Æsir

The Æsir are the gods of the principal pantheon in Old Norse religion and Norse mythology. The second Norse pantheon is the Vanir; these two pantheons waged war against each other, resulting in a unified pantheon. Æsir is the plural of áss, ǫ́ss "god". In genitival compounds, it takes the form ása-, e.g. in Ása-Þórr ("Thor of the Æsir"), besides ás- found in ás-brú "gods' bridge" (the rainbow), ás-garðr, ás-kunnigr "gods' kin", ás-liðar "gods' leader", ás-mogin "gods' might" (especially of Thor), ás-móðr "divine wrath" etc. Landâs "national god" (patrium numen) is a title of Thor, as is allmáttki ás "almighty god", while it is Odin who is "the" ás. There is also Old East Norse dialectal *ās-ækia (OWN: *áss-ekja), i.e. "god ride" (Thor riding in his wagon), resulting in the modern Swedish word for atmospheric thunder – åska (the form åsekia attested as late as the 17th c.). The feminine form is ásynja (plural ásynjur). The feminine suffix -ynja (Proto-Norse: -unjō) is known from a few other nouns denoting female animals, such as apynja "female monkey", vargynja "she-wolf". A cognate word for "goddess" is not attested outside Old Norse, and a corresponding West Germanic word would have been separately derived with the feminine suffixes -inī or -injō. Áss is attested in other Germanic languages, such as Old English ōs (plural ēse), denoting a deity in Anglo-Saxon paganism, preserved only as a prefix Ōs- in personal names (e.g. Osborne, Oswald) and some place-names, and as the genitive plural ēsa (ēsa gescot and ylfa gescot, "the shots of anses and of elves", i.e. "elfshot", jaculum divorum et geniorum). In Old High German, Old Dutch and Old Saxon, the word is only attested in personal and place names, e.g. Ansebert, Anselm, Ansfrid, Vihans. The Old High German is reconstructed as *ans, plural *ensî. Gothic has ans- as reported by Jordanes, who wrote in the 6th century CE, presumably a Latinized form of actual plural *anseis), as a name for euhemerized semi-divine early Gothic rulers. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic form is ansuz (plural ansiwiz).