Odin's Wife: - Germanic Mythology

Because modern scholars question the names and boundaries that Greek and
Roman authors assigned to the people of northern Europe, a couple of observations by
Herodotus regarding the Scythians may be relevant here. 38 Herodotus reports (7, 64) "The
Persians call all the Scythians Sakai,” a group many scholars have identified as the
ancestors of the Saxons. According to him (4, 59), the Scythians of northeastern Europe,
“propitiate by worship …Hestia most of all, then Zeus and the Earth, supposing that
Earth is the wife of Zeus, and after these Apollo, and Aphrodite Urania, and Heracles,
and Ares. Of these all the Scythians have the worship established, and the so-called royal
Scythians sacrifice also to Poseidon.” 39 Like Nerthus and Njörd in the Germanic realm,
Earth and Sea in Greek myth also appear to be intimately connected. In Greek sources,
Poseidon and Hera vie for the possession of the island Argos, where she ultimately
establishes her cult. In the Illiad, Hera and Poseidon conspire together to thwart the will
of Zeus (Book 8). Like Njörd, Poseidon and Oceanus are powerful sea-gods with a close
relationship to the earth.
38 Peter Wells, Beyond Celts, Germans, and Scythians, (Duckworth Publishers, 2001).
39 My gratitude to Carla O‟Harris for pointing this out.