Irminsul

[7] The Benedictine monk Rudolf of Fulda (AD 865) provides a description of an Irminsul in chapter 3 of his Latin work De miraculis sancti Alexandri.

[1] The commemoration was reportedly done by planting two poles six feet high, each surmounted by a wooden object one foot in height shaped like a pyramid or a cone on the cathedral square.

For example, in the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik an Irminsul is mentioned in three instances: Concerning the origin of the Wednesday: ûf ainer irmensiule / stuont ain abgot ungehiure, / daz hiezen si ir choufman.

[13] On an Irminsul / stands an enormous idol / which they call their merchant Concerning Julius Caesar: Rômâre in ungetrûwelîche sluogen / sîn gebaine si ûf ain irmensûl begruoben[14] The Romans slew him treacherously / and buried his bones on an Irminsul Concerning Nero: ûf ain irmensûl er staich / daz lantfolch im allez naich.

Tacitus states that while Drusus Germanicus was daring in his campaigns against the Germanic tribes, he was unable to reach this region, and that subsequently no one had yet made the attempt.

[19] The medieval Externsteine relief, located on a rock formation near Detmold, Germany, features a shape often identified as a bent tree at the feet of Nicodemus.

[20][21] However, according to scholar Bernard Mees: A medieval relief depicting Christ's descent from the cross on one of the Extern Stones seems to show what Teudt interpreted as a tree being withered by the cross (less imaginative researchers consider it to simply be an elaborate chair) ... [the symbol] joined the runes and the swastika as one of the foremost symbols of the anti-Christian völkisch identity at the time and remains a motif treasured among German neopagans today.

[22]Et inde perrexit partibus Saxoniae prima vice, Eresburgum castrum coepit, ad Ermensul usque pervenit et ipsum fanum destruxit et aurum vel argentum, quod ibi repperit, abstulit.

Et fuit siccitas magna, ita ut aqua deficeret in supradicto loco, ubi Ermensul stabat; et dum voluit ibi duos aut tres praedictus gloriosus rex stare dies fanum ipsum ad perdestruendum et aquam non haberent, tunc subito divina largiente gratia media die cuncto exercitu quiescente in quodam torrente omnibus hominibus ignorantibus aquae effusae sunt largissimae, ita ut cunctus exercitus sufficienter haberet.