The river is named after a legendary giant, the wild, rampaging, Bohemian, Prince Bodo, who, according to the Rosstrappe legend, changed into a marauding dog that guarded the crown of Princess Brunhilde in the Kronensumpf ("crown marsh") in the present-day Bode Gorge (German: Bodetal).

According to tradition, there was once a giant called Bodo who came from Thuringia, in modern-day central Germany, to pursue Brunhilde, the king's beautiful daughter, whom he wanted to marry against her will.

As her horse leapt the gorge, however, the princess lost her golden crown, which was now guarded by the dog Bodo in the valley of the river.

The Bode is heavily divided in its source region on the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz, but its two most important source streams are the: The two rivers, which actually have a temperature difference of 2 °C, merge not far from the Königsburg Ruins immediately before flowing into the Königshütte Dam (a feeder dam or Überleitungssperre).

The river then crosses the Harz Foreland in a curving and, in places, diked and canalised, course until it discharges into the Saale at Nienburg.

In the Early Middle Ages the Bode formed the border between the provinces of the Harzgau in the west and the Schwabengau in the east.

The two most important Bode crossings at that time were the settlements of Ditfurt und Gröningen, mentioned frequently in the Fuldau annals.

Heinrich Heine depicts the romantic Bode valley in his 1826 travelogue Die Harzreise: That dusky beauty, the Bode, did not receive me very graciously, and when I first caught sight of her in the smithy-like darkness of the Rübeland, she seemed even sullen and shrouded herself in a silver-grey veil of rain: but in a rush of love she threw it off when I reached the heights of the Roßtrappe, her face lit up opposite me in sunny splendour, from every aspect breathed a colossal tenderness, and from the conquered breast of rock it issued forth like sighs of passion and languorous sounds of wistfulness.The 'most devastating' floods from the Bode occurred in the years 1539, 1667, 1730, 1740, 1772 and especially at Christmas in 1925.