The Thorstein in the Harz Mountains

In the Harz Mountains, south of Halberstadt there stands a massive rock formation called the Glaeserner Moench-the Glass Monk or Crystal Monk. However the ancient Teutons called this sandstone rock the Thorstein-Thor's Stone. Only with the enforced Christianisation of my  Saxon ancestors did the name change to the Glass Monk. This latter name unfortunately still persists to this day, possibly out of false notions of political correctness rather than fear of the impotent dying Christian church.

After the conversion of the Saxons a legend developed about a nun and monk breaking their vows of chastity and being turned into sandstone. The shape of the rock is suggestive of both a monk's hood but also of Donar's hammer. Donar was worshiped both in the forest and on mountains and the sound of His thunder in the Harz is quite dramatic. Early Bronze Age finds dating back to about 2,000 BCE have been discovered in this location.

Hrethe and Ostara

On the 21st March as Wodenists we celebrate the rite of Summer Finding, the day when the forces of light are now in balance with the forces of darkness, Sunna beginning Her victorious ascent in the heavens. The month of March was known to the Anglo-Saxons as Hrēþmōnaþ which technically began in the modern month of February and extends to April, so roughly March. April was called Ēostermōnaþ after the Saxon Goddess Ēostre who is honoured even today by the Christians, although unwittingly in many cases. This Goddess does have variants of Her name. To the Northumbrians She was called Ēostre, to the West Saxons She was Ēastre and in Old High German She was Ôstara. In fact She is even referred to in the King James Bible:

"And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people." (Acts 12:4)

No doubt the translators of the 1611 Bible made a clear error, intending to use an English term for a Jewish festival!  Modern versions of the Bible translate Easter as 'Passover' but clearly they were referring to the time of year with reference to a Germanic heathen festival.

Bede (673-735) who is most widely known as the author of A History of the English Church and People referred to Ēostre in his De temporum ratione (The Reckoning of Time) in 725 CE. He stated that feasts were held in honour of Her in the month of Ēosturmōnaþ.

The fame and importance of Ostara must have been great for the Church was unable to eradicate Her name and thus they named one of their most important festivals after this Goddess as Jacob Grimm states:

"This Ostara, like the A.S.  Ēastre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries. "(Teutonic Mythology Volume 1)

The German variant of Her name has a special significance:

"The OHG. adv. ostar expresses movement toward the rising sun (Gramm. 3, 205), likewise the ON. austr, and probably an AS eastor and Goth. austr. In Latin the identical auster has been pushed round to the noonday quarter, the South. In the Edda a male being, a spirit of light, bears the name of Austri, so a female one might have been called Austra; the High German and Saxon tribes seem on the contrary to have formed only an Ostara, Eastre (fem), not Ostaro, Eastra (masc). And that may be the reason why the Norsemen said paskir and not austrur: they had never worshipped a goddess Austra, or her cultus was already extinct.

"Ostara, Eastre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted to the resurrection-day of the christian`s God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter, and according to a popular belief of long standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy (Superst. 813). Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing (Superst. 775. 804); here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess (see Suppl.).  

The town of Osterode in the Harz mountains in the German `Land` of  Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) is reckoned to be named after Ostara and Grimm relates this tale about Her:

"At Osterrode, every Easter Sunday before sunrise, may be seen a white maiden, who slowly walks down to the brook and there washes; a large bunch of keys hangs at her girdle. A poor linen-weaver having met her at that season, she took him into the castle ruins, and of three white lilies she plucked him one which he stuck in his hat. When he got home, he found the lily was pure gold and silver, and the town of Osterrode had not the money to buy it of him. The Easter-maiden`s marvellous flower was taken by the Duke in return for a pension to the weaver, and placed in his princely coat of arms. (Teutonic Mythology Volume 3)

 Scholars conjecture that Ostara derives from a Proto-Indo-European Goddess, *Hausōs and as a beautiful young woman the dawn is personified. Indo-European mythologies are replete with examples of an abduction and imprisonment of a dawn Goddess and Her liberation by a dragon-slaying hero. This motif continues down to the present time in the form of legends and fairytales.

Interestingly the Ariosophist Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels believed that the Ostrogoths and Austria (Österreich) were derived from Ostara and thus he named his magazine after Her.

