Searching for Sahsnôt
Part 1
By Travis Lilley (Ermund Alderman)

Editor’s note: We are very pleased to be able to offer the books of Ermund Alderman to you in this publication! They are out of print and unavailable to the public at this time. This book will be published in three parts, the second and third parts in upcoming editions.
 

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
1 Corinthians 10:20

In 743 CE, following his campaigns into the Saxon lands, Carloman, King of the Franks, issued a capitulary against the religion of the Saxons, prohibiting the worship of the Saxons’ ancestral Gods and forcing all within his reach to submit to Christian baptism. As part of the baptismal rite, the Saxons were forced to renounce the foremost of their Gods, decreeing them to be unholy servants of the Christian Satan. Known as the Abrenuntiatio, this renunciation formula follows here in Old Frankish and modern English.

Ec forsacho alum dioboles uuercum and uuordum thunaer ende uuoden ende saxnote ende allêm them unholdum the hira genotas sint.

I renounce all the works and words of the Devil, Thunaer, Woden, and Saxnôt and all those fiends that are their associates.

Aside from serving as a lasting testament to the intolerance inherent in Christian religion and to the atrocities that brought Christianity to the northern and western regions of Europe, the Abrenuntiatio preserves the names of three of the Saxon gods. Of significance is the fact that the names of these gods are given as they were known to the Franks, rather than according to the Roman interpretation. It is not Mercury who is renounced but rather Uuôden. This is certainly a rather unusual break with medieval ecclesiastical tradition. The bishop that penned this formula knew very well that the worship of these particular gods was deeply rooted in the belief of the Saxons. Nothing short of renunciation of the gods by their Germanic names would suffice. There could be no confusion among the conquered as to which gods they were to forsake.

Of the Gods listed in the Abrenuntiatio, Thunaer and Uuôden are clearly the same Gods the Norse knew as Thor and Odin. Saxnote, or Sahsnôt as Grimm related his name in Old Saxon, however does not appear by that name in any Nordic sources. This has led to no small measure of debate over the identity of Sahsnôt. Outside of Carloman’s Capitulary, the name appears only once, across the North Sea, in the genealogy of the East Saxon kings of Essex.

East Saxons

When the Saxons invaded Britain in the fifth century, they brought with them the worship of the gods they had known in their homeland. Over time, the names of these gods changed as the Old Saxon language took on characteristics of the languages of other Germanic migrants to Britain, eventually becoming the Anglo-Saxon language.

Setting aside the institution of temporary kingship called during times of war, the Saxons who migrated north across the sea soon adopted the more permanent form of kingship known to the Angles. In the institution of sacral kingship, the king is required to trace his noble lineage back through the ages to one of the Gods. Amongst the Swedes, this line is traced to Yngvi-Frey. Yet among the royal houses of the Anglo-Saxons, this line is traced almost exclusively to Uuôden. To this rule, the royal line of Essex stands out as the exception, tracing its line to Sahsnôt, who appears as the son of Uuôden in Florence of Worcester’s twelfth century Chronicon ex chronicis. Commenting on this is his Myth and Religion of the North, Turville-Petre wrote the following:

Saxnot remains a riddle. Since he is together named with Thunaer and Woden, he must have been an important god. He must also have been known in England for the genealogies of the East Saxon kings are traced to Seaxnet. Seaxnet does not appear in the other royal genealogies, which shows that the kings of Essex were believed to descend from a divine ancestor who was not the parent of other dynasties.

The Meaning of “Sahsnôt”

That Sahsnôt was an important god among the Saxons is undisputed. Yet, as mentioned previously, the identity of this deity has been contested for some time. Of the etymology of his name, two leading theories have been put forth. The first would interpret Sahsnôt as “sword friend.” This interpretation was favored by scholars of the nineteenth century though, since the mid twentieth century, it seems to have fallen out of favor. The second, and more preferred interpretation of “Sahsnôt”, renders his name as “Saxon companion” or “friend of the Saxons.”

