Calendars, holidays, their relationship, and importance.

In the past, I have written about Heathen holidays, and I tried to not be offensive.  It didn't get me or my message very far.  Heathenry has just three major holidays.  That's it.  The rest is secondary, some of which are recent additions.  And then we have one that is an out and out celebration of a Christian saint.  Let me start at a new point.

All of Northern Europe worshipped in some way and form the Aesir.  But there was not in any way or form a 'pan Northern European religious' practice.  Nothing was the same; similarities here, a difference there.  Let's look at people and calendars.

Scandinavians and Icelanders I will refer to as 'Norse.'  The group I will refer to as Anglo-Saxon is comprised of Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Angles, the early Franks, and Lombards.  Both groups had these three major holidays.

For the Norse - The Ynglinga Saga, chapter eight (Winter Nights, Yule, and Sigrblot).  In the Heimskringla, the Saga of Hakon the Good, section fifteen.

For the Anglo-Saxons - A few excerpts from Tacitus's Germania and excerpts from Bede's De Temporum Ratione.  

What makes this challenging is that Elder Heathenry (Heathenry before Christianization) did not use a solar calendar.  They used a lunar calendar.

The Norse celebrated the first day of winter on a full moon that appears usually mid to late October.  It is called Winter Nights or Disablot.  The Anglo-Saxons did the same but referred to it as Winter Moon.

The Norse and the Anglo-Saxons celebrated Yule during mid to late January, depending on when the full moon occurred.  It was a three-day celebration with the focus on good crops for the coming year.  The Anglo-Saxons give us Mother's Night.  It was the first day of their Yule and it was held on the full moon.  In both cases, Yule is a three-day celebration, crop focused, and half-way between the first day of winter and the first day of summer.

 Sigrblot is the Norse celebration of the first day of summer.  It's done mid to late April, depending on the full moon.  The Anglo-Saxons celebrated the first day of summer with a full day feast and called it Oster/Ostar/Eostre.

These are the three major celebrations from Elder Heathenry, and at no time was a holiday celebration wrapped around a solstice or equinox.  The answer for this is simple - Elder Heathenry used lunar calendars.  Solstices and equinoxes form the bulwark of solar calendars, the Roman/Julian and the Popish/Gregorian, which is used today.  It was not until Christianization that solar calendars were  introduced to the northern peoples.

There are holidays that should be celebrated, like Haustblot/Blood Month in November and Alfablot in December.  The point is the calendar origins and then wisely celebrating them.  The one alluded to above that should not be celebrated by Heathens/Pagans is Walpurgisnacht.

Walpurga was the niece of Boniface and she had the same proclivities as her uncle.  For her work, the Church gleefully made her a saint.  Her feast day is the 'eve of May' ... or April 30th.

These topics and more are the subjects of my new book.  Hopefully, it will be published before this year is finished.  This post is but a bare thumbnail concerning these subjects. 


                           Copyright 2019 Terry Unger All Rights Reserved

The Irminsul Revisited

Several years ago I wrote three posts on the Irminsul.  I hinted, maybe too strongly, that it was located at Externstiene.  At the time I was intrigued with the site but knew, for just as many years and then some, that the Irminsul was not there. Science and real sources state otherwise.  Modern scholars agree that Externstiene has nothing to do with the Irminsul.  Thermoluminescence, the modern technique of studying the use of fire, showed that it was used from time to time as a shelter in pre-Christian times and nothing more.  Also, extensive archaeological digs failed to yield any evidence of Externstiene being any kind of religious site.  It was located about 30 miles north in the old Eresburg area, now known as Obermarsburg.  So why Externstiene?  

In 1564 or thereabouts, a German fellow stated that the Irminsul of the Saxons had to be located at the Externstiene stone formation.  No research, just an assumption, based on wishful thinking about the standing stones at Externstiene. 

So, in 1929 a minor Nazi party functionary made the same statement.  Another assumption made without a stitch of research.  The Royal Frankish Annals were available.  As were other sources.  

In 772 the Saxons burned down a church.  Think of this as the Saxons showing the Vikings (20 years later, Lindisfarne) how to party.  Depending on the source, the church was either inside Saxon territory or just over the border in the Frankish kingdom.  Charlemagne got the news and butter started to churn in his shorts.  The Royal Frankish Annals tell the tale.  

Charlemagne, 'The Butcher of Saxons,' gathered his troops at Worms.  First, he had to destroy the castle/fortress at Eresburg.  More than likely it was guarding the Irminsul complex (this is an educated assumption on my part).  Then the Butcher took on the Irminsul.  

The RFA tells us that the Irminsul was a huge pillar.  A huge pillar.  And, it took the Butcher three days to finish the job.  Finally, the RFA casually mentions all the gold and silver the Butcher carted off.  

The Irminsul, the universal pillar, the axis mundi of the Saxons, did not stand by itself.  It was in a spiritual complex, a center of pilgrimage.  The Saxon people came to worship and left votive offerings, the gold, and silver that the Butcher took with him.  And only a huge complex would take three days to destroy.  Compare this to the Heathen temple at Uppsala Sweden and you will get the idea.  

The following year, 773, the Saxons retook the site.  Unfortunately, the Butcher prevailed and in 780 built a church on the site.  He tossed in a Christian cemetery to double down on his hope that the Saxons would leave well enough alone.  They did, but centuries later during the Thirty Years War that church was torched to the ground.  Soon after another church was erected on this site.  It is still there and is functioning today.  Inside and outside of this church are plaques that plainly state that this is the site of the Saxon Irminsul.  On our next trip to Europe, we will be making a pilgrimage to Obermarsburg, the site of the one and only Irminsul.  

                  Copyright 2019 Terry Unger All Rights Reserved