Frija

Presented at Frith Forge 2017

(Ill. 1: FRIJA)

Frija, Goddess of the continental Germanic tribes

Continental Heathens constantly lament the lack of in depth sources with which to validate their cult and theology. While it is true that we do not have such a rich lore as our Northern friends, if we look closer, we can find a substantial amount of information both from history, literature and linguistics as well as archaeology - enough to build on without having to ‘loan’ from Norse lore, which is, at closer look, not very sufficient when it comes to certain deities.

Let’s start our look at the Goddess Frija with the sources of which we can be sure before we can enter the realm of deduction, and now and then we will maybe have to resort to conjecture or an educated guess. All in all, I hope to outline for you what Frija might have meant to those continental tribes that chose to worship her.

The weekday Friday

This is the oldest but most ubiquitous source: the name of the weekday Friday. Roman weekday names were taken over into west Germanic language, in the 3rd. to 4th century CE, at least that is the opinio communis.

The dies Veneris, day of Venus, became frîatac, our Friday.¹ The basis for this name is the name Frija, and not Freyja. In Scandinavia, the Romanized-turned-into-Germanic weekday names arrived later, and the Southern Germanic name was used: frîatac became Old Norse frîadagr. Interestingly enough, this is not a form which we would expect for the name, for the Goddess which is presented in ON lore, Frigg, because that form would have been *friggjardagr. Rudolf Simek deduces that the Goddess was, at this time, the middle of the 1st century CE, more important and known on the continent than in the North.² That the interpretatio Romana equals Venus with Frija and not with, for example, Juno, tells us something about the perception of Frija throughout the Germania, it shows that Venus must have mirrored the continental Frija adequately, or else people would have chosen a different deity or name, like it happened with Saturday, which is named Sonnabend, the day before Sunday, or Samstag in German, which can be traced back to the word Sabbath.³

I suppose that you are all familiar with the competences and functions of Venus, and it follows that the competence of the continental Frija includes those which we expect from the Norse Freyja.

The scholar Erika Timm deduces that there cannot have existed a deity with the name of *Frouwja/Freyja in the neighbouring lands of the Roman Empire, or else this deity would have been preferred as a supplement for Venus. Which further means that Frija’s competences were not as restricted as those of the Norse Frigg. ⁴

An interesting question though is being raised the Anglicist Philipp Shaw: he argues that the weekday names have made their way into Germanic languages rather later, and he uses linguistic and archaeological arguments to show that the name of the weekdays have not been created by heathens, but later by Anglo-Saxon Christian scholars, and that the weekday names are rather a document of interpretatio Germanica by liberal scholars, who were so deeply rooted in their christian belief that they didn’t mind using the names of heathen deities, and that the attempts to substitute heathen names with christian alternatives in different parts of the Germanic speaking world mirrors the different levels of acceptance of the heathen past in the respective region. ⁵

If Shaw is right, it would make the name Friday a much younger source than hitherto acknowledged, it would also mean that the reason for choosing the names was possibly influenced by younger ideas about the deities concerned.

The name

Now what does the name Frija mean, and where does it come from? Frija (and also Frigg) can be traced back to IE roots *prāi- and *prī-, which means amongst others: ‘to love‘, ‘to like‘, ‘glad‘ but also ‘own‘. So we can translate Frija into ‘Beloved‘, but also into ‘Wife‘ or ‘our own‘. ⁶

This is possibly the reason that Simek calls her a ‘Goddess of Women’, which is still question worthy because the gender of a deity does not mean that their venerators are of the same gender or that their divine powers are only relatable to persons of the same gender. Also, we have no proof that only women have been worshippers of Frija.

What is more interesting is the idea that we are probably dealing with a noa name, meaning a name which was chosen out of awe or fear of the deity, or maybe even an umbrella name. We will come back to that question later.

The origin of the Langobards

We can also find the Goddess in two early medieval sources which are about the mythological origin of the Langobards. The Langobards were a tribe which settled at the Elbe around the 1st century CE and migrated to Lower Austria and Hungary before they merged with the Frankish Empire.

The first source is from an anonymous author and is called Origo Gentis Langobardorum, it was written down in the 7th century CE, the story had been traded orally before. The Origo, however is the source for the Historia Langobardorum by Paul the Deacon, who wrote it at the end of the 8th century CE. ⁷

The short version is as follows:

The tribe of the of the Winnili were ruled by a woman named Gambara who had two sons, Ybor and Agio. The Vandals, ruled by Ambri and Assi, came to the Winnili with their army and demanded that they pay them tribute or prepare for war. Ybor, Agio, and their mother Gambara rejected their demands for tribute. Ambra and Assi then asked the God Godan for victory over the Winnili, to which Godan responded (in the longer version in the Origo): "Whom I shall first see when at sunrise, to them will I give the victory."

