In book 1, chapters 50 and 51 of his Annals, Tacitus says that forces led by Germanicus massacred the men, women, and children of the Marsi during the night of a festival near the location of a temple dedicated to Tanfana: Original Latin (first century CE): Church and Brodribb translation (1876): They were helped by a night of bright starlight, reached the villages of the Marsi, and threw their pickets round the enemy, who even then were stretched on beds or at their tables, without the least fear, or any sentries before their camp, so complete was their careless and disorder; and of war indeed there was no apprehension.
[10][11] The historian Wilhelm Engelbert Giefers proposed 1883 that Tanfana derived from tanfo, cognate with Latin truncus, and referred to a grove on the site of the Eresburg, related to the Irminsul.
"[15] Based on folklore and toponymy, Friedrich Woeste proposed that the name was cognate with German zimmern and meant "builder" or "nourisher";[16] based on the season at which the festival and the Roman attack took place, Karl Müllenhoff proposed she was a goddess of harvest plenty, properly *Tabana, cognate with Greek words for "expenditure" and (hypothetically) "unthrifty"; others added Icelandic and Norwegian words for "fullness, swelling," "to stuff," and "large meal.
In the Dutch city of Oldenzaal the 19th-century antiquarian and school principal Jan Weeling developed the idea that the temple was located in the district of Twente, where the Tubanti as allies of the Marsi had been situated.
He also claimed that a heavy boulder with ceremonial functions in the centre of town ("de Groote Steen") originally stemmed from the supposed temple, but was moved into the city around 1710.
He found extra proof in the seal of the neighbouring baily of Ommen from 1336, depicting the patron saint Brigid of Kildare holding a palm branch, and accompanied by a lion, an eagle, and an eight-pointed star, apparently representing the sun.
[18][20] Rudolf Simek notes that an autumnal festival aligns with Old Norse attestations of the dísablót, a celebration of the dísir, female beings with parallels to the West Germanic cult of the Matres and Matronae.