The temple in Riedegost as described in Thietmar’s Chronicle

The description of a Polabian temple in Thietmar’s Chronicle is in fact our first extensive and detailed account of Slavic religion. Thietmar (6.23-5) calls the site with an image of a Lutitian goddess.

Thietmar records different types of divination carried out in Riedegost. He knows about a special kind of omen forecasting the “calamity of long civil war”, appearing in the form of “a big boar with foam on its tusks emerging from... the lake”, a place of sacral importance located close to the temple. But the annually recurring oracle was held there in the form of lot-casting and horse divination. It cannot be excluded that the Lutitians (or rather their priests) decided about the alliance with German King Henry II in precisely that way.

The oracle was asked about military campaigns in particular. Before acts of hippomancy, divination by lots was performed. The ritual started when the lots were drawn out of a little hole dug in the ground, which may have corresponded to the ancient Roman mundus.^ The lots were consulted, and covered again with sods. The act of digging the hole was of great importance. As Thietmar stresses, the priests murmured what were most probably sacral texts, and “they dig in the ground with great fear” (terram cum tremore infodiunt). In that way, the chthonic powers, unlike the igneous and solar Svarozic and his white horse, were asked first. This chthonic deity could be interpreted as the pan-Slavic god Weles (cf. Modzelewski 2004: 390) or the Lutitian anonymous war-goddess mentioned above (Slupecki 2008).

Then a saddled horse was used. As suggested by the analogies with similar rituals taking place in Szczecin and Arcona, the horse was the mount of a god (as nobody was sitting on it), and the place in the saddle was reserved for him (Slupecki 1998: 43-52).

The Lutitian war goddess, anonymous in Thietmar’s account, is possibly attested in another source. William of Malmesbury (De gestis Regum Anglorum ([History of the English Kings] 2.189), describing the tribes of “Vindelicos et Leuticios”, said that they “worship Fortune, and putting her idol in the most eminent situation, they place a horn in her right hand, filled with a beverage made of honey and water, which we call hydromel using a Greek term.... On the last day of November, sitting in a circle, they all test it, and if they find the horn full, they applaud with loud clamours” because it forecasts prosperity for the next year, “but if it be otherwise, they lament”.

The analogy with a description of a similar ritual held in the temple in Arcona for the god Sventovit, found in Saxo Grammaticus (Gesta Danorum [History of the Danes] 14.39.3-7), is obvious. William of Malmesbury’s account is a source some fifty years older than Saxo’s book, but Saxo probably did not know William’s work. Because the only Slavic tribe mentioned in the account is the Leuticos (Lutitians) this suggests that the ritual may have been held in Riedegost, and that the Slavic goddess whom William identified as the Roman Fortuna was the same deity as the anonymous Lutitian war goddess mentioned by Thietmar (Zaroff & Slupecki 1999).

To sum up: Rethra-Riedegost was a sanctuary of special religious importance, leading, after the uprising of 983, a powerful Lutitian union of tribes organized around the temple (somewhat like ancient amphictyonies). It is impossible to say whether or not the temple existed before the uprising; it was obviously a symbolic and real centre of religious and social life for the Lutitians. Thietmar portrays Riedegost as a purely religious centre of power, located in the great old forest growing around it like a sacred grove. The temple itself he described as a wooden building decorated with anthropomorphic images on the exterior (Slupecki 1997a: 297-301) and, in the interior, with “idols” (with Svarozic’s image as the most important), standards and possibly a treasury. The temple stood, according to his account, in the empty stronghold with enough space for assemblies and divinations. But Adam of Bremen (2.21) emphasizes the location of the temple in a stronghold built on an island on the lake connected to the mainland by a bridge (in contrast to Thietmar, who located the small sacred lake close to the stronghold standing in the forest).