Meanwhile, Ybor and Agio called upon Frea, Godan's wife. Frea counseled them that "at sunrise the Winnili should come, and that their women, with their hair let down around the face in the likeness of a beard should also come with their husbands". At sunrise, Frea turned Godan's bed around to face east and woke him. Godan saw the Winnili, including their whiskered women, and asked "who are those Long-beards?" Frea responded to Godan, "As you have given them a name, give them also the victory". Godan did so, "so that they should defend themselves according to his counsel and obtain the victory". Thenceforth the Winnili were known as the Langobards.

Paul the Deacon retold the story with a few variations, and while a very close inspection of the sources is not really relevant concerning our Goddess, we notice a similarity with the Grímnismál regarding a concurrence of sorts between Frea/Frigg and Godan/Odin. ⁸

In the Historia, the name Frea is recorded, and it is also a hint that Frea has been venerated by the Winnili as a patron Goddess (note that the name of the leader of the tribe is Gambara or Gandbara, meaning staff carrier). Also, we notice that henceforth the Langobards were Wodan-worshippers⁹ which might be a hint to the fact that the tribes didn’t necessarily venerate all the deities but had certain ones as patron deities.

But we must also take note of the fact that there is a third version of the tale, in which Frea is not mentioned at all, namely the Chronicle of Fredegar, written in the 7^th century. Paul the Deacon differs in quite a few details from the story and is relying heavily on the Origo Gentis Langobardorum.

But if we, like the scholar Philipp Shaw, assume that Fredegar’s Chronicle is all in all more logical and also possibly older as well as more authentic, then the insertion of the concurrence between Frea and Godan is to be seen as a mythological reinforcement and does not mirror an affiliation to Frea by the Winnili. ¹⁰

There is also the possibility that the author of the Origo took the motif of the cunning wife of the High God from Homer’s Iliad, where Hera does something similar with Zeus. This could also well have been the case with the Grímnismál. ¹¹

However, that would only make sense if at the time of writing the tale down, Frea was still remembered as the wife of Godan, and there had been a connection of the Winnili with Frea in the first place. ¹²

The Langobards are being named by Tacitus in his ‘Germania’ as part of the tribal group of the Suebi who later merged with the Alemanni, which is interesting for us, because seven small tribes of the Suebi were worshippers of the Goddess Nerthus, who we will meet later. ¹³

(Ill.2: MERSEBURGER ZAUBERSPRÜCHE)

The Second Merseburg Charm

The last source which directly quotes Frija is the Second Merseburg Charm.

In the year 1841 the historian Georg Waitz detected a manuscript in the library of the Domstift in Merseburg which contains two charms in Old High German. They are supposed to originate from the first half of the 8th century, the time of Bonifatius‘ mission – Bonifatius died 754. The charms were written down in the cloister of Fulda around 960 CE.¹⁴

Let me give you an English translation:

Phol and Wodan were riding to the woods,

and the foot of Balder's foal was sprained

So Sinthgunt, Sunna's sister, conjured it.

and Frija, Volla's sister, conjured it.

and Wodan conjured it, as well he could:

Like bone-sprain, so blood-sprain,

so joint-sprain:

Bone to bone, blood to blood,

joints to joints, so may they be mended. ¹⁵

What we are dealing with here is a typical charm structure: first a sort of ‘prelude‘, the historiola, then the charm itself, the incantatio. We might be wondering why we find a heathen charm in a Latin/christian context or that they obviously have been written down by monks, but the explanation is rather easy: The historiola, the story of the horse and the efforts to cure it were good enough to be an introduction into the purpose of the charm, but were not considered dangerous to the converted anymore. After christianization, people still believed in and used charms, and in the charms which were passed down, used the acting figures quite freely regarding to christian/biblical or heathen origin.

The importance of the Second Merseburg Charm, for us, lies in the recording of the different names of the deities: we can draw a parallel between Frija and Volla and the Norse Frigg and her handmaid Fulla and thus document a continuity. But concerning our Goddess, this is the only information of relevance we can get out of the charm for now. A connection between the historiola and a Bracteate discovery with a fallen horse cannot be drawn with what we know at the moment, also, the controversy about the question if the myth of Balder’s death was known on the continent is not yet decided.¹⁶

These are the sources which document Frija with that name, and without doubt. It seems she was perceived as a Goddess of some importance. How is it possible that we know so little about her?

