During the Second World War, SS-Untersturmführer Peter Paulsen, a member of the Nazi SS group called the Ahnenerbe, seized this ancient Germanic spearhead from its Polish owner. It was subsequently lost, so only copies survive today. But why did ancient Germanic people put a swastika on the spear 1,700 years before the Nazis would adopt it as their party logo?
This is the front cover of a German book by Adolf Kroll about the Norse god Odin titled “The Song of the Allfather”—we can see the god is flanked by his two ravens, his hounds, and a serpent—all associated with him in myths, but also by two swastikas. This was published in 1919, one year before the Nazis adopted the symbol. In the British Houses of Parliament in London, there hangs a little-known painting by Colin Gill depicting the English King Alfred fighting the Germanic heathen Vikings, whose raven banner of Odin has fallen—and the artist has depicted the banner with a swastika next to the raven.
This painting was completed in 1927. That’s 12 years before WWII started. So why were Germanic people associated with swastikas even before the Nazis?
And what is the connection to Odin? Most people associate the swastika symbol either with the Nazis or with India, and some even think the Nazis stole it from India. This is a popular misconception.
This video is not about Nazis or Hinduism. This video is not intended to promote Nazism. It is a video about ancient archaeological finds.
The hooked cross symbol, usually referred to with the Indian word “swastika,” was not invented in India, as many believe. Rather, it is found in many cultures all over the world, including ancient Germany, but it has completely different meanings in different contexts worldwide. Some people like to make up fantastical meanings for the symbol and apply it to all contexts universally without evidence.
But in this video, I will only talk about the specific use and potential meaning of the symbol in the context of Iron Age and medieval Germanic pagans. For them, it was evidently a very holy symbol, but its exact meaning is hard to discern, and therefore many people perpetuate erroneous interpretations. The heathens of old put it on gold pendants, beautiful brooches, magical amulets, funeral urns, funeral chairs, swords, spears, and runestones.
But why? And what did it really mean? A new study of ancient DNA (McColl et al.
, 2024) shows that the Germanic people originated in a group in central Sweden known as the Battle Axe culture during the late Stone Age. But we don't find swastikas in this culture's artifacts. Later, in the Nordic Bronze Age, we see many rock carvings and metal items with diverse symbols, but swastikas are rare, with only three possible examples.
They are all close to one another in the province of Bohuslän in western Götaland of Sweden. The symbol is a wavy cross with round marks called 'elf-mills' in Swedish, and its hooks aren't at right angles like a traditional swastika. I don’t think any of them are related to the later Iron Age Germanic swastikas.
They do look a bit like the so-called Ilkley Moor swastika petroglyph from England, though. It dates to the same time, but it isn’t really a swastika, and it has this funny hook on one of the arms. They are probably all somehow related to the so-called Camunian rose symbol from petroglyphs in Bronze Age northern Italy.
These predate any proper swastikas in Germanic contexts and could be precedents, but I think they are something else. There are no more swastikas in Germanic regions until about 1,000 years later! True swastikas, with right-angled hooks, started appearing in Germanic areas during the Roman Iron Age (1st-4th centuries AD) and continued through the Germanic Iron Age (4th-8th centuries AD), also known as the Migration and Merovingian eras.
Anyway, they are a long time after the Nordic Bronze Age. It seems more likely that the Germanic swastika of this period was influenced by Roman or Celtic art from the south, so let’s take a look at the possible Greek, Roman, and Celtic origins before we look at the Germanic swastika itself. They show up a lot in Greek art in the geometric period from 800 BC onwards—here next to a sphinx and here next to the so-called mistress of beasts, usually identified as Artemis, the hunt goddess who was called Diana in Rome.
This Sicilian mosaic in the Villa Romana del Casale, made nearly 1,000 years later, depicts a hunt scene, and one of the hunters has a swastika on his tunic—perhaps a sign of Diana the huntress. In Italy, the swastika appears in the Villanovan culture from 1000 to 500 BC. It's found on house-shaped urns used for burials.
This image of the horse and the swastika on an urn from Este may relate to the Indo-European motif of the sun being pulled by a horse through the sky. The same motif is clearly shown in the Danish Trundholm chariot of the pre-Germanic Nordic Bronze Age culture, dated even earlier to 1300-1600 BC. However, this has no swastikas on it.
The swastika was also sometimes used on depictions of the Greek sun god Helios. Later on, the plague god Apollo also became associated with the sun and is sometimes depicted with a swastika as well. Clearly, here it represents the sun, unlike in the hunt context.
