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> Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago > the real showstopper is an amulet

> Ginnerup dug up 14 glittering gold disks—some as big as saucers—that archaeologists say were buried about 1,500 years ago > the real showstopper is an amulet called a bracteate with two stylized designs: a man in profile, his long hair pulled back in a braid, and a horse in full gallop. An expert in ancient runes says she was awestruck when she finally made out the inscription on top: “He is Odin’s man.” > These embossed runes are the oldest known written mention of Odin, the Norse god of war and ruler of Valhalla. Ginnerup’s bracteate, which archaeologists describe as the most significant Danish find in centuries, extended the worship of Odin back 150 years I don't think this is right. The first mention of Odin by a Germanic source could date to 500 AD. But the Romans wrote about the Germanic gods several centuries prior to that. They used the equivalence we still use today, calling Odin "Mercury". But what they say about the Germanic gods is compatible with what we know from Germanic sources; there's no reason to believe there was a change in the gods. I note that the image on the bracteate features a pretty prominent swastika. Maybe Hitler was accidentally on to something after all.

tokai 1y ago
It's the oldest mention of Odin in Denmark. The sciam journalist lost that detail somewhere. That is why the find pushed worship of Odin in Denmark back 150 years.
eesmith 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... says "The earliest clear reference to Odin by name is found on a C-bracteate discovered in Denmark in 2020." So, "written mention of Odin" seems to mean written as "Odin', and not as "Mercury". It also mentions some debate over if the Goths actually worshiped Odin/Mercury, but I am too ill-informed to make sense if that's relevant. I did manage to find a scholarly reference to the topic at https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e4-ff28-499e-b654-ae292c3de469/content#page=336 https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e... ("Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA. Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022") > The problem of Mercury > Despite lack of Germanic evidence for the existence of a cult of Wodan/Óðinn before the fifth (or perhaps even the sixth) century, as presented above, many scholars maintain ancient roots. For example, disregarding critical scholarship on various individual sources, Schjødt reiterated that “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era (at least 3000 BC)” (Schjødt 2019: 67). ... > The reading of interpretation romana maintains that Tacitus’ famous description of Germanic deities, Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, should be understood to signify Wodan/Óðinn. Of course, it has already been shown by Karl Helm that this was a historical trope copied from Herodotus, and/or Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Helm 1946: 7-12). The fact that Caesar was talking about Celts, and his description of religion among the Germani mentions worship of the sun, moon, and fire, does nothing to secure the reliability of such ‘historical’ sources. Either way, the argument that the foremost deity interpreted by Tacitus as a ‘Mercury-type’ must be Wodan/Óðinn is a projection of the latter’s supremacy in Old Norse material onto a Germanic society several centuries older. This becomes a circular argument and cannot be leading.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Tacitus isn't the only interpretation of the Germanic gods. He is thought to refer to Thor as Hercules, but there are other references where a Jupiter is mentioned. There is a Roman complaint that the Germanic peoples see Mercury as the father of Jupiter when it should be the other way around. And while it's possible, it would be extremely surprising for Odin to be a new addition to the Germanic pantheon when we find him attested under that name in the 5th/6th century. He's in charge of the whole thing! The norm is for gods - all gods - to have very deep roots. Where we can prove that a god is