But we have a source from the end of the 1st century CE which reports the veneration of a Goddess, which might be interesting in our context, and we can find it in Chapter 40 of the book ‘De origine et situ Germanorum liber‘ by P. Cornelius Tacitus.

Nerthus

Tacitus tells us that seven neighbouring tribes, which all belonged to the tribal group of the Suebi and settled east of the Elbe, met regularly and, at a time which was determined phenological, worshipped a Goddess who was probably named Nerthus. There are several manuscripts of the Germania, the original is lost, and through false copying, there are several names which could be the ‚real‘ name. Scholars assume Nerthus is probably it, but the question remains unanswered. Jacob Grimm first proposed that Nerthus developed from Germanic *nerþuz and therefore the Goddess was closely related to or identical with the Norse God Njǫrðr, but from all names given he chose Nerthus because of the linguistic closeness to Njǫrðr, the classic circular argument. Most modern scholars, but not all, reject this theory. ¹⁷

The meaning of the name Nerthus is clear: it is an abstractum and means ‘life force‘, so Nerthus would be the ‘One who has vigor‘.¹⁸ This is the basis for assuming that Nerthus is a fertility Goddess.

Tacitus explains to his readers: “...Nerthum, id est Terram matrem colunt...“ – they worship Nerthus, she is the Terra mater. Terra mater can be translated literally as: Mother Earth, and many translators do so, but if we compare the rites which Tacitus described with those for other fertility deities, we realize that the Nerthus cult is not agricultural, dedicated to the earth or fertility of the earth. ¹⁹ The Goddess which personified the fertile earth in Roman religion was Tellus, who also took back the dead into her womb, a chthonic Goddess. If Nerthus was a similar Goddess, why did Tacitus not use the name Tellus through interpretatio romana? Because the Nerthus cult was different from Roman cult, and this might be the reason why Tacitus mentioned it in the first place. It was much closer to the cult of Cybele, who was called Magna mater in Rome. Cybele also had a wagon procession, a bathing ritual under the auspices of a priest, her festival was in March.

Special to the Nerthus cult was that 1. the festival began and ended at the will of the Goddess, 2. there was a holy grove, 3. a period of Gottesfrieden/frith, and 4. a human sacrifice at the end. ²⁰

It seems that the title mater was used to name non-Roman Goddesses, for example with the matres and matrones in the Germania inferior. Goddesses which were revered locally or belonged to a certain tribe or region. So a proper translation for the title of Terra mater would be ‘non-Roman Goddess of the land‘.²¹

So maybe Tacitus connoted Nerthus not so much with Tellus, but much more with Cybele, whose power is not appropriately described with a ‘vegetation and fertility cult‘, as we all know.

Which could also mean that the span of function of a Terra mater would be much more extensive than that of a ‚mere‘ fertility Goddess, even if her influence is only regional. Without suggesting that the Nerthus cult was henotheistic, we can assume that the participating tribes did not have a deity with similar competences - Nerthus seems to have been responsible for the wellbeing of her tribes on many levels. ²²

Now how does Tacitus describe her cult: the Goddess is attentive to her tribes and processes among them. She is being venerated in a grove on an island in the sea, there is a veiled wagon, on which the Goddess resides unseen. No one may touch the wagon, and when the procession, drawn by cows, is going around, there is peace everywhere, weapons are forbidden, people cheer on the way until the priest leads the waggon back and the Goddess, the veil and the waggon are being washed in a lake by slaves, after which the slaves are drowned because no one is allowed to see the Goddess and live. Among the cheerfulness and the celebrations, this part of the ritual induces fear and awe towards the Goddess.

There is no description of a specific agricultural rite, also not something which alludes to a holy marriage, a theory which ultimately is based on the idea that Nerthus and Njǫrðr were a divine couple and worshipped together, scholars with this theory suggest that Tacitus forgot to mention it or to misunderstand the situation. ²³

So, apart from speculative theories, what do we learn about Nerthus?

1. the Goddess usually resides at an unknown place:

2. At certain times, she visits her tribes.

3. She is veiled and must not be looked at.

4. She has a wagon and processes in it.

5. She has a special relationship with water.

6. She is ambivalent: on one hand, she brings blessings, peace, and happy days, on the other hand, she is feared and receives human sacrifice.

The fact that different tribes met to worship weaponless and under the Goddess‘ peace also underlines the function of her cult as meaningful and important for this community.