By contrast the Goddess Hrethe (Hrêðe/Hrêða) which means `famous` or `victorious` appears to be more of a warrior deity whose purpose is to banish winter to make way for the coming of Ostara for Hrēþmōnaþ precedes Ēastermōnaþ. Grimm also considers Hrethe to be a "shining Goddess":

".....I believe that the AS. name was really Hrēþ or Hrēþe = OHG. Hruod or Hruoda, and derived, as I said on p.206, from hruod gloria, fama; so that we get the meaning of a shining and renownful goddess."

The Heathen Heritage of the Harz Mountains

The Harz mountains range of Niedersachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen was an important centre for German heathen religion and the mountains were the Heimat of many Gods which were specific to the continental Germanic peoples and the local Saxon and Thuringian tribes, eg Krodo, Biel, Stuffo, Frau Holla and Ostara. There are also local legends concerning the Thunder God Donar as well as a remembrance of the sacred union of Woden and Freya in the annual gathering of the Hexen upon the mountain peak of the Brocken. The Harz is part of the famous Hercynian Forest referred to in the annals of classical writers. Harz is said to derive from the Middle High German Hardt or Hart (mountain forest).

My Harz-born mother would often tell me nursey tales regarding the Harz and pass onto me tit bits of local lore that have survived down the centuries. My maternal line apparently were local wise women or witches as we call them today. However they had to be very careful in not attracting the attention of the repressive local authorities of the time. Now this aspect of the Harz is celebrated as a part of the local culture, no doubt in order to attract tourists and their Geld.

I have in recent years begun to explore and examine my maternal heathen heritage on this blog and I will continue to do so. Whether we call our religion Wodenism, Wotanism, Odinism, Asatru or Germanic Heathenism the Norse interpretation of our Gods and Goddesses unfortunately tends to dominate everything. I am grateful of course to the existence of the Eddas and Saga literature as without them we would have struggled to resurrect our ancient religion in the 20th century but as English, German and Netherlandic peoples we must explore other and more obscure source material in order that we may encounter a more authentic spiritual experience and not be too dependent on the Icelandic and Scandinavian material. 

The work of Grimm is an important starting point for our quest for Jacob Grimm attempted in his 4 (or 3 volume) work Deutsche Mythologie to present a continental Germanic mythology. The English version of this monumental work is Teutonic Mythology which tends to obscure the German emphasis of Grimm's research. A better translation of the title would have been German Mythology. However the work does incorporate Scandinavian material but the emphasis is on German, Dutch, English and Indo-European sources.

The following is an interesting quotation from Maria Elise Turner Lauder's Legends and Tales of the Harz Mountains, North Germany:

"The Harz is the birth-place of the " Wild Hunter," of the " Wild Army " of South Germany, of the Gold Crown, and of the noble Brunhilda. The view from the top of the granite mountain, the Hexentanzplatz, to the distant Brocken in clear weather, and across to that mass of granite, the Rosstrappe, the swift Bode leaping over huge blocks of fallen granite between, and a thousand feet below, is one of the finest in these mountains. This spot is the scene of the legend of Brunhilda.

"On the summit of the Rosstrappe is a giant horse-hoof, hewn in the solid granite, measuring nearly three feet. How this mark came there is a mystery; but it is supposed that it was hewn by the Druid priests. In the Scandinavian mythology Wodan's white steed was worshipped as well as the god himself.

"When Charlemagne, in the eighth century, compelled the people of this district to embrace Christianity (by fire and sword) the wild mountaineers are supposed to have fled before his victorious forces, and to have entrenched themselves on the Ross trappe, where traces of their rude fortifications may still be seen. They had no white steed to worship in this retreat, hence probably, the priests cut this rut of a horse-hoof, and invented the story of Briinhilda and the Giant's White Horse, in order to impress the people with the mighty power of the Thunder-god, and prevent them from entertaining any sympathy for the new religion."

Krodo, a Lost Saxon God Traceable to Aryan Times

A modern day statue of Krodo erected in Bad Harzburg, Lower Saxony, Germany.






Some years ago whilst reading Legends and Tales of the Harz Mountains, North Germany by Maria Elise Turner Lauder (1885) I encountered a tale called The Steinkirche and the Hermit which refers to both Ostera and a God called Krodo:

"In the grey days long ago, when paganism ruled the land, there stood on the hills near the cave called the Steinkirche-altars to the gods.

Bright were the fires to Krodo in the darkness of the night, and on the opposite cliffs rose the fire pillar in honour of the goddess Ostera.

