Know Your Days of the Week: Tiw’s Day

A lot of times, we take certain things for granted. Monday is Monday and Tuesday is Tuesday, and we don’t really know what Tuesday means other than it is the second day of the work week. Mostly because nobody cares; it’s not important to know why Tuesday is called Tuesday; it has nothing to do with how we live our lives; why would you ever want to waste your time learning something so useless?

I’ll tell you why: because today is Tuesday and I’m lacking inspiration for proper blog postage so this is what you’re stuck with. So humor me. Or go find another blog.


Previous Days of the Week:
Woden’s Day
Thor’s Day


Tuesday: Tiw’s Day


Another name from our pasty white cultural ancestors, this day comes to us courtesy of the Old English “Tiwesdaeg.” That’s a lot of added letters but if you pronounce that drunk (which, if you are Old English, you most certainly did) it sounds just like our modern word. Tuesdays to this day are most tolerable when you have a couple of drinks in you. Not saying you should drink at work or anything.

Okay, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Tiw was the ancient Norse / Germanic / Saxon / Old English god of ‘single combat, victory and heroic glory.’ Here’s a picture of him:

Handsome guy, right? Take a look again and see if you can tell what’s missing. That’s right, he’s missing a hand. The moral of this story? The reward for chasing victory and heroic glory is to lose a hand.The Norse had an extensive collection of runes, kind of like hieroglyphics, that are meant to symbolize various words, concepts and of course gods. Here’s the one for Tiw.

Yeah, it's an up arrow. Does it remind you perverts out there of anything else?

Modern man celebrates Tuesdays by generally getting dicked over, much as Tiw had his hands cut off for doing honorable deeds. While not as bad as Monday, Tuesdays still kind of suck. They are definitely no Saturday.

Well Known Tuesdays:

Shrove Tuesday, aka Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, is about the only good Tuesday you can look forward to during the year. The only other famous Tuesday I’m aware of is Black Tuesday (October 29,1929), the sequel to Black Thursday, which was when stock markets crashed, starting the Great Depression.

US elections are generally held on Tuesday as well. Our cultural tradition of being dicked over continues!

Tuesday – NOT Your Lucky Day:

The day that Constantinople was captured by the Turks was on a Tuesday, therefore the Greeks consider Tuesday to be somewhat unlucky day. The Turks, of course, probably see it differently.
In case you were unaware, Constantinople is now called Istanbul. So if you’ve got a date in Constantinople, she’ll be waiting in Istanbul.

NERD.