Apart from Nerthus, Tacitus reports two more Goddesses in the Germania magna (the part of the Germania which was not occupied by Romans), namely the ‚Isis of the Suebi‘ , and in the Annales, Tamfana, tribal Goddess of the Marsi. And while four of the Nerthus tribes, the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Suardones and the Nuatones are only mentioned from Tacitus and we have no further information about them, scholars assume that the Eudoses can be identified with the people which settled on Jutland, the Juten, which mostly migrated to the Caucasus later.

Large parts of the Anglii and the Varini however migrated to a region which we now call Thuringia. There, around 800 CE, the „Lex Angliorum et Werinorum hoc est Thuringorum“ was written down, the tribal law of the Thuringians. Did they take the veneration for their Terra mater with them?

(Ill. 3: FRAU HOLLE AT FRAU-HOLLE-TEICH)

Frau Holle

And indeed, Thuringia is a center of folklore when it comes to a mythical figure, whose divine status has been questioned for a quite some time, but who has been rehabilitated magnificently by the German scholar Erika Timm: I am, of course, talking about Frau Holle.

In the lore and tradition concerning Frau Holle (and related figures) we can find interesting analogies to the Nerthus cult: a procession with a wagon, visitation with humans at a certain time, being attentive to human affairs, the veiling. ²⁴ Erika Timm states that in the broad Thuringian-Low Saxony region, there are hints and arguments that Holle dates back until the times of the empire of the Thuringians (before 531) and Herke (a name variant of Holle) dates back into the times of the Saxon forays (6th-10th century). ²⁵

Timm shows with the help of geography, linguistics, and a vast body of references and sources that Frau Holle as well as her sister figures Frau Percht, Frau Herke/Harke, Frau Gode/Wode, Frick and others can be traced back to a divine figure who we have already met and whose name is Frija. The distribution of the many different names can easily be limited regionally: Frau Perchta or Berchta in the Bavarian and Alemannic language area, in central Germany she was known as Frau Holle, in the area of the Middle and Low Frankish dialects as well as in the Rhineland we have Frau Holle as well as Frau Herke, and in the Low German and Netherlandic areas we find Frija or Frick, also Frau Herke/Wode/Gode.

The last three names can be well explained by a process which was called ‘Wodanization‘ by Timm, and to which we will come back later.²⁶ Behind all these different names, according to Timm, stands Frija.

Through Timm’s meticulous research, we have evidence for the earliest verifiable awareness of the Goddess. Early written documents for Frau Holle go back until the 13th century, for Frau Percht probably until the 11th century. Other, non-written evidence indicate their provenance from heathen times.

Like archaeological finds which suggest that at the Meißner, a mountain near Kassel which is supposed to be Frau Holle’s residence, a numen was worshipped in the first centuries CE. So Timm concludes that Holle and her sister figures are heathen figures, and we can find the most authentic picture in the southern border of the German North, where the Goddess in places still wears her ‚genuine‘ name as we find it in the Second Merseburg charm and the tale of the Langobardic origin. In Germany’s true north, Frija has been almost wholly shadowed by her husband and even lost her own name (Frau Wode/Gode/Herke), and who also took over a few of her functions. However in areas where the Goddess wears the name Frick, she also shows much more sensuality. ²⁷

Timm argues that the spatial dispersion of the various names is analog to the phenomena we find in the Zweite Lautverschiebung, a sound shift which began at the start of the 7th century, which consequently means that this dispersion must have already existed during that time.²⁸

Another issue which was answered very decidedly by Timm was the question of Holle’s divine status. Scholars who rejected Jacob Grimm’s perception of Holle as a divine figure argued that Holle and the other figures were only part of the ‘Lower Mythology‘ and not deities.²⁹ This can be denied as follows:

1. Frau Holle and her sisters are unique. There are no two ‚Frau Holles‘ at the same time at two places, but it is always the same figure, who is ubiquitous.

2. She has cosmic influence and competence, she regulates the weather and moves through the air.

3. The appellation ‘Frau‘ was, at that time, a honorary title, like ‘Lady‘.

4. Frau Holle, Percht, Herke and Gode have a wagon. Sacrifices are devoted to them, mostly in the form of food, but the most important thing is not so much what was offered, but what the people who offered hoped to get by offering: health, fertility for humans, cattle and the land, wealth, luck and well being.

5. We are dealing with ambivalent figures, who sometimes act in a drastic way. They are also bringers of children, takers of children and keepers of children’s souls.

6. Holle and her sisters have company including not only the souls of departed children, but also a crowd of women, and at times The Wild Hunt. ³⁰

7. The visitations of the Goddesses is concentrated on a certain time of the year, the Zwölften, which are the Twelve Nights. This is an immensely important sacral time , also because of the connection between our Goddesses and spinning. Holle, Percht and the others controlled the Spinnstube respectively the taboo of not spinning during that time. They controlled diligence and industriousness and punished noncompliance severely.