The crackling flames illuminated the country and the mountains, and invited the inhabitants of the nearlying vales and heights to the wild customs, the bloody sacrifices, and the raving dance of heathenism."

Poetically Lauder goes on to tell us how a xtian holy man converted the heathen Saxons by a supposed miracle and:

"And the hearts of the wild Sassen were opened.....

"They vowed to a man henceforth to forsake the worship of Krodo, to remain true to the new faith....."

Despite having a mother who came from the Harz mountains I had never heard or read this story before and neither had I heard of this God called Krodo. After carrying out some research I have found that He is one of the Saxons` ancestral Gods and thus my ancestral God.
Jacob Grimm refers to Krodo in his Teutonic Mythology Volume 1 and relates Him to the Roman God Saturn.

"But that AS. Saeteresbyrig from the middle of the 11th century irresistibly reveals the `burg` on the Harz mts, built (according to our hitherto despised accounts of the 15th century in Bothe`s Sachsenchronik) to the idol Saturn, which Saturn, it is added, the common people called Krodo; to this we may add the name touched upon in p. 206 (Hrethe, Hrethemonath), for which an older Hruodo, Chrodo was conjectured. We are told of an image of this Saturn or Krodo, which represented the idol as a man standing on a great fish, holding a pot of flowers in his right hand, and a wheel erect in his left; the Roman Saturn was furnished with the sickle, not a wheel."

Grimm tells us that Hrodo may be related to Baldag/Balder and he derives from this that the seventh day of the week (Saturday) may have been called Roydag and thus sacred to Krodo (see supplement 3 on page 248). Hrethemonath, the Anglo-Saxon month of March is the month heathens normally associate with the Goddess Hrethe.

Grimm draws further connections to the Slavic Gods Sitivrat and Kirt:

"...but beside Sitivrat we have learnt another name for Saturn, namely Kirt, which certainly seems to be our Krodo and Hrudo."

Interestingly he interprets Sitivrat as being:

 "sieve-turner" and that this "would be almost the same as kolo-vrat, wheel-turner, and afford a solution of that wheel in Krodo`s hand; both wheel (kolo) and sieve (sito) move round, and an ancient spell rested on sieve-turning. Slav mythologists have identified Sitivrat with the Hindu Satyavrata, who in a great deluge is saved by Vishnu in the form of a fish. Krodo stands on a fish; and Vishnu is represented wearing wreaths of flowers about his neck, and holding a wheel (chakra) in his fourth hand. All these coincidences are still meagre and insecure; but they suffice to establish the high antiquity of a Slavo-Teutonic myth, which starts up thus from one quarter."

Thus far we have established that not only is Krodo a Saxon and thus a Teutonic deity but His antiquity goes right back to Aryan times with his association with similar Slavic, Hindu and Roman deities. Indeed Krodo`s name is so ancient that Grimm states that it "is rather too ancient, and I can find no support for it in the Saxon speech." Clearly this deity was still remembered by the Saxons and other Aryan peoples long after their dispersion out of the Ur-heimat.
Elsewhere in Teutonic Mythology Grimm states:

"Bothe`s Sassenchronik relates under the year 780, that King Charles, during his conquest of the East Saxons, overthrew on the Hartesburg an idol similar to Saturn, which the people called Krodo."

One is reminded of Charlemagne`s (King Charles/Karl der Grosse) similar overthrow of the Irminsul also in the land of the Saxons in 772 CE.
In Goslar Cathedral there was stored the bronze Krodo Altar, dating back to the year 1040 CE, which is an indication that this God was still remembered with affection several hundred years after Karl`s sacrilege. It can now be found in Goslar`s town museum. A rebuilt statue of Krodo now stands at Harzburg Castle.

Even today there are a number of locations in the Harz that bear His name such as Crodenbeke (Krodo Valley)- now called Kroedlippen, Krotenpful, Crodenleide, Crothensee and Goetzenthal (Valley of the idols). Ground Ivy is also called Crodokraut which affords protection against witches.

After Karl destroyed Krodo`s temple he erected in its place a chapel and the site of this today is Harzburg Castle. Tradition has it that when Karl asked the East Saxons who was the God they worshipped they replied: "Krodo is our god", to which the emperor replied "Krodo is all the same as kroten-duevel!" Thus "toad-devil" became a German curse. Such curses often involve the names of our ancient deities.