Ull (also known as Ullr), with his bow and skis, is such an elusive presence in Norse mythology that no conclusive remarks can be made about him. The 13th-century Icelandic author Snorri describes him only briefly in his Prose Edda, and he only appears in two of the Old Norse poems of the Poetic Edda. Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 - c. 1220) recounts one story involving the character Ollerus, probably Ullr from Old Icelandic. While the scarcity of the literary sources suggests that the god had fallen into oblivion before the Northmen - Icelanders in particular - started writing about the heathen myths, place names from Sweden and Norway allow us to speculate that he once played a more prominent role in religious worship. There have been several interpretations of the god’s name, the most widely accepted links it to the Gothic wulþus, ("splendour" or "glory"), derived from Proto-Germanic wulþuz. Related words are found in Old English (wuldor – "fame"), Old Celtic (veleda – "seeress"), and Latin (vultus – "appearance").
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/Ull/.