New in Juneau: Alaska senators bow heads for prayer for ‘magic and truth’ to Norse god Odin
By Suzanne Downing -May 17, 2022
The Alaska Senate usually starts out its floor sessions with a prayer or sometimes a thought for the day from a non-religious member. On Tuesday, the prayer was offered by one of the Senate pages, Ollie Zaldivar of Anchorage, who beseeched wisdom from a Norse god named Odin.
He offered the prayer that asked that he know magic and know truth. He referred to the god as “Allfather.”
Described as a wise, one-eyed old man, writes the description in Wikipedia, “Odin has by far the most varied characteristics of any of the gods and is not only the deity to call upon when war was being prepared but is also the god of poetry, of the dead, of runes, and of magic.” …
As a legislative floor staff, Zaldivar is one of several who work for the entire Senate.
Oddly related, Sen. Bert Stedman has a wooden bust of Odin that sits in the Senate Finance Committee on a shelf overlooking the table that the committee members gather around to decide on legislative matters coming before them.
A wooden bust of Odin, Norse god of war and magic and other things, sits in Senate Finance.