What would Woden do?

I have always thought that Thor was the angry one, but wait.  Perhaps the question should be what wouldn’t Woden do.  He seems to be rather an interesting fellow:

 The name is connected to the Proto Indo-European stem, *wāt “inspiration”, which is ultimately derived from the Indo-European theme, *awē “to blow”. *Wāt continues in Old Irish fáith, “poet” or “seer”; Old High German wut, “fury”; and Gothic wods, “possessed”.  Old English had the noun wōþ “song, sound”, corresponding to Old Norse óðr, which means both “fury” and “poetry, inspiration”.  It is possible, therefore, that *Wōđanaz was seen as a manifestation of ecstasy, associated with mantic states, with fury, and with poetic inspiration.  An explicit association of Wodan with the state of fury was made by 11th century German chronicler Adam of Bremen, who, when detailing the religious practices of Scandinavian pagans, described Wodan, id est furor, “Wodan, that is, the furious”.*

Perhaps an angry poem would be in order, a furious Odin to Woden, so to speak.  But sad and angry poems abound, so why add to the misery, when Keats has already done it too well in his “Ode to Melancholy”:

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

After that nice downer, let’s move on, and cease to contemplate beauty which must die.

I think sometimes academics get to make stuff up, especially when the historical sources are slim and open to interpretation, and here is a lovely example of how all we really know about Woden was created by flawed humans implying past causation by imposing a narrative constructed out of selective or invented ‘facts’  to promote self-interest, over the course of centuries:

As the Christianisation of England took place, Woden was euhemerised as an important historical king and was believed to be the progenitor of numerous Anglo-Saxon royal houses.  Discussing the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (completed in or before 731 [which Xty has actually read, ed.] writes that the:  “two first commanders are said to have been Hengist and Horsa … They were the sons of Victgilsus, whose father was Vecta, son of Woden”; from whose stock the royal race of many provinces deduce their original.  The Historia Brittonum, composed around 830, presents a similar genealogy and additionally lists Woden as a descendent of Godwulf, who likewise in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda is said to be an ancestor of “Vóden, whom we call Odin”.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, composed during the reign of Alfred the Great, Woden was the father of Wecta, Beldeg, Wihtgils and Wihtlaeg and was therefore an ancestor of the Kings of Wessex, Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia. As in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, a history of early Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain incorporating Woden as an ancestor of Hengist and Horsa is given:  [t]hese men came from three tribes of Germany: from the Old Saxons, from the Angles, and from the Jutes … their commanders were two brothers, Hengest and Horsa, that were the sons of Wihtgils. Wihtgils was Witta’s offspring, Witta Wecta’s offspring, Wecta Woden’s offspring. From that Woden originated all our royal family ….
Descent from Woden appears to have been an important concept in Early Medieval England. According to N. J. Higham, claiming Woden as an ancestor had by the 8th century become an essential way to establish royal authority. Richard North (1997) similarly believes that “no king by the late seventh century could do without the status that descent from Woden entailed.”

So what would Woden do?
I don’t have a clue.
Do you?

I obviously prefer Seuss to Keats, but I do unfortunately get Keat’s point too.

So enjoy a furious, rhyme filled day, and create a narrative to fill the void.

*both quotations are from Wikipedia, which really is getting to be very useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wōden