(Ill.4: FÜRSTENBERG BRACTEATES IK 311 und IK 350)

Spinning and the accessories needed for spinning are so much part of the lore, that scholars are of the opinion that the so called Fürstenberg bracteates, which depict a divine spinning figure, or a figure with spinning and weaving accessories, are clearly Frija. ³¹

Bracteates are coins or medallions which are only pressed on one side, very often from noble metals. Those bracteates from the 5th and 6th century which are of interest to us in this context depict deities, stylized animal depictions, also runes. The Fürstenberg bracteates belong to the group of B7 bracteates and are dated from the 5th century, except one copy which was found in Gudme and probably imported, there were all found on the continent.

All show an identical female figure with a headdress and equipment. Crucial for the interpretation of the depicted figure is the bracteate from Oberweschen (IK 311), on which the Goddess holds a spindle in her right hand. The scholar Michael Enright interprets the equipment on the other bracteates (for example IK 350) as a swift and a weaver’s beam. ³²

As most of you probably know, spindle and weaver’s beam are not only mundane tools, but also signs of power and cultic symbols, because in IE societies, weaving and spinning was seen as being intensely connected with creating and allotting fate as well as prophecy and magic. ³³ This is underlined by the fact that two of the bracteates have been found at cult sites. The Oberweschen bracteate was found under the chin of an elderly women, with the bones of sacrificed horses nearby, also Gudme is viewed as a place of cultic importance. ³⁴

It is assumed that the bracteates have been worn by women who were seeresses, and by that expressed a feeling of connection to the Goddess. ³⁵  

(Ill.5: ‚GERMANIC DIANA‘ OF OBERDORLA)

The Diana of Oberdorla

Let us follow another intriguing piece of evidence to a place some of you will soon visit – the Opfermoor Oberdorla, a prehistoric cultic place at a lakeside in Thuringia. Here, from the Hallstatt period on (that would be 6th century BCE) until the early Middle Ages and randomly until the 10th and 11th century CE, cultic action and sacrifice has taken place, so it’s a place with an extended continuity. Whorls and weaving tablets are among the finds and document a connection to a ‘divine weaver or spinner‘, beginning in the Hallstatt era. Comparing these with finds near the Kyffhäuser (which is a mountain group 70 km away), scholars conclude that a spinning Goddess of chthonic character has been worshipped already as early as the Urnfield period (1300 – 800 BCE), and that this Goddess of an agrarian fertility cult was given offerings of whorls, jewellery, cereals, animals, and humans. ³⁶

The archaeologist Günter Behm-Blahncke confirms that all Goddesses which are connected with spinning and weaving belong to the chthonic realm and influence people’s fate, give life and therefore not only were seen as kind of birth helpers, but who also end life. ³⁷

In Oberdorla, a Goddess was venerated in the 3rd century CE, who has been called ‘Germanic Diana‘ by scholars, a Goddess of the hunt, mistress of animals. But she also seems to have required attributes like wooden whorls and a decorated staff. The grave of a fifteen year old girl belonged to her cultic site too, which underlines the importance of the Goddess.

Why the appellation ‘Diana‘? Because the Roman Diana, just like the Greek Artemis, was a hunting Goddess, a mistress of the animals, but which was also a fertility deity in an existential way. Both Diana’s as well as Artemis‘ cult sites were preferably at lakesides or watery lowlands, both deities were attentive to women and birth. ³⁸

Not only modern researchers and scholars seem to have found the Goddess Diana a suitable parallel for a Germanic Goddess. As shows the Passio minor, the oldest passion of Kilian which is one of the two versions of the life of the missionary St. Kilian. The Passio minor was written before the year 800 CE, but probably more around 788. It’s also possible that the date is nearer to 750 CE. ³⁹ Kilian was murdered by heathens ca. 689 CE in Würzburg, so his biography mirrors a lot of the tensions and disruptions between heathenry and christianity.

We don’t know exactly how Kilian came to his death, but this is not as important as the sentence which Kilian’s biographer puts in the mouth of a heathen protagonist:

“volumus servire magnae Dianae, sicut et anteriores nostri fecerunt patres, et prosperati sunt in eo usque in praesens.“ ⁴⁰

Which translates to: “We want to serve the great Goddess Diana, just like our forebears did and fared well with it until today”.

