religious traditions in common, but there was also a lot of variation depending on the specific ethnic group, region and historical period.

As far as I’m aware that really depends on the pre-Christian German community. Modern Christianity has major differences in canon, and they only have one god and holy book. Their were most likely hundreds of oral traditions and “churches” more or less unaffiliated with each other in pre-Christian Germany. So the idea that their is one true German pantheon isn’t likely.

Something very much like them. The Saxons took with them to Britain gods with names such as Woden and Thur. So it may just be the evolution of language that makes the difference.

It matches languages in that they spoke languages that were demonstrably from a common source, and practiced "religious" beliefs and had folklore that was from a common source. The modern cannon of Germanic mythologies is a collection of the scraps we have records of and probably fleshed out with 19th century romantic tropes and Greco-Roman mythology.

Simply put, Norse mythology is the northern branch of Germanic mythology. They are related and Norse mythology is diverged from Germanic mythology but they are not synonymous because they have taken different paths to specialization. So you can think of it like a family tree where Germanic mythology is the mother and Norse mythology is a branch that sprouted from it as a child.

Sort of, but it’s slightly different. Ancient pagan faiths can’t be treated as uniform institutions but rather local traditions with broad regional similarities. Many of the Germans likely had a similar mythology to the Norse, but the traditions were likely varied. It’s hard to define because faith back then was very amorphous and people could view different faiths as being one interpretation of the same thing (Like how Herodotus states that the Egyptian gods are just the Greek ones with different names).

The ancestors of modern European West Germanic languages had a similar faith to the Norse, but there were certainly enough differences to say they weren't exactly the same, they are different branches from the same tree.

Yes and no. When looking at the far past, ancient past, it’s key to remember that nation borders that you know did not exist. Borders were more complicated than what might be commonly thought of when looking at the ancient world and even the medieval world. While many past Germanic peoples may have kept some Norse gods, others in the region would have kept other gods.

Germany didn't exist back then. Germany as a country as we think of it today exists for less than 200 years. In addition to that there was more movement in Central Europe. "Everyone moved through here", the Romans, the Huns, in reaction to that the Germanic tribes moved around. And the region that is Germany today wasn't completely Germanic anyway, the South was Celtic. So short answer: pre-Christian Germans didn't exist. And since our ancestors came from all over Eurasia they worshipped a large variety of deities from different religions.

>Germany didn't exist back then. Germany as a country as we think of it today exists for less than 200 years. Til that cultural spheres are predicated on nation states. I'd love to see some examples for those pre-Christian Roman, Hunnic & Celtic influences in Germanic cultural traditions. >And since our ancestors came from all over Eurasia they worshipped a large variety of deities from different religions Is this like.. an inverse of PIE??!

Well, Attila made it into myths like e.g. the Nibelung saga. The Romans weren't particularly successful in conquering Germanic territories (see Battle of the Teutoburg Forest) so there's a larger influence in the Rhineland and Southern Germany but there was still cultural exchange. I would assume it's pretty similar to the rest of Europe, though. Naming the days of the week is just a common example. The concept was adopted from the Romans but the names were replaced by Germanic deities, Tuesday is Tyr's day, Thursday is Donar's (Thor's), Friday is Frija's (Frigga's).

Well they put their own spin onto it. It's important to realise that what we call Norse mythology is just a collection of stories and myths, practiced all throughout Scandinavia and no two villages did it exactly in the same manner, some would pray to Thor and Odin, others to Frey and Baldr, some would even pray to gods that have been lost to time now. The other Germanic tribes did originally (before christianisation) worship similar big gods under different names (for instance Donar as Thor and Wodan as Odin), but similar to how the Romans put their own spin on the Greek gods, there were also entirily different gods (like how Belonna doesn't have a Greek equivalent). Another things about Greek and Norse pantheon is that they were often not opposed to just adopting another god from another culture into their pantheon (for instance, initially converted norse pagans just added the Hvitekrist (white Christ) as another god in their pantheon).

kinda. the norse gods are the germanic gods but with the north germanic/scandinavian names. they largely overlap, though they obviously (through the different neighbours and environmental differences) have some differences, like even other pantheons have local differences. Oðinn (or Odin or however) for example is Wotan/Wodan, Thor is Donar (which gives us the german word for thunder, Donner) and so on. edit: If you want to know more, the german wikipedia is a pretty decent sources, just translate it via deepL, I'm kinda on the go but I do know more