BRACTEATES AND AMULETS

Bracteates are circular decorative coins, stamped on one side only and dating from the fifth and sixth centuries CE. They were modelled on the late classical medallions depicting the Roman emperors, given as decorations to elite soldiers of the Roman army and thus known to the Scandinavians.

The first and most obvious question concerns the identity of the Germanic equivalent to the bust of the Roman emperors shown on the bracteates. The second major problem is caused by runic inscriptions found on nearly a third of all bracteates. The first question is closely connected to the problem of nearly all prehistoric iconographic representations of anthropomorphic figures, namely whether they may be interpreted as human or divine. Over the last few decades, the male figure on the bracteates, whether shown fully or only with his head, has usually been equated with Wodan/Odin, the oldest Germanic god known by name and undoubtedly the most important god in the early part of the first millennium. However, none of the bracteates offers the slightest hint in their runic inscriptions as to the name of a god, but rather use fairly standardized magic terms such as alu, laukar or ota. No doubt these terms refer to something like “protection”, “healing” and “numinous fear”, but they leave doubts about the identity of the prominent figure (or figures, on the B-bracteates). Even so, the most frequent motif, the male head over a horse on the C-bracteates, certainly brings to mind the fact that in the Second Merseburg Charm it is Odin who can heal a lame horse.

What we may say with some certainty is that the bracteates underwent a development from military decoration to amulet and finally ended up as jewellery used in female necklaces. The function as an amulet is, however, not incompatible with the other uses, and the runic inscriptions (which do not always make sense) tend to point in the same direction.

The use of amulets was in any case very widespread, but in most cases limited to amulets made from organic materials in early times. Amulets made of semi­precious metals such as copper and lead became widespread throughout Europe from the Viking Age onward, with Christianized inscriptions giving them a thin veneer of Christianity. But even earlier, amulets with written texts must have been common, as the missionaries did not tire of condemning ligamenta, that is, amulets tied round humans and animals (for the protection from illnesses), or people carrying written charms, which could be attached to their clothing or elsewhere.

Neither bracteates nor other amulets tell us the names of Germanic gods. The earliest occurrence of names from the Germanic pantheon occurs on a south German fibula (from Nordendorf, Bavaria), which names Wodan together with two less obvious names: logathore and wigithonar. At least the second component of the latter name is identifiable as Donar, the south Germanic name for Thor, but the other elements are matters that are still being discussed. Not much less problematic are other early mentions of deities; the Saxon baptismal formula from the early ninth century renounces Donar, Wodan and Saxnot, the last of which was probably some sort of Saxon tribal deity not mentioned anywhere else. The Second Merseburg Charm, probably copied down from oral sources in the tenth century, names Wodan as well as Phol, Balder and four female deities, of whom we know Frija from other sources, whereas Sinthgunt, Sunna and Voila are not recorded anywhere else.

The only traces of the pre-Christian gods of some of the Germanic peoples apart from runic inscriptions and missionaries’ reports are found in old myths of origins which survived for a while in poems and much longer in the genealogies of their leaders. The foundation myths of the Langobards refer to their names being given by Wodan and Frigg, and the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies lead doubt, fear of incurring the wrath of their own gods!) when they saw how easily the mighty tree was demolished by Boniface and turned into planks for a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter. Otherwise, laws prohibiting the cult around or at natural holy places (King Canute’s in eleventh-century England and Medieval Icelandic laws) were probably more concerned with the avoidance of deviations from accepted communal Christian cult places rather than with addressing actual religious questions and inconsistencies.

It seems that in any case many practices of folk belief survived Christianization relatively unscathed, which suggests that missionary activity was normally less concerned with what was going on in fields and woods, but rather with converting the local chieft ains or dignitaries to what they believed was the true faith, and as such increasing the cultural (and political) influence of the Church. Allegiance to the articles of faith, affirmed belief in the trinity, belief in the rewards of the life to come, and the observation of feast days and fast times were considered major external signs of internal conversion, regardless of whatever went on outside the walls of the church or halls.

It is interesting that the most detailed instruction to missionaries preserved, the short Ordo de catechizandis rudibus (On catechizing the uneducated) by Augustine of Hippo and used by Alcuin, pays a lot of attention to the Christian views on life after death including the resurrection of the dead, but none to daily rituals; one of the reasons for this is of course that the local religion was notoriously vague on life after death, with several often conflicting views on the topic. Consequently, the relatively distinct Christian teaching which stressed this point with such positive hopefulness was an obvious strong point in evangelizing the Germanic tribes.

