Irminsul

Irminsul (pillar of Irmin) was the pillar that was said to connect heaven and earth, represented by oak or wooden pillars venerated by the Saxons.

Overview

Irmin was the war god of the Saxons, son of Mannus, and ancestor of the tribe of the Herminones. The Old Norse form of Irmin was Jörmun and interestingly, just like Ygg, it 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. It appears, thus, that Irminsul may have represented a World tree corresponding to Yggdrasil among the Saxon tribes of Germany.

The holy yew at the temple at Uppsala mentioned by the eleventh-century chronicler, archbishop Adam of Bremen, could have a direct relation to the Irmin pillar; the flight of Widukind and other Saxon nobles to Denmark in 777 after the victory of Charlemagne has been presented as an event mediating late pagan cultural exchanges between Saxons and Scandinavia. At this time Old Saxon and Old Norse may still have been mutually intelligible, and the two neighbouring cultures probably retained open transmission of ideas.

The actual Irminsul of the Saxons may have been a wooden pillar with a cult image on top. Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin with Old Norse iörmungrund "Earth", and iörmungandr (anguis maximus, i.e. the Midgard serpent).

According to one suggestion, it could have been situated on or near the Externsteine. A twelfth century Christian relief on these standing stones depicts a tree-like design at the feet of Nicodemus. It is disputed whether this is simply intended as a depiction of a palmtree, or represents the bent or fallen Irminsul beneath a triumphant Christianity.

At the time of Charlemagne, there were probably several Irmin pillars. One of them, at Eresburg castle near Paderborn, he is reported to have destroyed in 772.

Awareness of the significance of the concept seems to have persisted well into Christian times; Grimm cites the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik as mentioning several Irmin pillars:

Concerning Mercury:

ûf einir yrmensûle / stuont ein abgot ungehiure, / den hiezen sie ir koufman;

"On an Irminsul / stands an enormous idol / which they call their merchant"

Concerning Julius Caesar:

Rômere in ungetrûwelîche sluogen / ûf einir yrmensûl sie in begruoben;

"The Romans slew him treacherously / and buried him on an Irminsul"

Concerning Simon the Magician:

ûf eine yrmensûl er steic / daz lantvolc im allesamt neic

"He climbed upon an Irminsul / the peasants all bowed before him"

Remains of an Irmin pillar apparently dating to Roman times are found in the Hildesheim cathedral, where it has been adapted as a candelabrum. The nearby village of Irminseul () points to an older connection of the area with the concept. Other placenames in the area like Drachenberg "dragon's mount" and Wormstal "worm's dale" point to the Nibelung legend.

Roman association of warlike Wotan with Mercury rather than with Mars, may have been due to an identification of the Irmin pillars with the hermai dedicated to Mercury.

Neopaganism

The design of the Irminsul symbol current in Germanic neopaganism, particularly Heathenry and Ásatrú, is based on the shape of the tree in the Externsteine relief, but straightened back into a vertical position. The shape of this design has been likened to that of the Tyr (Ziu) rune. Irmin may have been an epithet of Ziu in early Germanic times, only later transferred to Wotan, or Wotan himself may have emerged as separate from Ziu only in the Migration Period.

Reference

Karl Schoppe, Die Irminsul, Forschungen über ihren Standort, Paderborn 1947.

References on-line

"Of Irminsuls and world trees"

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Overview

Neopaganism

Reference

References on-line

See also