The Irminsul and the Externsteine

In 772 Charlemagne occupied the Eresburg castle near Paderborn, the central Saxon stronghold, and destroyed the Irminsul, the main Saxon place of worship to their traditional Northern deities. Eresburg is now known as Obermarsberg (approx. 46 miles from the Externsteine).

 

Near Eresburg is Priesterberg, a hill overlooking the valley of the Diemel. It is thought to be the home of the Irminsul, a sacred tree or pillar which represented the Germanic central pillar of the world.

 

The Irminsul is known to have been a pillar of wood or stone, probably a large tree trunk. We do not know if this was the only one, or if there were more in the area.  The current popular T- shaped representation of the Irminsul comes from the Nazi archaeologist William Teudt.

 

In Tacitus’ Germania, the author mentions rumors of what he describes as "Pillars of Hercules" in land inhabited by the Frisii that had yet to be explored.

Comparisons have been made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns that were erected along the Rhine around CE 2 and 3.  Rudolf Simek states that the columns were Gallo-Roman religious monuments, and that the reported location of the Irminsul in Eresburg does not fall within the area of the Jupiter Column archaeological finds.

 

The Old Norse form of Irmin is Jörmunr, which just like Yggr was one of the names of Odin. Yggdrasil was the yew or ash tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connected heaven and earth. Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin with Old Norse terms like iörmungrund ("great ground", i.e. the Earth) or iörmungandr ("great snake", i.e. the Midgard serpent).

 

The linguistic connection between Irmin- and iörmun/jörmun- is generally accepted, but the terms simply mean "great/mighty" or "rising high". It is easy to see how "The great one" or "The exalted one" could become a by-name of Odin, but unfortunately this is of little use to determine whether the Saxon term refers to a deity or simply means - as is usually preferred today - "great pillar" instead of "Irmin's pillar" or "Odin's pillar”.

 

The Benedictine monk Rudolf of Fulda (CE 865) gave a description of an Irminsul in his Latin work De miraculis sancti Alexandri. Rudolf's description says 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.

 

The Externsteine, a large sandstone formation, is thought  in popular folk belief to the place where the Irminsul stood and pagan rites enacted.

 

That the Externsteine were a center of religious activity for the Teutonic people is a belief that can be traced back to Hermann Hamelmann, who wrote as much in 1564: “Charlemagne has made the Externsteine, a pagan idol, into a (Christian) altar”.

 

There is a Christian religious relief at the Externsteine, of which Philip Coppens says, “The first point of interest is at ground level, where there is a relief, known as the Descent from the Cross. It is, at first sight, a normal depiction of Jesus at the Cross, with the usual angels and crying people. Christ is held by Joseph of Arimathea, with the Virgin Mary on the left. Nicodemus stands on a tree-like chair, to the right John holds the Book of Revelation, while above all, is God, as well as the sun and the moon. In the lower section, a huge dragon entangles two kneeling figures, probably Adam and Eve. It is the “tree-like chair”, right next to the Cross, which has been suggested to represent the Irminsul.” Until Teudt, it had never been recognized and a representation of the Irminsul. It has been suggested by Ermund Alderman that is a stylized palm tree. A story exists about Jesus as a boy commanding a palm tree to bend down before him. Myrrh and the myrrh tree were connected with Nicodemus.

 

In the 1920’s William Teudt claimed that the Externsteine functioned as an astronomical site for the ancient Germans. He theorized that the tree-like chair represented the Irminsul. An excavation was done in 1932 with no results. After 1933, Teudt became influential with the National Socialists and in 1934 he planned another excavation under Julius Andree. Teudt later influenced Heinrich Himmler to take over the excavations and the results were not published. Mainstream archaeologists at the time called Andree and his associates Germanomanen (Germanomaniacs).  Even Hitler said about Himmler, “Why do we call the whole world’s attention to the fact that we have no past?”

 

The importance of the Irminsul was reinvigorated by Karl Maria Wiligut, who made the Irminsul the centre of his new religion, Irminism. Wiligut claimed that the Bible had been written in Germanic, and that this was an aberration of a Germanic religion, whereby the “real Saviour” had been substituted with the modern Jesus Christ. Irminsul meant “Great Pillar”, and it is clear that this was indeed a pagan belief-system in a “centre of the world”, where the “World Tree” connected the Earth to Heaven. The painting at Externsteine thus symbolized the cutting down of the World Tree, which was replaced with the belief in Jesus Christ, who died at the Cross. In 1933 Wiligut met Himmler and a history department was created for him. In 1935, he was transferred to Himmler’s personal staff.

 

The lack of evidence as to the ancient importance of the Externsteine rocks didn't stop Heinrich Himmler from declaring otherwise. Himmler was the head of the Nazi's occult division "Ahnenerbe", a Nazi think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." In reality it was a psuedo-scientific organization devoted to finding, or fabricating, a glorious Germanic past. The National Socialists held a winter solstice at the Externsteine with fire and music and since the 1980’s new age groups have continued to celebrate there.

 

60 years later Uta Halle evaluated the finds from the 1930’s. They contained late Paleolithic artifacts, pottery from the 10th to 14th century, pottery from the 17th to the 19th century and iron artifacts from the 12th to 17th century. Nothing that could be called "pagan Germanic". No evidence that it had ever been a site for ancient pagan rites.

 

Halle describes the Externsteine mythos thusly:

 

“We reach the conclusion that everybody creates his or her own story about the site. For these stories, the results of archaeology are not normally very important, and perhaps without any significance whatsoever. It has been argued that archaeologists have a great responsibility to serve the public with the provision of facts and to argue against certain misrepresentations of the evidence. But how realistic is it to hope that archaeologists can really make a difference and educate the rest of society about the results of their work? The Externsteine is one of those archaeological/historical objects whose ideational or emotional value is more important than their historical value. Such monuments are not appreciated purely for their academic significance, but receive their social meaning from the way they are perceived by different members of society. They provide compelling explanations that draw on people’s desires for mystery, identity and connection to unseen power, and are far more fascinating than the sometime very dull and pragmatic result of the scientists.”

 

Sources

Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard's Histories by Bernhard Walter Scholz

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externsteine

Die Externsteine sind bis auf witeres germanisch 2002, by Uta Halle

On the Folklore of the Externsteine by Martin Schmidt and Uta Halle, in "Archaeology and Folklore" by Amy Gazin-Scwartz and Cornelius Holtorf

The Past as Propaganda by Bettina Arnold in Exploring the Past: Readings in Archaeology, James Bayman (Ed.)

Extersteine: The Quest for Germany’s roots by Philip Coppens

Poles, Pillars and Trees by Ermund Alderman Marklosahsono, 2008

Dictionary of Northern Mythology by Rudolf Simek

The Apocryphal and legendary life of Christ: being the whole body of the Apocryphal Gospels by James Donahoo, 1903