AnIrminsul (Old Saxon 'great pillar') was a sacred,pillar-like object attested as playing an important role in theGermanic paganism of theSaxons. Medieval sources describe how an Irminsul was destroyed byCharlemagne during theSaxon Wars. A church was erected on its place in 783 and blessed byPope Leo III.Sacred trees and sacred groves were widely venerated by theGermanic peoples (includingDonar's Oak), and the oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air.[1]
TheOld Saxon word compoundIrminsûl means 'great pillar'. The first element,Irmin- ('great') iscognate with terms with some significance elsewhere inGermanic mythology. Among theNorth Germanic peoples, theOld Norse form ofIrmin isJörmunr, which just likeYggr is one of thenames of Odin.Yggdrasil (Old Norse 'Yggr's horse') is acosmic tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connects theNine worlds. 19th century scholarJakob Grimm connects the nameIrmin withOld Norse terms likeiörmungrund ("great ground", i.e. the Earth) oriörmungandr ("great snake", i.e. theMidgard serpent).[3]
A Germanic godIrmin, inferred from the nameIrminsûl and the tribal nameIrminones, is in some older scholarship presumed to have been the national god ordemi-god of the Saxons.[4]Irmin could also be an aspect orepithet of some other deity – most likely Wodan (Odin).[5] Irmin might also have been an epithet of the god Ziu (Tyr) in early Germanic times, only later transferred to Odin, as certain scholars subscribe to the idea that Odin replaced Tyr as the chief Germanic deity at the onset of theMigration Period. This was the favoured view of early 20th century Nordicist writers,[6] but it is not generally considered likely in modern times.[7]
Irminsuls are attested in a variety of historic works discussing the Christianization of the continental Germanic peoples.
According to theRoyal Frankish Annals (772 AD), during theSaxon Wars,Charlemagne is repeatedly described as ordering the destruction of the chief seat of their religion, an Irminsul.[8] The Irminsul is described as not being far from Heresburg (nowObermarsberg), Germany.[8]Jacob Grimm states that "strong reasons" point to the actual location of the Irminsul as being approximately 15 miles (24 km) away, in theTeutoburg Forest and states that the original name for the region "Osning" may have meant "Holy Wood".[8]
TheBenedictine monkRudolf of Fulda (AD 865) provides a description of an Irminsul in chapter 3 of his Latin workDe miraculis sancti Alexandri. Rudolf's description states that the Irminsul was a great wooden pillar erected and worshipped beneath the open sky and that its name, Irminsul, signifies universal all-sustaining pillar.[8]
Clive Tolley has argued thatWidukind of Corvey in a passage of hisDeeds of the Saxons (c. 970) is in fact describing anad hoc Irminsul erected to celebrate the Saxon leaderHadugato's victory over theThuringians in 531. Widukind says the Saxons set up an altar to their god of victory, whose body they depicted as a wooden column:
When morning was come they set up an eagle at the eastern gate, and erecting an altar of victory they celebrated appropriate rites with all due solemnity, according to their ancestral superstition: to the one whom they venerate as their god of Victory they give the name of Mars, and the bodily characteristics of Hercules, imitating his physical proportion by means of wooden columns, and in the hierarchy of their gods he is the Sun, or as the Greeks call him, Apollo. From this fact the opinion of those men appears somewhat probable who hold that the Saxons were descended from the Greeks, because the Greeks call Mars Hirmin or Hermes, a word which we use even to this day, either for blame or praise, without knowing its meaning.[9]
Widukind is confused, however, about the name of the god, since the Roman Mars and the Greek Hermes do not correspond. Tolley supposes that the name Hirmin, of which Widukind does not know the meaning, is not to be related to Hermes, but to Irmin, the dedicatee of the Irminsul.[10][11]