The symbol was also used decoratively on buildings and mosaic borders, similar to Greek meanders, like on this Lycian tomb, and in the mosaic on the floor of the women’s bath at Herculaneum in Italy. More importantly, it was also used as a charm—this one was found near Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland. Perhaps a soldier there thought wearing it kept him safe from the fearsome Picts.
Here is another brooch worn by a Roman soldier in Britain. In the Roman Empire, the Persian god Mitra was turned into Mithras in a secretive Roman cult, often linked with the sun gods Sol in Rome and Helios in the Greek-speaking East. This depiction of him in Turkey shows solar rays emanating from his head.
Mithras was sometimes identified with Sol Invicto, “the unconquered sun,” and, like Helios, was sometimes depicted with a swastika, as in these two. . .
Examples where it is evidently a solar symbol. The cult of Mithras was very popular with soldiers, and it spread with the Roman army. A great many Germanic auxiliaries served in the Roman army and were exposed to this cult—and indeed, a great many temples of Mithras have been discovered within Germania itself, as you can see on this map.
So, this is one plausible origin for the Germanic swastika. The Romans also liked to put swastikas on silverware, and here it is thought to have been a sign of wealth and prosperity. The Celts also embraced the swastika, using it in diverse ways.
Early examples from the late Hallstatt period show possible influence from Italy's Villanovan culture. The Hochdorf Chieftain's barrow contained a burial chamber lined with textiles and a cauldron over which textile bands with swastikas were draped. This is a high-status burial with a wheeled vehicle, which may be significant to the swastika.
The symbol was still used in the La Tène period of Celtic art, such as on the 4th century BC stone of Kermaria in Brittany, France. The Celtic Battersea shield, found in London, is over 2000 years old; it has 27 round compartments in which bronze with red cloisonné enamel forms a swastika—presumably, it was believed to enhance the protective power of the shield. The exact same kind of swastika is seen here on the cap of a chariot yoke from Llyn Cerrig Bach in Wales; the yoke is at the front of the chariot as it charges, so again it seems to have a protective or power function pertaining to war.
And this is a 4th century BC Celtic helmet found in a chariot burial in La Gorge Meillet in Eastern France—covered in swastikas—so again a connection to Celtic chariots. Later Celtic art is influenced by Roman art, but the swastikas are still present. This decorative phalera depicts a god holding two swastikas inside wheels.
While these coins from France and Belgium depict various types of swastika surrounded by dots and circles, the meaning of which eludes us. The Germanic peoples had close contact with both the Celts and Romans at this time, and we know they were influenced by both. But that doesn’t mean the swastika had the same meaning in the Germanic world as it did further south.
So, now let’s look at the swastika of the Germanic world and try to figure out what it meant there. In Germanic contexts, the swastika is known as the fylfot. It might have come from Roman, Etruscan, or Celtic cultures, but its use and meaning were unique.
One of the earliest true fylfots in the Germanic world is seen on this 3rd century comb from the Nydham bog in Northern Germany near the border of Denmark. The evidently holy bog has yielded many finds, including a boat and many weapons, all of which are thought to have been offerings to a god. Combs are sometimes found in Germanic burials, so they were evidently important for the dignity and identity of men and women—even in the Viking Age, foreigners remarked how well-groomed they were.
This comb, then, is not insignificant and is a mark of status. The fylfot is also found on other high-status items such as bracteates. Romans used gold coins called solidi as money.
Rich Romans wore these as necklaces, and the Germanic people, thinking it was stylish, made their own version called bracteates. In one sample set, only 3 of at least 120 bracteates from graves were reliably found with men; the rest were found only with women. The Germanic people replaced the heads of emperors with heads of Odinic kings and surrounded them with imagery associated with Odin, such as runes, ravens, horses, and weapons.
These were mainly popular in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The 12th century Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus seems to describe the necklaces on which bracteates were worn as follows: “This necklace was a chain of golden knobs in raised works intercepted with images of kings which could be contracted or expanded by the aid of an inner thread. An ornament of luxury rather than one of use.
” The god Odin, or Wodnaz as he was known in late antiquity, was a militant war god of the aristocracy. An important recent find confirms that the kings depicted on C-type bracteates really are Odinic, as it says “he is Wodnaz’s man” in runes above the king’s head. There is also a fylfot above his horse.
Loads of the C-type bracteates, mainly from Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, have fylfots on them. They are also on A, B, and F type bracteates but not on D types. This map shows the distribution of bracteates across Europe and Scandinavia.
This is a map of where bracteates with a fylfot on them have been found—basically everywhere bracteates have been found, except for England. They are most common in Denmark and Southern Sweden. There are eight different fylfot designs on bracteates, but they all seem to mean the same thing, with five of them only seen on C-type bracteates.
