u/spinosaurs70

So obviously we all know the story where Odin hung himself from a tree (specifically the world tree) and thus torturing himself gained tons of wisdom and magical knowledge.

The story seems oddly related to Christian notions of sacrifice less extreme than Baldur dying and returning in the world to come or that strange case of basically just Adam and Eve but still there.

One thing I thought is this might not be a Christianization of a pagan myth but possibly a pagan interpretation of Christianity. Norse Pagans heard about a myth involving sacrifice and that got totally mangled instead of thinking that Jesus was always god they instead thought Jesus acquired magical power through suffering then applied that to Odin.

If this was the case it seems that Christian stories became pagan as much as the inverse when we look at our sources making them even more confusing.