novel, we can also often show that it's a borrowing of a foreign god with deeper roots (e.g. Adonis < Tammuz) or that it is an explicit deification of a human (e.g. if you go to the temple of the city god in Shanghai, there's an informative plaque explaining that the city god was posthumously appointed to the position by an emperor of the Yuan dynasty). I do understand that after cassava or maize was introduced somewhere in Africa, anthropologists documented a new goddess associated with the crop. Innovation exists. But pantheons are very conservative overall. "Several centuries" is not an amount of time where we expect to see pantheonic turnover.
  - eesmith 1y ago
    Were all gods worshiped? By my limited understanding, the question isn't if Odin was part of the pantheon, but rather if there was a specific cult of Odin.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      I don't understand your question. All gods are worshiped by definition. "The cult of Odin" would refer to anything and everything related to Odin. See sense 1 here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult , or sense 3/4 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult .
      - eesmith 1y ago
        I am a software developer with little knowledge of the topic. What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God informs me: "In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". The "often" tells me that a god is not always worshipped. How should I make sense of this line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... : "There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated." Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'. What veneration, devotion, and religious rites are attested?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ethan_smith 1y ago
Roman accounts using interpretatio romana (equating Germanic deities with Roman gods) aren't the same as direct written evidence naming "Odin" specifically. The bracteate's significance is that it contains the actual name in runic form, not a Roman interpretation or equivalent.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Sure, but claiming that it pushes back the date of Odin's worship back 150 years is wrong. It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom.
  - tokai 1y ago
    >It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom. Why state this so strongly over something that was misconstrued?
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      Huh?
HK-NC 1y ago
I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Where do you think he got the term "Aryan" from?
  - Reasoning 1y ago
    From contemporary ethnologists who used the term to refer to the proto-indo-europeans? Because the term aryan is common amongst the languages descended from the proto-indo-european language (Arya, Iran, Alans, Arios)? Nazi philosophy grew out of 19th century ethnology which was heavily influenced by Darwinism. They believed the proto-indo-european ("Aryan") homeland was in northern Europe and that the spread of "Aryan" language was do to "Aryan" immigration to those regions and that in ancient times those regions were led by an "Aryan" "master race" who ruled over the "lesser races" do to their natural superior genes developed through generations of natural selection in the harsh northern climate. To be clear, I believe that is all BS but I wrote all that to clarify that the Nazis didn't steal the term Aryan from the Hindu, it's a term used by the Indo-Iranians to self-designate which was erroneously misattributed to the proto-indo-europeans by early European ethnologists.
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      So Hitler was jealous of the fact that the Romance speakers had history and the Germanic speakers didn't. And he solved that problem by appropriating the history of India and claiming it was also the history of the Germans. He used Indian symbols and Indian words. But that doesn't mean that he took them from India? That's crazy. What else would you say he did? That they were from India was the point. Without their Indian identity, they would have failed to serve his purpose of giving a history to the Germans.
      - 1y ago

