A bit of help regarding Celtic, Greek, and Norse mythology?

I'm writing an essay in social anthropology about the similarities in gods of these three mythologies, trying to see if they do, in fact, mostly stem from indo-european "Concept gods" as many speculate. Anyone know of any remarkably similar traits of gods from the three?

Lessee, you got your patriarchy and your etymological similarities, just for a start.

The belief of eras and cycles always struck me as similar.

Also: Hax.

I remember hearing about traditions of certain cultures appropriating certain cultures Gods of their own culture.

So, Greeks would call Ra Sand Zues, while the Romans would say the Gauls worshiped Mercury. This seems like the sort of track you might want to sniff.

Odin isn't quite as shag happy as Zues though, so there might be cultural differences? Also beware because a lot of later medieval writers used the roman or greek gods to describe "Pagans" that had probably never heard of them.

Best evidence I can think of for your theory?

The norns/fates, two sets of 3 godlike women (there's a lot of effort put in to avoid actually calling them goddesses) in which the old one is in charge of the past, the middle aged one is in charge of the present, and the young one is in charge of the future. (The Greeks would actually phrase all that very slightly differently but it amounts to the same thing anyway.)

That is clear evidence of influence, since in earlier stories of the Norns there were a lot more than three. As in, one for every living person.

Etymologically, Zeus, Father Jove (=Iouis Pater, Iuppiter) and Tiwaz/Tiu/Tyr (and the generic terms theoi/dei/diui/tivar="gods") seem to be related, believed to be from a root denoting "brightness, daylight, the sky." Odin and Thor are, in a sense, usurpers of the original Germanic sky-god, who was demoted(?) to a war-god, Odin ("stirring, movement, wind") taking over his functions as ruler and father and Thor ("thunder") his function as thunder-god. (Bear in mind that our sources for Germanic mythology are all relatively late. According to Tacitus (1st cemtury), the Germans worshipped only the visible forces of nature, unlike the more sophisticated Greeks and Romans, who worshipped also personifications of abstract qualities, such as Tyche/Fortuna.)

edited 27th Nov '10 1:17:51 AM by Tannhaeuser

For bonus points compare the three groups you mentioned to modern polytheism, like Hindu beliefs in India.