One reason why the missionaries did not address the veneration of nature is that Christian teaching is mainly concerned with the salvation of the soul and the afterlife, that is, metaphysical matters, and there is little that actually governs or even discusses man’s relation to nature and its possibly inherent spirits. This lack of interest means that folk practices such as simple methods of divination or clandestine sacrifices to spirits of nature, although abhorred by the missionaries, managed to survive beneath the veneer of official religion and were - in practice - adopted rather than eradicated by the medieval Church once the missionary aim of official conversion by belief and law had been achieved. As late as the early eleventh century in Germany, the penitential of Burchard of Worms lists numerous forms of simple divination, which, though considered to be unchristian, were not nearly as severely punished as those practices of black magic that were concerned with divination by the invocation of demons or the so-called utiseta of much later Icelandic sources. This ritual is described in later Icelandic sources as “sitting out” by night on a fresh and still bloody cowhide at a crossroads in order to invoke the evil powers of the other-world for the purpose of communicating with the dead, finding out about the future, or both (see Chapter 24 by Britt-Mari Nasstrom on Old Norse religion in the present volume).

The fact that demons were still considered to be at large practically everywhere even in Christian medieval Europe shows the survival of polytheistic is more speculative. The wide currency of the term and the reference to their veneration make it likely that they were thought of as divinities on a lower level than the >Esir, and the many depictions of stately women, sometimes bearing a horn, on brooches, fibulae, pendants and other depictions of Migration Age and Viking Age Scandinavia may most likely be interpreted as disir. There may even be a connection between them and the Norns, the three wise and prescient women of Old Norse mythology, but in southern Germanic areas these are only found in folk tales and have otherwise hardly left a trace.

The Valkyries are on a quite different level of lower mythology. They are not only known from Scandinavian but also from Anglo-Saxon sources, and their name, “choosers of the slain”, marks them as death-spirits of old, which were thought to conduct the dead to their respective otherworlds. In Old Norse literature of the High Middle Ages, however, they became confused with, and related to, the skjoldmaer, “shield-maidens”, of heroic literature and this led to the modern, romantic picture of Valkyries to be found from the thirteenth century onwards. It is only in medieval Icelandic mythography that the Valkyries become the “waitresses” in Valhall, although their connection to Odin is certainly older.

Of the rich lower mythology known from Scandinavian mythography, giants, trolls and dwarfs, little can be found in the sources of the south Germanic area. Only occasional terms, such as gitwerc, “dwarf’ but also “illness”, point to the same fate of demonization of these beings as we have seen for the alfar. Medieval epics and post-medieval folk literature alone preserve stories of giants and dwarfs south of Scandinavia, where Christianization (or a lesser intensity in the belief in such creatures?) has left little trace of them, at least as far as religion is concerned.

It must not be forgotten that the paucity of material from south Germanic regions is to some extent a direct consequence of the early Christianization of those Germanic groups who came into contact with the Roman Empire during the first centuries CE. The Goths on the lower Danube had already converted to Christianity by the time Bishop Wulfila wrote his famous Bible translation in 348. Next to convert were other groups in south-eastern Europe such as the semi­Germanic Gepides (after 440 and before 548), the Vandals who had probably converted in Spain during their long trek to North Africa before 421, the Rugians in today’s Austria before 480, and the Langobards in that region before 490. The Franks were converted following the famous baptism of their king Chlodwig in 496, and the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (who had been called from Jutland to a still Romanized Britain in the fifth century) were converted by the beginning of the sixth century. The Alamans, the Bavarians and the Thuringians followed in the seventh century, converted both by Irish missionaries and by the integration into the growing empire of the Franks. On the continent, only the Frisians and the Saxons retained their pre-Christian religious traditions until the ninth century, when Charlemagne took drastic steps to end both their political independence and their polytheistic religion.

SUGGESTED READING

Düwel, K. 2008. Runenkunde, 4th edn. Stuttgart.

Padberg, Lutz E. von 1998. Die Christianisierung Europas im Mittelalter. Stuttgart.

Simek, R. 1996. Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Angela Hall (trans.). Cambridge.

Simek, R. 2003. Religion und Mythologie der Germanen. Darmstadt.

Simek, R. 2006. Lexikon der germanischen Mythologie (Kroners Taschenausgabe 368), 3rd edn. Stuttgart.

coexisted with other religions such as Mithraism, the worship of the gods of the Roman pantheon, and the cult of the emperor. Yet in the Early Middle Ages when Roman rule and its cults were gone, the church was in retreat; it is sometimes said that Christianity died out in Lowland Britain at this time. The story of the post-Roman decline of Christianity and its renewed ascendancy may eventually prove to be so complex that the story will never be fully known and understood.⁸ The British language, too, was in retreat and eventually passed out of use except in Wales, Cornwall and parts of north-west Britain. And, over a period of some few generations, Germanic religious practices were introduced - whatever that change exactly involved - with effects that long postdated the conversion.

The rest of this chapter will review what can be known, from the insular evidence, about the non-Christian religious ideas and practices of the Germanic peoples who took control of Lowland Britain after the fall of Rome. Given the scattered nature of the evidence, it is wise not to underestimate the difficulty of that task. Still, much can be learned (or can plausibly be surmised) when the available sources are used in conjunction with one another. The most important of these are (a) early Latin textual evidence, (b) the evidence of the Old English lexicon, (c) place-names that have a bearing on religious ideas or practices, (d) funerary practices and other aspects of material culture, and (e) late textual evidence, recorded chiefly in the vernacular. These categories will be addressed in that order.⁹