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
Odin religious practices associated with the god. This multitude of names makes Odin the god with the most names known among the Germanic peoples. The modern English weekday name "Wednesday" derives from Old English "wōdnesdæg". Cognate terms are found in other Germanic languages, such as Middle Low German "wōdensdach" (Dutch "woensdag"), and Old Norse "Óðinsdagr" (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish "Onsdag"). All of these terms derive from Proto-Germanic *"Wodensdag", itself a Germanic interpretation of Latin "Dies Mercurii" ("Day of Mercury"). In Old High German, the name derived from Odin's was replaced by a translation of Church Latin "media hebdomas" ('middle of the