It is sometimes used in conjunction with magical runic formulas such as Laukaz, meaning “leek or onions,” which is an ingredient associated with Odinic herbal magic. Also with the ALU runic charm, but more on that later. Usually, there is just one fylfot on a bracteate.
Only six examples have two, and all of them are C-type. On 4, both of the fylfots are the same variant, and on 5, one of them is placed before the king’s head and the other behind or under the horse’s head. Of the 70 C-bracteates with a swastika, 30 also have a runic inscription or rune-like symbols, seven have a bird which is probably a raven of Odin, seven have a triskele, and 17 have a three-pointed symbol.
This particular B-type bracteate (DR-BR55) from Denmark has the dragon-slaying hero Sigurd, who descended from the god Odin, here sucking dragon blood from his thumb so he can, like Odin, perceive the speech of birds. The design is available as a shirt in my webshop and as a decal for your car. I spoke to Germanic philologist Dr Scott Shell about the pagan motifs of these bracteates.
I've I've noticed lately that the swastika appears on magical formulas on these bracteates with the swastika too. So, is it a part of a dedicatory thing? Is it part of a peacekeeping thing?
I'm open to ideas; I just—I haven't found anything to where I'm like, "This is exactly what it means. " I'm leaning towards an Odinic interpretation of the swastika in a Germanic context. The dead and the urns and also because of the Odinic king—the kingship or the bracteate evidence—it seems like they're kings and the King is Odin's man, for example.
There's this idea of an aristocracy and their association with the symbol; it might be some kind of like a symbol of dedication to that God. Yeah, that makes sense. The dedication thing too, because you see it with AL.
So, this one has Alu written on it; it's found up in Sweden and dated to roughly 304 or 450 CE. But then everybody always wants to say, "What does Alu mean? " It's, of course, related to ale—at least that's what the consensus is.
If it's not related to ale, then ALU and Al became homophonous at one point in time, and then they weren't able to really be distinguished; and that just means that they both sounded like the same word. So you get semantic overlap. But in reality, when we think back then about the effects of this nectar of the gods—the effects of this soma or haoma—in our case ALU, the sacred aspects of that and that feeling in connection is what I think ALU really means.
I agree; that’s what I think. My own opinion is that it's relating to the sacral quality of ritual beverages. I wanted to just bring up the mythic correspondence to Kvasir’s blood being used by the dwarves to brew the mead of poetry.
So in that context, we conflate the act of sacrifice with the act of brewing. So we're seeing this very potent mythic imagery bringing together the core ritual of that religion—which is sacrifice—with the act of brewing alcohol. So I definitely think that there's some kind of potent power to the idea of the word ALU pertaining to this alcoholic brewing process.
Yeah, absolutely, I think we're on the same page. The magical runic combination spelling ALU, meaning “ale,” is often found on bracteates and sometimes in conjunction with a swastika. Like the Germanic swastika itself, there are scholars, namely Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, who claim that the Germanic ALU runes originated in North Etruscan Rhaetic-speaking regions like West Austria and Southeast Germany.
But Dr Scott Shell disagrees with their linguistic argument. They believe that ALU was just simply a dedicatory formula—in a ritual context at least. The dedicatory formula that was borrowed from the Rhaetic tribes and taken North.
I'm not saying I even agree with that; I actually prefer to look at ALU as something that's pretty Germanic. So in the bracteate context, we are seeing a Germanic symbol of state power celebrating a king in a pseudo-Roman way. It is possible the swastika was recognized from the Roman artwork Germans encountered but was imbued with a new meaning, just like the solidi were, and this meaning pertained to the aristocratic god Odin and his relationship to earthly power and authority.
The fylfot wasn’t just worn on bracteates. This 3rd century Danish fibula has a swastika next to runes saying "alu god," suggesting that the god linked with the ALU charm also relates to the fylfot. Since both ALU and the fylfot are shown on Odinic bracteates, we can easily guess who this god is.
Other brooches show how the symbol travelled. This one is Ostrogothic from 6th-century Eastern Europe, while this one comes from Merovingian Frankish territory in the West from the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxons brought it to England in the 5th century—the brooch on the right comes from Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire.
A very similar one was found in North Luffenham in the East Midlands. And this pair from Sleaford, Lincolnshire, dated to the 6th century. Were these worn as protective charms like the Roman one?
Or were they symbols of the god Odin, whom the Anglo-Saxons called Woden? This brooch from Bavaria looks very Roman. I'm unsure if it's a Germanic copy or an actual Roman piece.
