Honestly, a lot of people throw around “Odin” and “Yggdrasil” connections without actually looking into the history of Tarot, playing cards in Europe, or much else.
Playing cards came into Europe through trade with the Islamic world around the 1200s. At that point, the decks were basically what we’d call the Minor Arcana/pips. By the 1500s, trump games like the Minchiate and Tarot show up, mostly produced in Italy and France for wider European audiences. Sure, Vikings were around centuries earlier, but by then most were Christian, and Norse mythology wasn’t mainstream enough to influence card design. (If we ever found a hand-painted Nordic aristocracy deck… maybe then we could talk about runes, but we haven’t.)
As for why the Hanged Man is upside-down: check older decks. Card 12 is often shown holding two bags. The inverted hang was actually a torture/execution method for thieves in the late Middle Ages, and reportedly even used on traitors earlier. Some executions were… extra dramatic, involving dogs and all that.
The trumps were basically allegories or scenes from everyday life, like what you’d see in carnival parades. Remember, executions were public events and kind of “entertainment” for the whole town for a long time.
So yeah — Odin isn’t the only one who’s been hanged from a gallows.
