Iron Age wooden cult figures
Anthropomorphic Iron Age wooden cult figures, sometimes called pole gods, have been found at many archaeological sites in Central and Northern Europe.
A typology has been developed based on the large number found at Oberdorla, Thuringia, at a sacrificial bog which is now the Opfermoor Vogtei open-air museum.
[1] Locations of anthropomorphic idols are spread across the entire northwestern to eastern European region and represent a pan-European phenomenon across cultural boundaries.
It is plausible that numerous finds are still waiting in the soil of the extensive, former swamp landscapes of Europe (Baltic Sea neighbors, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, etc.
The Broddenbjerg idol, an ithyphallic forked-stick figure found in a peat bog near Viborg, Denmark, is carbon-dated to approximately 535–520 BCE.
[11][12][13] The Old Norse term for a god áss (the singular of Æsir; derived from the Common Germanic root *ans, *ansuz and also recorded for Gothic as the Latin plural Anses by Jordanes) has a homonym meaning "pole" or "beam".
[20] In Ibn Fadlan's early 10th-century account of the Volga Vikings, he writes that as soon as they come into harbour, they leave their ships with food and alcoholic drink and offer them at a tall piece of wood with the face of a man carved in it, which is surrounded by smaller similar figures.
Günter Behm-Blancke classified the anthropomorphic figurines into four groups based on the finds at Oberdorla: Most of the figures which have been preserved are of oak, which was probably preferred for its endurance in the mostly wet locations where they were deposited.
It is impossible to determine the exact purpose of the figurines, or their relationship to the named Germanic gods and goddesses, with whose worship they overlap; examples are found dating to as late as the Viking Age.
[27] They have been interpreted, in particular by Behm-Blancke, as the site of fertility sacrifices, based on the indications of male and female sexual characteristics and the frequent association with potsherds and the bones of animals and, at Oberdorla, of humans.
[17] Heiko Steuer has suggested that in the case of the male and female Wittemoor figures, which stood on either side of a plank causeway through a marsh, there may have been a secular decorative motive in addition to the spiritual luck-bringing and warding (apotropaic) functions.
A fragment of an anthropomorphic figurine made of oak dating to the 2nd century BCE was found in a possibly sacrificial shaft inside a Viereckschanze enclosure in the Schmiden section of Fellbach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
[30][31][32] Lucan's Pharsalia refers to a sacred grove near Massilia (Marseille) which was a location of human sacrifice and had stone altars and rough-hewn wooden idols.
[36][37] An oak statue belonging to the La Tène culture was found at the mouth of the River Rhone in Lake Geneva, near Villeneuve, Vaud, Switzerland.
The figure had been deposited in a ritual context with other objects, within an enclosure marked off with woven branches, similar to cultic finds on the continent.
Also, as with Celtic and Germanic, Slavic paganism was not universally standardised but included decentralised, local cult centres and practices, of which the wooden images would have formed a part.
