Swastika (Germanic Iron Age)
Encyclopedia
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
design is known from artefacts of various cultures since the Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
, and it recurs with some frequency on artefacts dated to the Germanic Iron Age
Germanic Iron Age
The Germanic Iron Age is the name given to the period 400–800 in Northern Europe and it is part of the continental Age of Migrations.-Germanic Iron :...
, i.e. the Migration period
Migration Period
The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...
to Viking Age
Viking Age
Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...
period in Scandinavia, including the Vendel era
Vendel era
In Swedish prehistory, the Vendel era is the name given to a part of the Germanic Iron Age ....
in Sweden, attested from as early as the 3rd century in Elder Futhark inscriptions and as late as the 9th century on Viking Age image stones.
In older literature, the symbol is known variously as gammadion, fylfot
Fylfot
Fylfot or fylfot cross , is a synonym for swastika, sometimes used in Britain.However – at least in modern heraldry texts, such as Friar and Woodcock & Robinson – the fylfot differs somewhat from the archetypal form of the swastika: always upright and typically with truncated limbs, as...
, crux gothica, flanged thwarts, or angled cross.
English use of the Sanskritism swastika for the symbol dates to the 1870s, at first in the context of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but from the 1890s also in cross-cultural comparison.
Examples include a 2nd century funerary urn of the Przeworsk culture
Przeworsk culture
The Przeworsk culture is part of an Iron Age archaeological complex that dates from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. It was located in what is now central and southern Poland, later spreading to parts of eastern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia ranging between the Oder and the middle and...
, the 3rd century Værløse Fibula from Zealand, Denmark, the Gothic
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
spearhead from Brest-Litovsk, Russia, the 9th century Snoldelev Stone
Snoldelev Stone
The Snoldelev Stone, listed as DR 248 in the Rundata catalog, is a 9th century runestone that was originally located at Snoldelev, Ramsø, Denmark.-Description:...
from Ramsø
Ramsø
Until January 1, 2007 Ramsø was a municipality in the former Roskilde County on the island of Zealand in east Denmark. The municipality covered an area of 76 km², and had a total population of 9,320 . Its last mayor was Poul Lindor Nielsen, a member of the Social Democrats political party...
, Denmark, and numerous Migration Period bracteate
Bracteate
A bracteate is a flat, thin, single-sided gold medal worn as jewelry that was produced in Northern Europe predominantly during the Migration Period of the Germanic Iron Age...
s. The swastika is drawn either left-facing or right-facing, sometimes with "feet" attached to its four legs.
The symbol is closely related to the triskele, a symbol of three-fold rotational symmetry, which occurs on artefacts of the same period. When considered as a four-fold rotational symmetrical analogue of the triskele, the symbol is sometimes also referred to as tetraskele.
The swastika symbol in the Germanic Iron Age has been interpreted as having a sacral meaning, associated with either Odin
Odin
Odin is a major god in Norse mythology and the ruler of Asgard. Homologous with the Anglo-Saxon "Wōden" and the Old High German "Wotan", the name is descended from Proto-Germanic "*Wodanaz" or "*Wōđanaz"....
or Thor
Thor
In Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...
.
Bracteates
A number of bracteateBracteate
A bracteate is a flat, thin, single-sided gold medal worn as jewelry that was produced in Northern Europe predominantly during the Migration Period of the Germanic Iron Age...
s, with or without runic inscriptions, show a swastika. Most of these bracteates are of the "C" type, showing a human head above a quadruped, often interpreted as the Germanic god Woden/Odin
Wodanaz
or is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of a god of Germanic paganism, known as in Norse mythology, in Old English, or in Old High German and in Lombardic...
. The swastika in most of these cases is placed next to the head. The majority of these swastikas are left-facing (卍), but there are also a number of right-facing (卐) instances. It must be noted in this context that the direction of the runic inscriptions on bracteates always is right-to-left (the mirror image of the stamp used to produce the bracteates), and in the transcription below the swastika is mirrored to preserve its directionality relative to the reading direction.
Examples where the swastika is part of the inscription include (DR being the Rundata
Rundata
The Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future research...
province code for "Denmark"):
DR BR12 Darum 4 (lïïaþzet lae : t卐ozrï);
DR BR38 Bolbro 1 and DR BR40 Allesø (both zlut : eaþl lauz 卐 owa ); DR BR41 Vedby (...] lauz 卐 owa );
DR BR53 Maglemose 2 (卍(l)kaz).
Anglo-Saxon England
The early Anglo-SaxonAnglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
ship burial
Ship burial
A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave...
at Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo
Sutton Hoo, near to Woodbridge, in the English county of Suffolk, is the site of two 6th and early 7th century cemeteries. One contained an undisturbed ship burial including a wealth of Anglo-Saxon artefacts of outstanding art-historical and archaeological significance, now held in the British...
, England, contained numerous items bearing the swastika, now housed in the collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge
The MAA : Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge houses the University's collections of local antiquities, together with archaeological and ethnographic artefacts from around the world...
. The Swastika is clearly marked on a hilt and sword belt found at Bifrons in Bekesbourne
Bekesbourne
Bekesbourne is a village, within the civil parish of Bekesbourne-with-Patrixbourne, near Canterbury in Kent, South East England.Situated approximately three miles south-east of the city boundary, the village has a church, St Peter's Parish Church which has a Norman doorway, a 13th century chancel...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, in a grave of about the 6th century.
Interpretation
Hilda Ellis Davidson theorized that the swastika symbol was associated with ThorThor
In Norse mythology, Thor is a hammer-wielding god associated with thunder, lightning, storms, oak trees, strength, the protection of mankind, and also hallowing, healing, and fertility...
, possibly representing his hammer Mjolnir - symbolic of thunder - and possibly being connected to the Bronze Age sun cross
Sun cross
The sun cross, also known as the wheel cross, Odin's cross, or Woden's cross, a cross inside a circle, is a common symbol in artifacts of the Americas and Prehistoric Europe, particularly during the Neolithic to Bronze Age periods.-Stone Age:...
. Davidson cites "many examples" of the swastika symbol from Anglo-Saxon graves of the pagan period, with particular prominence on cremation urns from the cemeteries of East Anglia. Some of the swastikas on the items, on display at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, are depicted with such care and art that, according to Davidson, it must have possessed special significance as a funerary symbol
Funerary art
Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. Tomb is a general term for the repository, while grave goods are objects—other than the primary human remains—which have been placed inside...
. The runic inscription on the Sæbø sword
Sæbø sword
The Sæbø sword is an early 9th-century Viking sword, found in a barrow at Sæbø, Vik, Sogn, Norway in 1825. It is now held at the Bergen Museum in Bergen, Norway. The sword has an enigmatic inscription on its blade, which has been identified as a runic inscription incorporating a swastika symbol...
(ca. AD 800) has been taken as evidence of the swastika as a symbol of Thor in Norse paganism
Norse paganism
Norse paganism is the religious traditions of the Norsemen, a Germanic people living in the Nordic countries. Norse paganism is therefore a subset of Germanic paganism, which was practiced in the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes across most of Northern and Central Europe in the Viking Age...
.
External links
- http://www.arild-hauge.com/brakteater.htm