Chapter 6

The chief authority for images of gods among the Saxons is the famous passage in Widekind of Corvei (1, 12), where he relates their victory over the Thuringians on the R. Unstrut (circ. 530), 'ut majorum memoria prodit' : Mane autem facto, ad orientalem portam (of castle Schidungen) ponunt aquilam, aramque victoriae construentes, secundum errorem paternum, sacra sua propria veneratione venerati sunt, nomine Martem, effgie columnarum imitantes Herculem, loco Solem quem Graeci appellant Appollinem.----This important witness will have to be called up again in more than one connexion.

To the Corvei annals, at year 1145, where the Eresburg is spoken of, the following is added by a 12th century hand (Pertz 5, 8 note): Hec eadem Eresburg est corrupto vocabulo dicta, quam et Julius Cesar Romano imperio subegit, quando et Arispolis nomen habuit ab eo qui Aris Greca designatione ac Mars ipse dictus est Latino famine. Duobus siquidem idolis hec dedita fuit, id est Aris, qui urbis meniis insertus, quasi dominator dominantium, et Ermis, qui et Mercurius mercimoniis insistentibus colebatur in forensibus.----According to this, a statue of Mars seems to have stood on the town-wall.

That the Frisian temples contained images of gods, there seems to be sufficient evidence. It is true, the passage about Fosite (p. 84) mentions only fana dei; we are told that Wilibrord laid violent hands on the sacred fountain, not that he demolished any image. On the other hand, the Vita Bonifacii (Pertz. 2, 339), in describing the heathen reaction under King Rêdbod (circ. 716), uses this language: Jam pars ecclesiarum Christi, quae Francorum prius subjecta erat imperio, vastata erat ac destructa, idolorum quoque cultura exstructis delubrorum fanis lugubriter renovata. And if it should be thought that idolorum here is equivalent to deorum, the Vita Willehadi (Pertz. 2, 380) says more definitely: Insanum esse et vanum a lapidibus auxilium petere et a simulacris mutis et surdis subsidii sperare solatium. Quo audito, gens fera et idololatriis nimium dedita stridebant dentibus in eum, dicentes, non debere profanum longius vivere, imo reum esse mortis, qui tam sacrilegia contra deos suos invictissimos proferre praesumsisset eloquia.----The event belongs to the middle of the 8th century, and the narrator Anskar (died 865) comes a hundred years later; still we are not warranted in looking upon his words as mere flourishes. And I am not sure that we have a right to take for empty phrases, what is said in a Vita S. Goari (died 649), which was not written till 839: Coepit gentilibus per circuitum (i.e. in Ripuaria), simulacrorum cultui deditis et vana idolorum superstitionis deceptis, verbum salutis annuntiare (Acta Bened. sec. 2, p. 282). Such biographies are usually based on older memorials.

The Frisians are in every sense the point of transition to the Scandinavians; considering the multifarious intercourse between these two adjoining nations, nothing can be more natural than to suppose that the Frisians also had in common with their neighbours the habit of temple and image worship. Even Fosete's temple in Heligoland I can hardly imagine destitute of images.

Some facility in carving figures out of wood or chiselling them out of stone is no more than we should have expected from those signa and effigies in Tacitus, and the art might go on improving up to a certain stage. Stone weapons and other implements that we find in barrows testify to a not unskilful handling of difficult materials. That not a single image of a Teutonic god has escaped the destructive hand of time and the zeal of the christians, need surprise us less than the total disappearance of the heathen temples. Why, even in the North, where the number of images was greater, and their destruction occured much later, there is not one preservedæ all the Lethrian, all the Upsalian idols are clean gone. The technical term in the Norse was Skurdgoð (Fornm. sög. 2, 73-5), from skëra (sculpere), skurd (sculptura)æ in the two passages referred to, it is likeneski af Freyr. Biörn gives skûrgoð, idolum, sculptile, from skûr, subgrundium (penthouse), because it had to be placed under cover, in sheds as it were; with which the OHG. skûrguta [[[shed-god]]] (Graff 6, 536) seems to agree. But there is no distinct proof of an ON. skûrgoð [[idol]].