It certainly lends weight to the idea that the swastika entered the Germanic world via a Roman context in Southern Germany. In the 5th and 6th centuries, these square brooches were a sign of wealth for Germanic women. This one from Inderøy, Norway, has shapes that look like a swirly swastika with a square in the middle.
The footplate shows many interlocking animals and a human figure who resembles other depictions of the dragon-slaying hero Sigurd sucking his thumb. Sigurd was descended from Odin, so his motif can be called Odinic, and again we can connect the fylfot, tentatively, to an Odinic context. Another kind of jewelry popular among Germanic tribes in the 6th and 7th centuries was the "zierscheibe," or "ornamental disc.
" These discs are typically made of bronze and can feature various symbols, like the fylfot as in these examples. The zierscheibe were part of a Germanic woman's belt-fastened sash. Archaeologist Frank Behrens says zierscheibe were one of several amulets women wore around their hips, along with items like crystals and bear teeth—all of which dangle in the pelvic and thigh area.
Therefore, he thinks they may have specifically been intended to protect the female genital area. An Arab visitor saw a Viking funeral where the dead chieftain’s relative walked backward carrying fire to the funeral pyre while covering his rear with the other hand to keep spirits out. Women might have worn these charms to protect their vaginas in a similar way.
Zierscheibe are particularly common in Germany and Holland but are also found in France, England, Scandinavia, and Italy. Besides fylfots, they also contain many other apparently solar motifs, including the so-called sun cross and variants of the sun wheel, including the so-called black sun design that the SS adopted and used to decorate the floor of Wewelsburg Castle. If we can identify some of these as symbols of the sun, then it is tempting also to interpret the fylfot as a.
. . Symbol of the sun, just as it is sometimes regarded in the Mediterranean and in India.
The designs on Zierscheibe are just as likely to be animal or human shapes as they are geometric shapes. These variants all feature a man on horseback—is this a king, as on the bracteates, or is it a god whose image will protect the woman who wears it? There are also variants with two interlocking male figures, which could represent the twin gods found in many Indo-European religions and are sometimes identified with Hengist and Horsa in a Germanic context.
Hengest and Horsa are the great-great-grandsons of Woden. Many have animal-shaped versions of triskelions and swastikas—"zoomorphic" just means animal-shaped. Very often, the animals are birds in the same style that, in other contexts, can be identified as Odin’s two ravens.
I made a video all about the double raven motif and the depictions of Odinic priests wearing headdresses with two ravens on them, all of which have the same distinctive curly beak as the birds on the Zierscheibe—so watch that if you doubt these are ravens. The issue is that while some designs use three birds for triskelions and four for swastikas, others have even more bird heads around a wheel. So maybe they aren’t Odin’s two ravens?
Or are they the same as the other sunwheels without bird heads—but the Odinic raven heads are supposed to add another layer of protection to the charm? Then there are Zierscheibe which just have four basic birds in them and no swastika—so what’s that about? I suspect they are a variant of the bird-headed swastika.
Other zoomorphic triskelions and swastikas are made of snakes and boars, or even of horses, and the last type is thought to be influenced by ancient Mediterranean art where horse-headed triskelions are found. The more variants you look at, the harder it is to assign a single meaning to them. The designs on these discs are clearly made to fit their round shape.
They often have this rotational circular movement or wheel shape, so they lend themselves well to these wavy triskelions and swastikas. Is it just a design choice consistent with the circular medium? We're not sure if the number of animal heads or their presence or absence changes what the symbols mean.
I’m inclined to always class triskelions, swastikas, and other geometric shapes which include bird heads as Odinic artifacts, but I am reluctant to assign an Odinic context to shapes using other animals such as boars or to the sunwheels and sun crosses which have no animals. The precise meaning of the fylfot itself is not made any clearer by looking at the diverse types of Zierscheibe, so let's look at something else now. Woden was not just a god of war; he was also a god of the dead, associated with the mysteries of the underworld.
Germanic funerary urns are often stamped with solar crosses or runic inscriptions, and these Anglo-Saxon examples are no exception. Several Anglo-Saxon urns are also stamped with fylfots, like this 5th or 6th-century example from Spong Hill near North Elmham in Norfolk. And this is another urn from the same cemetery with a fylfot stamp.
About 150 urns were found there, and one of them had this lid with a man on top. Another urn from Spong Hill has a unique mirrored variant of the ALU runes so commonly seen in conjunction with swastikas in bracteate contexts—once again linking the motifs across diverse contexts. These are examples of various kinds of fylfots found on Anglo-Saxon urns—showing that the symbol could be depicted in many diverse ways, but all of them depict a hooked cross with the hooks at 90-degree right angles facing either left or right.