The confusion began with the possible interpretations of the initial portion of his name: sahs. Sahs is the Old Saxon form of the Anglo-Saxon word seax, referring to a single-edged cleaving knife. The Saxons earned their name, “warriors of the sahs” after they massacred a number of Thuringians at an inter-tribal Thing. The Saxons were able to utilize the sahs against the Thuringians because the knife’s small size allowed it to be concealed beneath a cloak. Interpreting sahs as “sword”, however, is quite a stretch. While some sahs did indeed reach the size of the modern machete and were sometimes used as swords, most were much smaller. The vast majority of sahs were utilitarian tools, quite useful for their cleaving ability. That is not to say that the sahs was not carried into battle. All through Europe it was common for soldiers to carry a dagger or knife with them into battle as a weapon of last resort should they lose their spears or break their swords. Even as late as the Viking era, Scandinavian warriors were buried with sahs along with their swords and spears.

That the Saxons would name one of their most important gods after a utilitarian tool, one to be carried into battle as a back-up weapon, seems rather odd. If that were the case, one might liberally interpret Sahsnôt to mean “The ‘Oh-shit-occasions’ friend of last resort weapon.” It is doubtful that the Saxons would have bothered with worshiping such a god, or that the Franks would have felt his cult a threat to the spread of Christianity.

Summarizing the thought of most modern scholars, Georges Dumézil put forth the following etymology of Sahsnôt in his Gods of the Ancient Northmen.

The first two of these divine names are cognates for Thor and Odin. The third name, whose second element corresponds to modern Germanic (Ge)noss “companion,” means nothing more than “companion of the Saxons.”

Though Sahsnôt may be taken to mean “companion of the Saxons” this still does very little to cast light on his identity. On this question there seem to be three popular proposals. The first is that Sahsnôt is a god unique to the Saxon peoples, entirely unknown to the Norse. The second connects him with Tiuu (ON: Tyr). The third identifies him as Frô (ON: Frey). In searching for Sahsnôt, each of these theories should be given its due consideration.

Unique God

That Sahsnôt may be a god unique to the Saxons is an idea that has some appeal. Drawing such a conclusion from the start certainly spares the modern mythologist the need to invest any time and effort into examining the matter further. Yet, in so deciding, the mythologist fails to utilize the various tools afforded him by comparative mythological studies, drawing his conclusion as soon as the tool of etymology has served its purpose. That is akin to attempting an archeological excavation using only a pick-axe when shovels, brushes, and a whole array of tools are needed to uncover what the passage of time has hidden.

That Sahsnôt was a god so revered by the Saxons that they called him their friend, is hardly cause to assume he was known only to them. Uuôden and Thunaer are both called by a number of bynames throughout Nordic literature. The same is the case with the goddess Frûa. Therefore, with such precedent already established, the possibility that Sahsnôt is an epithet for a god better known by another name should not be lightly dismissed.

The Sword Connection

Writing over a hundred years ago when the serious study of Germanic lore was still in its infancy, Jacob Grimm wavered on his identification of Sahsnôt. Drawing from the popular etymology of the day which gave the meaning “sword companion” to Sahsnôt’s name, Grimm focused heavily on those Gods in mythology who were associated with the sword to draw his own conclusion.

Aside from the obvious issue of translating Sahsnôt as “sword companion”, Grimm faced the problem that, other than a single reference in the Poetic Edda’s “Lay of Sigdrifa”, in which Sigurd is instructed to invoke Tiuu twice after carving victory runes on his sword , there is nothing in the Nordic corpus that connects Tiuu to the sword. From this sole reference, it is a stretch to conclude that Tiuu was a sword god in particular, rather than a god of battle, which is how he is known in Snorri’s Prose Edda.