Dietmar's account is silent about the gods' images at Lethra (8); in Adam of Bremen's description of those at Upsal (cap. 233), the most remarkable thing is, that three statues are specified, as they were in that temple of the Alamanns: Nunc de superstitione Sveonum pauca dicemus. Nobilissimum illa gens templum habet, quod Ubsola dicitur, non longe positum a Sictona civitate (Sigtûn) vel Birka. In hoc templo, quod totum ex auro paratum est, statuas trium deorum veneratur populus, ita ut potentissimus eorum Thor in medio solium habeat triclinio. Hinc et inde locum possident Wodan et Fricco. The further description we have nothing to do with here, but there occurs in it also the term sculpere; as the whole temple was ex auro paratum, i.e., decorated with gold, he might doubtless have described the figures of the gods above all as gilded, just as those in Alamannia were aereae et deauratae.---Saxo p. 13 tells of a golden statue of Othin; Cujus numen Septentrionis reges propensiore cultu prosequi cupientes, effigiem ipsius aureo complexi simulacro, statuam suae dignationis indicem maxima cum religionis simulatione Byzantium transmiserunt, cujus etiam brachiorum lineamenta confertissimo armillarum pondere perstringebant. The whole passage, with its continuation, is not only unhistorical, but contrary to the genuine myths; we can only see in it the view of the gods taken by Saxo and his period, and inasmuch as golden and bedizened images of gods were consonant with such view, we may infer that there still lived in his time a recollection of such figures (see Suppl.). Ermoldus Nigellus, in describing Herold's (Harald's) interview with King Charles, mentions 4, 444 seq. (Pertz. 2, 509-10) the gods' images (sculpta) of the heathen, and that he was said to have had ploughshares, kettles and water-buckets forged of that metal. According to the Nialssaga cap. 89, in a Norwegian temple (goðahûs) there were to be seen three figures again, those of Thor and the two half-goddesses Thorgerðr and Irpa, of human size, and adorned with armlets; probably Thor sat in the middle on his car. Altogether the portraitures of Thor seem to have been those most in vogue, at least in Norway. (9) One temple in which many skurdgoð were worshipped, but Thor most of all, is described in Fornm. sög. 2, 153 and 159, and his statue 1, 295. 302-6; in 2, 44 we read: Thôrr sat î midðju ok var mêst tignaðr, hann var mikill ok allr gulli bûinn ok silfri (ex auro et argento confectus); conf. Olafs helga saga, ed. Holm. cap. 118-9, where a large standing figure of Thor is described; and Fornm. sög. 4, 245, ed. Christ. p. 26. Freyr giörr af silfri, Isl. sög. 1, 134. Landn. 3, 2. One man carried a statuette of Thor carved in whalebone (lîkneski Thôrs af tönn gert) in his pocket, so as to worship him secretly, when living among christians, Fornm. sög. 2, 57. Thôr's figure was carved on the öndvegis-pillars, Eyrbygg. p. 8. Landnamab. 2, 12; and on the prows of ships, Fornm. sög. 2, 234. A figure of Thorgerðr hölgabrûðr, with rings of gold round the arm, to which people kneel, Fornm. sög. 2, 108. (10) Frey's statue of silver, (Freyr markaðr af silfri), Vatnsd. p. 44. 50; carried about in a wagon in Sweden, Fornm. sög. 2, 73-7. The Jomsvikîngasaga tells of a temple on Gautland (I. of Gothland), in which were a hundred gods, Fornm. sög. 11, 40; truly a 'densitas imaginum,' as Jonas has it (see p. 83). Saxo Gram. 327 mentions a simulacrum quercu factum, carved in oak? or an oaktree worshipped as divine? (see Suppl.)  



ENDNOTES:

8. On recently discovered figures of 'Othin,' v. infra, Wôdan.  (back)

9. Finn Magnusen, bidrag til nordisk archaeologie, pp. 113-159.  (back)

10. There is another thing to notice in this pasage. The figure of Thorgerðr bent its hand up, when some one tried to snatch a ring off its arm, and the goddess was not disposed to let him have it. The same man then brought a lot of money, laid it at the figure's feet, fell on his knees and shed tears, then rose up and once more grasped at the ring, which now the figure let go. The same is told in the Færeyîngasaga, cap. 23, p. 103. I regard it as a genuine trait of heathen antiquity, like others which afterwards passed into christian folk-tales of the Mid. Ages (see Suppl.). Or more than one image of grace we are told that it dropt a ring off its finger or a shoe off its foot as a gift to those who prayed before it. A figure of Christ gave its shoes to a poor man (Nicolai abbatis peregrinatio, ed. Werlauff p. 20), and a saint's image its gold slippers (Mones anz. 7, 584. Archiv. des Henneb. vereins, pp. 70, 71). A figure of Mary accepts a ring that is presented to it, and bends her finger as a sign that she will keep it (méon nouv. recueil 2, 296-7. Maerl. 2, 214). The two Virgin stories in Méon and Maerlant, though one at bottom, have very different turns given them. In the latter, a young man at a game of ball pulls the ring off his finger, and puts it on the hand of a Madonna; in th former, the youth is boxing in the Colosseum at Rome, and puts his ring on the finger of a heathen statue, which bends the finger. Both figures now hold the man to his engagement. But the O. French poem makes the afflicted youth bring an image of Mary to bear on the heathen one, the Mary takes the ring off the other figure, and restores it to the youth. Conf. Kaiserchr. 13142. 13265. 13323. Forduni Scoti chronicon 1, 407 (W. Scott's ministr. 2, 136), relates this fable as an event of the 11th century: a nobleman playing at ball slips his ring on the finger of a broken statue of Venus, and only gets it back with the help of a priest Palumbus who understands magic. We see the story had spread at an early time, but it is old Teutonic in its origin ['undeutsch,' evid. a slip for urdeutsch]. Even in a painting of Mary, the infant in her lap hands her a casket to give to a suppliant, Cod. pal. 341 fol. 63). Similarly, statues turn the face away, stretch out the arms to protect, they speak, laugh, weep, eat and walk; thus a figure of Christ turns itself away (Ls. 3, 78. 262), another begins to eat and grow bigger (Kinderm. legenden no. 9), to weep, to beckon, to run away (Deutsche sagen, no. 347. Tettaus, preuss. sagen, pp. 211-5-8). In Reinbot's Georg the idol Apollo is flogged with rods by a child, and forced to walk away (3258-69), which reminds one of the god Perûn, whom, according to monk Nestor, Vladîmir the Apostolic caused to be scourged with rods. In an Indian story I find a statue that eats the food set before it, Polier 2, 302-3. Antiquity then did not regard these images altogether as lumps of dead matter, but as penetrated by the life of the divinity. The Greeks too have stories of statues that move, shake the lance, fall on their knees, close their eyes (katamuseij), bleed and sweat, which may have been suggested by the attitudes of ancient images; but of a statue making a movement of the hand, bending a finger, I have nowhere read, significant as the position of the arms in images of gods was held to be. That the gods themselves ceira uperecousin over those whom they wish to protect, occurs as early as in Homer.   (back)