Dagenham Woden Idol from the third Millenium BCE

A replica of the Dagenham Idol on display in the Museum of London, by Ethan_Doyle_White , is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0  Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagenham_idol No changes were made to this image and the image owner does not endorse this blog.






Our knowledge of the Germanic deities is too tightly bound up in the public mind with Viking Age Scandinavia and consequently discussion of the Gods tends to focus too narrowly on this small geographical area in the latter stages of historical Germanic heathenism. My quest over recent years is to uncover evidence for and information about our deities over a wider northern European area and from a much earlier time period.

An interesting example of archaeological evidence for the cult of Woden is to be found in the Dagenham Idol, found in Dagenham in 1922 and carbon dated to 2250 BCE. This is a staggering 3,000 years prior to the early Viking era and significantly from what came to be England. Fortunately the idol was found buried in peat just under 10 ft below ground and near to the skeleton of a deer which is thought to have been a votive offering to the Gods. I understand that the idol is 'owned' by Colchester Castle Museum and is on indefinite loan to Valence House Museum in Dagenham with a copy on display in the Museum of London.

The idol is carved out of Scot's Pine wood and is 18 inches in height. Like many such idols found to be dated to the late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age this idol has two legs but no arms. What identifies this idol with Woden is a damaged left eye.

In an edition of the British Archaeology magazine in 2014 the Dagenham idol was identified to be similar to other idols of this nature found at Seahenge at Holme Beach in Norfolk. The wooden circles at Seahenge have an identical carbon dating and interestingly the Dagenham idol is said to originate from East Anglia as well. The fact that there should have been a cult of Woden in East Anglia in the third millenium BCE should not entirely surprise us we now know from DNA analysis and the study of the origins of Old English that there has been migration from the Germanic north of Europe to eastern England for many centuries prior to the 'Anglo-Saxon invasions' of the mid 5th century CE.