tokai 1y ago

It's the oldest mention of Odin in Denmark. The sciam journalist lost that detail somewhere. That is why the find pushed worship of Odin in Denmark back 150 years.

eesmith 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... says "The earliest clear reference to Odin by name is found on a C-bracteate discovered in Denmark in 2020." So, "written mention of Odin" seems to mean written as "Odin', and not as "Mercury". It also mentions some debate over if the Goths actually worshiped Odin/Mercury, but I am too ill-informed to make sense if that's relevant. I did manage to find a scholarly reference to the topic at https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e4-ff28-499e-b654-ae292c3de469/content#page=336 https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/c11e69e... ("Pre-print papers of THE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SAGA CONFERENCE SAGAS AND THE CIRCUM-BALTIC ARENA. Helsinki and Tallinn, 7th–14th August 2022") > The problem of Mercury > Despite lack of Germanic evidence for the existence of a cult of Wodan/Óðinn before the fifth (or perhaps even the sixth) century, as presented above, many scholars maintain ancient roots. For example, disregarding critical scholarship on various individual sources, Schjødt reiterated that “taken together, they strongly indicate that Óðinn, although not exactly the same as the god that we know from the Nordic sources, has roots reaching far back in time, probably as early as the Indo-European era (at least 3000 BC)” (Schjødt 2019: 67). ... > The reading of interpretation romana maintains that Tacitus’ famous description of Germanic deities, Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, should be understood to signify Wodan/Óðinn. Of course, it has already been shown by Karl Helm that this was a historical trope copied from Herodotus, and/or Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico (Helm 1946: 7-12). The fact that Caesar was talking about Celts, and his description of religion among the Germani mentions worship of the sun, moon, and fire, does nothing to secure the reliability of such ‘historical’ sources. Either way, the argument that the foremost deity interpreted by Tacitus as a ‘Mercury-type’ must be Wodan/Óðinn is a projection of the latter’s supremacy in Old Norse material onto a Germanic society several centuries older. This becomes a circular argument and cannot be leading.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
Tacitus isn't the only interpretation of the Germanic gods. He is thought to refer to Thor as Hercules, but there are other references where a Jupiter is mentioned. There is a Roman complaint that the Germanic peoples see Mercury as the father of Jupiter when it should be the other way around. And while it's possible, it would be extremely surprising for Odin to be a new addition to the Germanic pantheon when we find him attested under that name in the 5th/6th century. He's in charge of the whole thing! The norm is for gods - all gods - to have very deep roots. Where we can prove that a god is novel, we can also often show that it's a borrowing of a foreign god with deeper roots (e.g. Adonis < Tammuz) or that it is an explicit deification of a human (e.g. if you go to the temple of the city god in Shanghai, there's an informative plaque explaining that the city god was posthumously appointed to the position by an emperor of the Yuan dynasty). I do understand that after cassava or maize was introduced somewhere in Africa, anthropologists documented a new goddess associated with the crop. Innovation exists. But pantheons are very conservative overall. "Several centuries" is not an amount of time where we expect to see pantheonic turnover.
- eesmith 1y ago
  Were all gods worshiped? By my limited understanding, the question isn't if Odin was part of the pantheon, but rather if there was a specific cult of Odin.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    I don't understand your question. All gods are worshiped by definition. "The cult of Odin" would refer to anything and everything related to Odin. See sense 1 here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult , or sense 3/4 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult .
    - eesmith 1y ago
      I am a software developer with little knowledge of the topic. What do we call a personified supernatural being who is not worshiped? Are there really no such entities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God informs me: "In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". The "often" tells me that a god is not always worshipped. How should I make sense of this line from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin#Roman_era_to_Migration_Pe... : "There is no direct, undisputed evidence for the worship of Odin/Mercury among the Goths, and the existence of a cult of Odin among them is debated." Definition 1 starts 'The veneration, devotion and religious rites given to a deity'. What veneration, devotion, and religious rites are attested?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ethan_smith 1y ago

Roman accounts using interpretatio romana (equating Germanic deities with Roman gods) aren't the same as direct written evidence naming "Odin" specifically. The bracteate's significance is that it contains the actual name in runic form, not a Roman interpretation or equivalent.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
Sure, but claiming that it pushes back the date of Odin's worship back 150 years is wrong. It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom.
- tokai 1y ago
  >It hasn't made any change to our beliefs about when Odin was worshiped, or where, or by whom. Why state this so strongly over something that was misconstrued?
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Huh?

HK-NC 1y ago

I'm not sure who decided that Hitler stole the swastika from the Hindus, but it's false. The symbol appeared in the decorations of his childhood church IIRC and wasn't an alien symbol to germans elsewhere.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
Where do you think he got the term "Aryan" from?
- Reasoning 1y ago
  From contemporary ethnologists who used the term to refer to the proto-indo-europeans? Because the term aryan is common amongst the languages descended from the proto-indo-european language (Arya, Iran, Alans, Arios)? Nazi philosophy grew out of 19th century ethnology which was heavily influenced by Darwinism. They believed the proto-indo-european ("Aryan") homeland was in northern Europe and that the spread of "Aryan" language was do to "Aryan" immigration to those regions and that in ancient times those regions were led by an "Aryan" "master race" who ruled over the "lesser races" do to their natural superior genes developed through generations of natural selection in the harsh northern climate. To be clear, I believe that is all BS but I wrote all that to clarify that the Nazis didn't steal the term Aryan from the Hindu, it's a term used by the Indo-Iranians to self-designate which was erroneously misattributed to the proto-indo-europeans by early European ethnologists.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    So Hitler was jealous of the fact that the Romance speakers had history and the Germanic speakers didn't. And he solved that problem by appropriating the history of India and claiming it was also the history of the Germans. He used Indian symbols and Indian words. But that doesn't mean that he took them from India? That's crazy. What else would you say he did? That they were from India was the point. Without their Indian identity, they would have failed to serve his purpose of giving a history to the Germans.
    - 1y ago