Perhaps because of this ambiguity, Grimm looked to the identification of “Mars” worshipped among the Getae, Scythians and Alans. In the legends of these peoples, “Mars” is the god of war and is indeed associated with a divine sword, making him, in effect, a sword god. Aside from confusion presented by medieval writers, who seem to use “Mars” when referring to both Tiuu and Uuôden, a greater difficulty is presented by the fact that none of those tribes were Germanic peoples. The Getae were a tribe of Thracians whereas the Scythians and the Alans were largely of Iranian origin. That the Goths settled in Scythian lands and perhaps adopted the worship of the Scythian Mars does very little to identify that Iranian God with the Germanic Tiuu. Much less does it connect Tiuu to the Saxon Sahsnôt.

In writing of Frô, Grimm felt compelled to acknowledge that in many ways, even as a sword god, Frô may have been a more suitable candidate for Sahsnôt. In the Eddas, Frô is gifted with a magical sword which fights by itself on the same occasion that Uuôden is given his famous spear and Thunaer is given his mighty hammer. It is worth noting that these three Gods alone received magical weapons from the dwarves. As Uuôden is considered a god of the spear and Thunaer is considered a god of the hammer, it may very well have been that Frô was held to be a god of the sword. Thus even if the etymology of “sword companion” carried more weight, the body of lore certainly would point to Frô as the most likely to be that god.

In the end, Grimm decided to identify Sahsnôt with Tiuu. This is not surprising, as comparative mythologists of that era were hard at work trying to find in Tiuu some ancient supreme Indo-European sky-father based on the etymology of his name. Whether it was Irmin, Sahsnôt, Tuisco, or some other God whose identity was unclear, Tiuu was thrust forward as a likely candidate in an effort to give the popular theory of the day more weight.

Among modern mythologists, this theory has been rejected for some time. Of those who still cling to it, Hilda Davidson is the most well known. . Though Davidson’s early works on the afterlife and the Anglo-Saxon sword are second to none, her more popular mythological works such as Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, were largely built upon mythological theories that had long been rejected by her peers. Yet as her mythological works were printed in paperback and were penned for public consumption rather than peer review, they have long remained in print, being readily available at any large chain bookstore. This has led to their popularity among modern heathens, who are often faced with a dearth in informational material to begin with. Hence over time, the modern heathen has become more and more out of touch with serious scholarly mythological studies, having been sold discarded nineteenth century theory without the resources to know any better.

Returning to Grimm, it is worth examining his argument for a Tiuu-Sahsnôt association further. In discussing Frô’s sword, Grimm wrote the following:

There appear to have been other traditions also afloat about this sword; and it would not seem far-fetched, if on the strength of it we placed the well-known trilogy of ‘Thunar, Wôdan, Saxnôt’ beside Adam of Bremen’s ‘Wodan, Thor, and Fricco’ and the Eddic ‘Oðinn, Asabragr, Freyr,’

 
that is to say, if we took Freyr, Fricco = Frô to be the same Sahsnôt the sword possessor. Add to this that the Edda never mentions the sword of Tyr. Nevertheless, there are stronger reasons in favor of Sahsnôt being Zio: this for one, that he was a son of Wuotan, whereas Freyr comes of Niorðr, though some genealogies to be presently mentioned bring him into connection with Wôdan.”

Grimm may have been among the first mythologists to see a correlation between the worship, at Uppsala, of Odin, Thor, and Freyr, with the many appearances in Nordic poetry of those gods’ names linked together in what could be described as a magico-religious formula, and with the Thunaer, Uuôden, and Sahsnôt of the Saxons. As we shall soon see, however, he was by no means the last to see this association. Yet before delving more deeply into this, we should examine further Grimm’s argument for favoring Tiuu as Sahsanôt.

[1] 1 Corinthians 10:20

[2] Massmann, Abschwörungsformeln No 1, from Thorpe, Northern Mythology, p. 168.

[3] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol. I, p. 203

[4] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol. IV, p. 1714.

[5] Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, p.100.

[6] Dumézil, Gods of the Ancient Northmen, p. 19, 20.

[7] Poetic Edda, “The Lay of Sigdrifa”, p. 167.

[8] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol. I, p. 197.

[9] H.R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (New York, NY: Penguin  Books, 1990), pp. 60 and 196.

[10] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol. I, p. 216.