Now we can assume that an educated christian who wrote a biography of a missionary between 750 and 800, can well remember the local name of a deity which has been worshipped until a few decades ago in that area. Why did he call this Goddess ‘magna Diana‘ and not by her Germanic name? It cannot have been because the Roman Diana was meant, because there are no traces of veneration of the Roman Diana in the Germania magna. It is an appellation which was chosen because the might and power of the local Goddess equalled that of the Roman Diana, it was the most suitable comparison (and it showed education).

It is lamentable that we do not know her name. But this source is a proof that the local tribes did not only worship male deities like Donar or Tiu with dedication, but also a Goddess, and that this was the old way of their fathers, the old custom, Alte Sitte.

A multitude of local Goddesses

So now we have seen quite clearly how Goddesses, or maybe one multipotent Goddess of Heil, blessings, fate, birth and death was revered locally by different or related tribes in the part of the Germania which was not occupied by Rome. Let us have a look at the other part as well. In the Germania superior we find that local, meaning non-Roman deity names are around 14% percent of all finds, and they are all Celtic. But things are looking different in the Germania inferior where we have not only more female names than those of male deities, but also a lot more Germanic or Celto-Germanic names, the latter being due the great cultural influence of Celtic tribes, up to the point of merging. ⁴¹

The archaeologist Bernardus Stolte enumerates the following: Aveha and Hellivesa (who together are called Ahuecannae), Haeva, Hariasa, Baduhenna, Harimella, Vihansa, Vagdavercustis, Viradectis, Apadeva, Argenta, Exomna, Hurstrga, Rura, Sibulca, Isebucaega, Sandraudiga, and the Alaisigae (Baudihillia, Friagabis, Beda, Fimmilena), Ricagambeda and Sunucsal.⁴²

(Ill.6: VOTIVE STONE FOR VAGDAVERCUSTIS)

4/5 of the names are only documented once, and the last fifth is documented in small areas and not found widespread, like for example Nehalennia, Vagdavercustis and Sunucsal, which is identified as tribe Goddess of the Sunuci by name as well as by the spatial dispersion of finds relating to her.

In general, we can state that all these Goddesses have one thing in common: their small-scale sphere of influence, which probably means that they each were the Terra mater and tribe Goddess, and thus in charge of the welfare of their respective tribes, like we have seen it with Nerthus, for example.⁴³

Those Goddess names that can be connected with a martial aspect like for example Hariasa, Harimella or Vagdavercustis, are being explained with the martial character of their respective tribes. ⁴⁴ With other Goddesses, we cannot find hints about function, their names depict the connection with a tribe or a certain region, a vast forest or a river like f.e. Rura or they are general attributive names like ‚the glorious‘ for Hludana, so that we can actually assume that most of them were multi-functional and that their sphere of competence was large. Now if we add what we know about the veneration of divine mothers and ancestors, which is documented in form of the many Matronae and Matres votive stones on some cultic hot spots in the Germania inferior, we realize that religious life in the Germania between the 1st and the 5th century CE was based to a considerable extent on female deities. ⁴⁵

Erika Timm argues that this multitude of local Goddesses is paralleled in the multitude of small Germanic tribes. Maybe not every tribe, but quite a few of them probably worshipped a hail bringing Goddess who was marked by name as their own and who probably embodied the nurturing land, or significant parts of the land or was simply the embodiment of fertility, wealth or a victory bringer in war.

The genesis of these multitudinous names is being explained by Timm as follows:

“The most plausible theory is that they [the names] are based on regionalization and the gaining of independence of one or two ‘Great Goddesses‘“⁴⁶

After the migration era, many small tribes merged into few very large ones. What became of their very own Goddesses? The tribes would have continued to worship them, but not under their small-tribe-specific names, but under fewer names, or maybe even just one which expressed what this Goddess had in common for all of them. This Goddess now gained spatial greatness on top of her greatness of function, even if her name became regionalized with time again, and was tabooed with the advent of christianity. And thus we find the dispersion of names already discussed, like Frau Perchta, Frau Holle, Frau Wode/Gode, or Frick, and Frija behind all of them.⁴⁷

Now if we take a step back and look at the situation on the continent, then we realize that where in Old Norse lore Frigg and Freyja shared the part of the feminine divine between them, ⁴⁸ on the continent, maybe only one Goddess was worshipped under many local names, by many different tribes and possibly also by their predecessors, by some like the Nerthus tribes and former Thuringians more, by others, who had other main deities, to a much lesser extent.