UnderLouis the Pious in the 9th century, a stone column was dug up atObermarsberg[12] inWestphalia, Germany, and relocated to theHildesheim cathedral inHildesheim,Lower Saxony, Germany. The column was reportedly then used as acandelabrum until at least the late 19th century.[13] In the 13th century, the destruction of the Irminsul by Charlemagne was recorded as having still been commemorated at Hildesheim on the Saturday afterLaetare Sunday.[1]
The commemoration was reportedly done by planting two poles six feet high, each surmounted by a wooden object one foot in height shaped like a pyramid or a cone on the cathedral square.[1] The youth then used sticks and stones in an attempt to knock over the object.[1] This custom is described as existing elsewhere in Germany, particularly inHalberstadt where it was enacted on the day of Laetare Sunday by theCanons themselves.[1]
Awareness of the significance of the concept seems to have persisted well into Christian times. For example, in the twelfth-centuryKaiserchronik an Irminsul is mentioned in three instances:
Concerning the origin of the Wednesday:
ûf ainer irmensiule / stuont ain abgot ungehiure, / daz hiezen si ir choufman.[14]
On an Irminsul / stands an enormous idol / which they call their merchant
ConcerningJulius Caesar:
Rômâre in ungetrûwelîche sluogen / sîn gebaine si ûf ain irmensûl begruoben[15]
The Romans slew him treacherously / and buried his bones on an Irminsul
ConcerningNero:
ûf ain irmensûl er staich / daz lantfolch im allez naich.[16]
He climbed upon an Irminsul / the peasants all bowed before him
ABBOT DE LUBERSAC (Abbé de Lubersac): Discours sur les Monuments Publics (Speech on Public Monuments)
The abbot place the Irminsul in Stattbergen, Bavaria. (P.183)
A number of theories surround the subject of the Irminsul.
InTacitus'Germania, the author mentions rumors of what he describes as "Pillars of Hercules" in land inhabited by theFrisii that had yet to be explored.[17] Tacitus adds that these pillars exist either becauseHercules actually did go there or because the Romans have agreed to ascribe all marvels anywhere to Hercules' credit. Tacitus states that whileDrusus Germanicus was daring in his campaigns against the Germanic tribes, he was unable to reach this region, and that subsequently no one had yet made the attempt.[18] Connections have been proposed between these "Pillars of Hercules" and later accounts of the Irminsuls.[1]Hercules was probably frequently identified withThor by the Romans due to the practice ofinterpretatio romana.[19]
Comparisons have been made between the Irminsul and theJupiter Columns that were erected along theRhine inGermania around the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Scholarly comparisons were once made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns; however, Rudolf Simek states that the columns were ofGallo-Roman religious monuments, and that the reported location of the Irminsul inEresburg does not fall within the area of the Jupiter Column archaeological finds.[20]
The medievalExternsteine relief, located on a rock formation nearDetmold, Germany, features a shape often identified as a bent tree at the feet ofNicodemus. In 1929, German lay archaeologist and futureAhnenerbe memberWilhelm Teudt proposed that the symbol represented an Irminsul.[21][22]
However, according to scholarBernard Mees:
A medieval relief depicting Christ's descent from the cross on one of the Extern Stones seems to show what Teudt interpreted as a tree being withered by the cross (less imaginative researchers consider it to simply be an elaborate chair) ... [the symbol] joined the runes and the swastika as one of the foremost symbols of the anti-Christianvölkisch identity at the time and remains a motif treasured among German neopagans today.[23]
Et inde perrexit partibus Saxoniae prima vice, Eresburgum castrum coepit, ad Ermensul usque pervenit et ipsum fanum destruxit et aurum vel argentum, quod ibi repperit, abstulit. Et fuit siccitas magna, ita ut aqua deficeret in supradicto loco, ubi Ermensul stabat; et dum voluit ibi duos aut tres praedictus gloriosus rex stare dies fanum ipsum ad perdestruendum et aquam non haberent, tunc subito divina largiente gratia media die cuncto exercitu quiescente in quodam torrente omnibus hominibus ignorantibus aquae effusae sunt largissimae, ita ut cunctus exercitus sufficienter haberet.
