The Gods in Your Week

Every day, you say the name of a god nobody worships anymore. Saturday is Saturn's. Sunday belongs to the Sun, Monday to the Moon. But Tuesday through Friday smuggle in a different, northern pantheon — the Norse gods, swapped in long ago for their Roman equivalents. Tuesday is Tiw's day, a god of war. Wednesday is Woden's — Odin's. Thursday is Thor's; say it slowly and you can almost hear the hammer. Friday is Frigg's.

So your week is a quiet roll-call of two dead religions, Roman and Norse, fused together and worn smooth by use. You invoke Odin every Wednesday and Thor every Thursday, and you have never once meant a word of it.

The belief vanished centuries ago. The names never did — they simply went underground, into the most ordinary thing you own: the calendar on your wall.

And if these gods are still hiding in your week — where did they come from in the first place?