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 “We have to be content with an imperfect and patchy understanding of the old religion. But this does not entitle us to assume that the religion itself was correspondingly primitive or incomplete. We must bear in mind that no extensive direct information about the pagan religion was recorded until fully two centuries after the conversion to Christianity, and the generations which had come and gone meanwhile were, or were supposed to be, hostile to these pagan heresies.” 

 Historically, Odin is the first recognizable Germanic god called by a Germanic name, which we can trace through to the late heathen era. The earliest record of Odin‟s name occurs in a runic inscription on a silver-gilt fibula discovered near Ausberg, Baveria in 1843 known as the Nordendorf Fibula I. Dated to the mid 6th century, it reads “Loga.ore Wodan Wigi-.onar.” While the meaning of the entire inscription is disputed, the name Wodan in the inscription “poses no problem.”1 

 For a moral code to remain in effect in any religion, there must be consequences for not following that code. Since Heathenism has a highly developed moral code, it stands to reason that it also spoke of the consequences of leading a life in accordance with or in opposition to its own moral standards, yet according to popular belief there is no mechanism for that to happen — primarily because Snorri‟s Edda doesn‟t mention a court to judge the dead or any reward for leading a pious heathen life; warriors go to Valhalla and everyone else goes to Hel, a dreary, dismal place. Do the sources of Heathen belief confirm this view?