As a small kid I asked my parents where the names of the week came from, and they didn't know.
I subsequently learned Spanish and other Romance languages used the name of Roman gods.
But it wasn't until later Iearned our English names were Viking. The king of the gods Odin got Wodinsday in later changed only in German to Mittwoch (midweek).
Odin's son Tyrs or Tiwaz the god of the sky and sometimes battle gets the prior day Tiwazday. Of course Thor the arrogant thunder god is Thorsday, the day following Wodinsday. The week starts with the Sun's day then the Moon's day. Freya, Norse god of love, fertility, battle, and death was commemorated with Freya's day or Friday.
Saturday belonged to the trickster and agriculture god Loki origninllynamed Laugerdad and later by his god name of the ambush incarnation Sataere, or Sataere'sday. Many mistakenly believe Vikings has adopted Saturn, the Roman god of the underworld, as the name for Saturday reveling, but it was Loki.
Vikings were primarily merchants with a pragmatic mindset. To obtain better trades they wore crosses when negotiating with Christians and replaced that with their Thor's Hammer when they left that settlement. Virtually all "Christian" vikings followed their Viking rituals from 700 forward.
My 25th greatgrandfather Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson King of Denmark & Sweden 935 to 985 "became a baptised chrisitian as part of a peace treaty with the Roman Frankish king Otto who also defeated the Magyars of Hungary in 955 and became the inherited Duke of Saxony.
Bluetooth actually committed the sacrilege of digging the body of his father "The Old - den gamle" Eriksson - King of Sweden out of his viking warship burial mound and had it reburied inside s newly built church and immediately faced major problems with his half-brother Styrbjörn Starke
Styrbjörn Starke "the Strong" Olafson. It became very complicated, but through it all, claiming to be a christian was good for business.
But English and Norse speakers all retained their Norse god names for days of the week.
We've run out of other people's Social Security taxes needed to subsidize our low income tax rates.