This Goddess is a chthonic tribal Goddess who brings blessings and hail, but also expects sacrifices and punishes taboo violations severely. Sometimes she is experienced as the wife of the sky God, but she is genuinely independent and commands an inherent amount of power. She is probably childless, but she has maternal functions and watches over the souls of dead and not yet living children, and she brings fertility to humans and nature. Her cultic high time is mid-wintertime, when she visits people, receives her offerings, punishes laziness and rewards industriousness. Spindle and distaff are her insignia, and they stand for her knowledge of fate and its allotment, and that makes her are truly great and awe-inspiring deity.

‘Wodanization‘

But why does Frija take on the name of Wodan as Frau Gode, Frau Wode or Frau Herke in the German North? Why is Frigg in Norse lore mostly depicted as Odin’s wife, as his queen and as a mother, and demonstrates so little independent power that is actually assigned to her in the sources?⁴⁹ It is probably the result of a process which is called ‘Wodanization‘ by Erika Timm – nothing less than the ascension of the God of storm and psychopomp Wodan to being the All-Father, God of the warrior elite and king of Asgard. And to see that more clearly, we have to take a small detour.

Due to the great socio-cultural influence of Celtic tribes on Germanic tribes, we can see a vast shift concerning the leadership of the tribes left of the Rhine who lived in close proximity to Celtic ones, this was around the turn of the eras. ⁵⁰ Most of them had been led by kinglets or chieftains up to that point, but that changed, and leadership went to a royal family, or a warlord came into the picture, who had had the power to lead in times of war, but not in times of peace, and now tried to gain complete control. ⁵¹ The retinue of that warlord was not only made of tribesmen, it was called comitatus, and they were are sworn group which was loyal to the death. At first probably a Celtic phenomenon, it was adapted by more and more Germanic tribes.

An outstanding example of such a warlord is Julius Civilis, leader of the Batavian rebellion against the Romans in the years 69 – 74 CE. Civilis, who was born 25 CE, hailed from a noble Batavian family, the Batavi being a Germanic tribe living northwest of the Rhine on territory which we now call the Netherlands. At first, he fought as a cohort prefect for the Romans, a fact which is mirrored by the survival of his Roman, but not his tribal name.

He meddled with Roman intrigues but returned home with a pardon, where he started to muster sympathizers and followers to lead them into an open rebellion against the Romans, joined by further Germanic and Celtic tribes like f.e. the Treveri and the Bructeri.

Germanic and Celtic tribes had so much in common that a lot of Romans had difficulties telling one from the other, which resulted in military cooperation between Germanic and Celtic tribes not being very problematic. Civilis enforced his status as warlord by a recourse of historic anti-Roman heroes like Hannibal or Sertorius,⁵² but also, so it is assumed, by a sacral legitimation through a dedication to Wodan: he gathered his soldiers in a sacred grove and celebrated a big feast there, he made a point of throwing a spear in a ritualistic way before battle, in order to be associated with two spear carrying Gods: Wodan and the Celtic Lug (who closed on of his eyes during cultic rites). ⁵³ Civilis had only one eye.

We do not know if Wodan at that time was imagined with one eye only though, as we have no image which can be clearly assigned to him. Through romanisation, or so scholars assume, Lug turned into the Gallo-Roman Mercurius, who is documented in many contemporary monuments dedicated to him. Roman inscriptions from monuments in the Germania inferior very often show that ‚Mercurius‘ plus byname did not refer to the Roman Mercury, but a local deity, sometimes a Celtic one, sometimes maybe a Germanic one, in that case probably Wodan.

According to Tacitus, Civilis was accompanied by a seeress of the Bructeri, which was called Veleda, ⁵⁴ probably a byname or a title, and by which he demonstrated being favored by the Gods or the most important God. Consulting a seeress was a Celtic tradition, not necessarily a Germanic one. Traditional tribes usually had their divinations done by all sorts of functionaries, as Tacitus conveys. In times of war the matres familiae predicted when to start the battle and who would probably win, they were hard to instrumentalize by a warlord. ⁵⁵ But that was not an issue with a single seeress who was kept close by.

