Sacred Groves of Britain
By Craig Chapman from Northern Earth 68
When our Germanic ancestors invaded post-Roman Britain, they brought with them their own pantheon of gods and there is no doubt that they set aside 'sacra sylvestre' where the powers emanated from the land. Tacitus, speaking of the Ingaevones and tribes of the North German coastlands, reports in Germania "they judge that gods cannot be confined within walls, nor portrayed in likeness to any human countenance; they consecrate groves and woodland glades, applying the names of deities to that hidden presence only sensed by the eye of reverence". He adds, concerning the tribes around the River Elbe, that there was nothing remarkable about them apart from the fact that they worshipped 'mother Earth', calling her Nerthus, believing the female form to be sacred.
Tacitus further reveals that "In an island of the ocean there is a sacred grove, and within it a consecrated chariot . Only the priest is permitted to touch it...He can perceive the presence of the goddess in this sacred recess, walking by her side as she is drawn along by heifers. It is a season of rejoicing and festivity reigns wherever she is received.;they do not go to battle or wear arms till the goddess is restored to her temple. The divinity herself, cart and vestments are then purified in a sacred lake, slaves performing the rite who are instantly swallowed up by its waters."
This agricultural fertility rite probably took place in Sol Monas - February, the mensis placentarium, when, according to Bede, "the English offered to their gods"9. The goddess' perambulation around the fields atop a chariot or cart likely occurred before cultivation, to ensure a wealth of fertile produce, Her presence in the grove, sensed by the priest, was possibly viewed as the reawakening of spring, the first sign of vegetation growth within the grove after the winter sleep - as Dylan Thomas so aptly put it, "the force that through the green fuze drives the flower".
On an island off the coast of Denmark, Sjaelland, Nerthus' grove may be recorded in the placename Niatharum, first written down c.1100 CE. An earlier Germanic tribe, the Semnones, regarded a sacred grove as being the centre of the tribe, their origin. Likewise it could be said that the English (Angles) originated from the sacred grove of Mother Earth Nerthus in old Anglia, as this is the region of their origin.
Placename evidence predominates in Denmark, where the old Norse word lundr, sacred grove, sheds light on the somewhat darker aspects of northern paganism taking place in the sombre pine and oak forests around the Baltic Sea. The home of the Svevi, Jutland, is famous for the number of preserved sacrificed bodies, figurines and votive deposits unearthed within its boglands. 
The serene face of the Tollund Man is probably the best-known bog body, whose preserved head takes pride of place in Denmark's National Museum. This individual, after being strangled with a rope fashioned like a torc, was offered to the gods in an old peat cutting (Two thousand years later, it might be said that the gods took a new life for old, when a man helping to extract the body died of heart failure). The bog itself is still surrounded by native trees and vegetation, not too dissimilar to the dark forest of Jutland that witnessed the spring sacrifice so long ago. Tollund first appeared in a 1481 document as 'Torlundr', a grove sacred to one of the primary gods of the Viking Age, Thor13.
That the numerous Germanic tribes practised human sacrifice in sacred groves is beyond doubt. Tacitus tells of a visit to a Teutoburg wood in 15 CE, where three divisions of the Roman army and their general, Varus, were wiped out. The Germans left their bodies to rot after the victory, decapitating many and fastening the heads to tree trunks. "In groves nearby were the outlandish altars at which the Germans had massacred the Roman colonels and senior company commanders". Six years later, the Romans returned to build there a large burial mound of turves, relinquishing their dead to Dis Manibus and the gods of the shadows.
