Christmas gift-bringer the leader of the Wild Hunt at the time of Yule. Santa Claus's reindeer has also been compared to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin in Norse mythology. Jacob Grimm ("Deutsche Mythologie") traces the threatening or scary companions of Saint Nicholas (such as the Krampus of the Austro-Bavarian dialect region) to Christianized versions of house-spirits (kobolds, elves). After Christianization, the benign mid-winter gift-bringer was associated with the 4th-century Christian Saint Nicholas of Myra. This association took place mainly in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, including German-speaking Europe, the Low Countries, the Czech lands, Hungary and Slovenia. The basis
Discover Odin is Cope's spoken account of the alleged misinterpretation of the Norse myths by Roman historians and Christians, with comments on the religious traditions of Nordic cultures and their neolithic forebears. Cope suggests that Odin originated as a weather god and as the shaman Óðr. Later tracks mix musical and spoken material on the subject of the Odin stone of Orkney, the neolithic hill of Silbury and the World Ash Tree, Yggdrasil. The final track is a recording of a poem read by its author Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931). The music ranges from ambient to psychedelic and space rock, especially when accompanied