So, Michael Enright concludes, there was a one eyed warlord, accompanied by a seeress, which created a narrative and a mythical connection to Wodan and the Gallo-Roman Mercurius, and which was recognized and accepted both by Germanic as well as Celtic tribes .⁵⁶

(Ill. 7: MERCURIUS UND ROSMERTA)

The Gallo-Roman Mercurius and the God of furor and storm Wodan had one thing in common with the Roman Mercury, God of merchants and artisans: all three of them were psychopompoi with a strong chthonic connection.⁵⁷ On some contemporary votive stones and altars Mercurius also has a companion, the Goddess Rosmerta, connected to fertility as well as to fate and the knowledge thereof. Often she is depicted with a staff. ⁵⁸

Now with the rising importance of the warband and their leaders, Wodan’s cultic influence rose too, and he supposedly was put in the center of cultic activities which were dominated by the warrior elite, especially with those tribes who had been Wodan worshippers in the first place: tribes from Ripuarian and Lower Saxony regions, Frisians, Saxons and Angles (Hengist and Horsa, for example, were depicted as descendants of Wodan). ⁵⁹ This is underlined archaeologically by the growing importance of war booty as sacrifice. ⁶⁰ Wodan became the God of war, sacrifice, divination, war leadership, and tactics and political hierarchy was merged. ⁶¹

During the next centuries, this rise of Wodan to becoming the High God took the ‘westway‘, that is to say the route Lower Rhine – North Saxony – Southern Scandinavia. In the central parts of the Germania, his power was not as distinct. ⁶²

But actually, an increasing war-related element in sacrificial finds is notable, from the 2nd century CE on, in North Western Germany and Southern Scandinavia. Generally, from the 3rd century on we see that an agricultural farmer cult is being replaced by the cult of a war God, ⁶³ to a degree that from the 5th century on, we mostly find sacrifices given by a warrior aristocracy, and next to no sacrificial items connected to the female sphere. ⁶⁴ The archaeologist Andrén notes that deities which we know from Old Norse lore start to pop up on amulets, pendants, on weapons not earlier than approximately 550 CE, and we have a similar development on Gotland picture stones, from which it follows that deities and their narratives, their mythology underwent a massive change. ⁶⁵

And now we can understand why Frija vanishes behind her husband on that route – which is documented on her names in the North, from Frau Wode/Frau Gode up to the point where Wodan takes completely over from his wife in folklore, even taking over the control of the Spinnstube although he has nothing at all to do with spinning in the first place. Wodan’s eminence forces the usurpation of functions from the female sphere and thus, the Goddess. ⁶⁶ The bracteates show his dominance, too, and it documents a very distinct ‚Wodan culture‘. We can only wonder if Ziu’s/Tyr’s downfall is connected with that, too.

In Scandinavia, the end point of the ‘Wodanization‘ and place of the latest conversion to christianity, we find Wodan/ Óðinn as the God of the warrior aristocracy in all his glory and magnificence. The scholar Terry Gunnell assumes the 5th and 6th century CE for that point of development. ⁶⁷ hile the farming population, according to region, still sacrificed to Frey or to þórr or Freyja, the centers of political power and wealth saw the manifestation of a cult of Óðinn, also demonstrated by shifting cultic activities from places in nature to the hall of the king or warlord or cult halls dedicated to that purpose. ⁶⁸ Which had first and foremost political reasons: it was easier to incite loyalty from your followers if you displayed closeness to the war God, and were able to give promises of an afterlife or undying honor as well as a huge war booty. ⁶⁹

These ideas were manifested through the skalds, which were lyrically loyal to their God even after conversion, and finally in the Prose Edda, which ignores private and familial cult, and thus cultic actions led by women, and centered around local deities. ⁷⁰

Which in turn makes clear how Odin became the All-Father and ruler of the divine family, and how, in Norse lore, his wife Frigg is depicted first and foremost as the ruler’s wife and mother of his children, whereas her continental counterpart Frija shows a lot more power, and independence from a male partner. The advent of christianity in the Germanic tribes, most prominently the Franks, led to her banishment though, and that started around the time Wodan had risen to full power. But her many aliases and noa names were used, and she was not forgotten, as we can see in the folklore and those traditions which were, for example, taken over by Mary the Mother. Conversion alone could not do away with her, it took the help of the reformation, enlightenment and industrialization to destroy the structures in which Frija and the other Gods, as well as the beings from the so called ‘lower mythology‘ were remembered and revered. But times are changing.

List of Illustrations:

Ill. 1 Frija, made by Steffen Schindler, picture: Ulrike Pohl

Ill. 2 Merseburger Zaubersprüche. Colored image of Cod. 136, folio 85r, Domstiftsbibliothek Merseburg, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ill. 3 Frau Holle at the Frau-Holle-Teich, picture: Markus Goebel, via German Wikipedia

Ill. 4 Two of the Fürstenberg bracteates, IK 311 und IK 350, taken from Alexandra Pesch, Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit – Thema und Variation. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2007 (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Band 36).

Ill. 5 ‚Germanische Diana‘ von Oberdorla, G. Behm-Blan> Ill. 7 Mercurius and Rosmerta, picture: QuartierLatin1968, via Wikimedia Commons