Moving forwards in time, we meet the heathens of the far north sacrificing in groves as late as the eleventh century at Uppsala in Sweden. Three large burial mounds were known by the names of the three main Viking deities - Wodenshowe, Thorshowe and Freyshowe - and the area was famed in history as the most notorious pagan centre in all Scandinavia. Adam of Bremen, a German cleric of 1075, described the site as a huge temple in whose vicinity a general feast was held, from which no-one was exempt from attending or making offerings; to the gods of everything that is male they offer nine heads, with the blood of which it is customary to placate gods of this sort; the bodies they hang in a sacred grove that adjoins the temple. This grove is so sacred in the eyes of the heathen that each and every tree in it is considered holy because of the death and purification of the victims. Even dogs and horses hang there along with men"12.
Adam adds in a footnote that near the grove grew a sacred tree that remained green all year round (presumably a conifer), and underneath its wide spreading branches "a spring arose between the roots, to which sacrifices were offered; if the victim sank without trace the gods had answered". This is clearly reminiscent of the description of Yggdrasil, the World Tree central to Germanic religion.
Yggdrasil grew at the centre of the world, the 'greatest and best of all trees', the World Ash; its branches reached the sky and covered the Earth, its roots stretched out to the realm of the dead and the world of humans. Under it the gods assembled a council. Beneath its roots lay the well of Fate, tended by three females, Past-fate, Present being and Future necessity - the Norns. Each day they watered the tree from the well of fate; no care was considered too good for it, since Yggdrasil bore up the Universe and the welfare of the world depended on its well-being. In its branches perched an eagle with a hawk between its eyes; at its root gnawed the serpent Nidhogg. Up and down its trunk ran mischief, the squirrel Ratatosk. Deer and goats devoured its shoots, and the huge trunk was infested with rot. Of its origins we know nothing; but we are told that it would endure aged and shaken, till the world's end12.
An excavation in the mid-1970s at Uppsala uncovered a well with a ladder leading into it, underneath the roots of a huge ancient tree; although the species is not known, it is tempting to think that it may have been a descendant or even the original tree of which Adam spoke.
The waves of Germanic invaders and settlers formed the country of England that we know today. 90% of its Teutonic inhabitants arrived between 400-1066 CE. The Norse word lundr became in English 'lound', 'lownde' or 'land'. One good example of a sacred grove still standing is Wayland Wood in Watton, Norfolk. Going back to the Viking era as Wanelund, it was mentioned in the Domesday Book as the site of a hundred court held on the division of the county. This grove of pre-Conquest heathen worship is now owned by the Norfolk Naturalists Trust.
Further west, in Cambridgeshire, lies the ancient Hayley Wood, whose companion, littelund, was unfortunately grubbed up in 1650; however, the genius loci may still be sensed among the anenomes and yellow oxlips of Hayley Wood, at the centre of which grows an ancient oak that puts forth leaves of the deepest red. Woden's Groves The groves of our Germanic predecessors exist mainly as placenames on the map, and here one must be cautious, as the study of etymology is subject to the vagaries of fashion.
For seekers of Wilde's "spirit that dwells in dark dim woodland and walks unseen in open field"10, Roseberry Topping in North Yorkshire is a good place to start. This numinous conical hill was first recorded in 1119 as Othensburg. the hill of Odin. Under his Saxon name the god's groves can be found in Wensleydale - the valley of Woden's Grove where the annual 'Burning of Bartle' ceremony takes place every August.
A grove of Thor can be traced from the 11th century at Thundersley in Essex (TQ 77 88), or one of Tiw in Surrey at Tuesley (SU 97 43), also recorded in the 11th century9. In Warwickshire a sacred oak still exists on the parish boundary once called Walluhtgrove in Long Itchingtonl. And recently a valley of the goddess Frigg was identified - the modern village of Fridon in Derbyshire (SK 13 60). A charter of 963 CE revealed the old name of Frigedene, shedding light on the boar-crest helmets found in the Saxon Benty Grange burial mounds.
So ancient groves mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters and chronicles and the Domesday Book can indeed still be identified - and their genius loci found intact - but one must learn to decipher the names, and seek them; like Westgraf, in Hazelor in 704, where the sacred oaks of one of our old English groves stand yet.
References
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