Continental urns can also have fylfots on them. The only god with a clear connection to both the military aristocracy and to the dead is Odin, a. k.
a. Woden. Those who died in battle went to Odin, and everyone else who died went to Hell, where they were judged by Odin and the other gods anyway.
Odin is also associated with the dead because he is a god of necromancy, and Germanic pagans followed his example by consulting the dead on esoteric matters. In the migration and Merovingian period, we sometimes find these special so-called Klotzstuhl, meaning “block chairs,” but exclusively within richly furnished graves of important people. This kind with a backrest is only in male graves, so we must conclude these are a symbol of male power displayed in a funerary context.
This one, made from a single alder log, is from an early 5th-century boat burial in Fallward, Lower Saxony. It belonged to a man who died aged about 50 and is thought to have served as a mercenary in the Roman army. Some such stools bear runic inscriptions; this one has none but was accompanied by a foot stool with a runic inscription.
There are many geometric patterns on it, including fylfot shapes—so perhaps the fylfots have no symbolic meaning in this context and are just decorative. Then again, the context of a funeral, a high-status warrior, and runic items are all Odinic, and so we can tentatively ascribe an Odinic context to the artifact. Swastikas start to appear on Germanic weaponry at the same time that they show up on urns and bracteates, or slightly before.
This Gothic spearhead, which I showed at the start, is from early 3rd-century Ukraine and has a fylfot with double-hooked arms, as well as other symbols and runes. This is a very early example. This is another very similar Gothic spearhead but from Dahmsdorf-Müncheberg in Eastern Germany—it has a fylfot next to a triskelion.
The triskele can also be found alongside the fylfot on bracteates, and this seems to indicate that they were separate symbols with different meanings. The god Odin was known in Viking Age kennings by names such as Geirtýr “spear god” and Geirvaldr “spear ruler”—he owned the magic spear called Gungnir, and he declared the first war among the gods when he cast his spear. In a Norse poem called Hlǫðskviða about a war between Goths and Huns, the King of the Goths calls on the god to help his spear, saying, "láti svá Óðinn flein.
" Fliúga' "May Odin let the spear fly as I say. " So evidently, the spear was a sign of Odin, and it is certainly very telling that the Goths put the fylfot on their spears. Later on, we see the motif appears more frequently on swords rather than spears.
Sometimes they appear within the cloisonné garnets of migration era artifacts, such as this sword hilt—on which four L-shaped garnets interlock, causing the golden cell walls to form a fylfot. This is not a unique example. This 6th-century Anglo-Saxon sword from Bifrons in Kent has a very prominent fylfot on the pommel, and it was also found with these square fittings which would have attached to the leather sword belt.
One of the fittings has four fylfots on it. The motif was still used on swords in the Viking era as well. This sword was made by a man named Hartolfr in the 9th or 10th century.
The fylfot is a repeating motif all along the hilt and the pommel. If it was intended to give good luck, then Hartolfr certainly wasn’t taking any chances! The 9th-century Sæbø sword was found in a barrow in Western Norway.
The poorly preserved blade has what seems to be a runic inscription with a swastika; as far as I know, this is the only example of a sword with a swastika on the actual blade itself. However, the damaged runes are not decipherable, so interpretations of them are speculative. The fylfot isn’t visible anymore, but was previously and can be seen on old drawings.
The sword was very much a prestige weapon. It is not only associated with war, but also with status, and so it is deposited in high-status male burials across the pagan Germanic world. Although swords don’t have the specific Odinic associations that spears do, the contexts of wars, aristocracy, and burials certainly make it possible to argue these are Odinic artifacts too, and the inclusion of a fylfot on a sword would not be inconsistent with it being a symbol of the god of war.
The geometric shape of the swastika makes it ideal as a weaving pattern, as we saw in the early Celtic examples. Indeed, it is quite possible that this is where the symbol originated. It is traditionally used in woven patterns around the world, including in folk costumes of the Baltic.
Few ancient Germanic garments survive, but this beautiful Viking era sash was preserved in a barrow in Snartemo, Vest-Agder, Norway. It looks just like similar sashes traditionally worn in Lithuania to this day—which also often have swastikas woven into them. Another Viking Age barrow in Norway—which contained the Oseberg ship burial—also yielded several fragments of a large tapestry on which a few swastikas can be made out.
This very liberal reconstruction may not be accurate, but it shows that the whole thing depicted a kind of religious procession—maybe the funeral itself. The swastikas are positioned beside the wagons and horses—once again, a funeral procession connects the symbol to the world of the dead. Runestones were memorials for the dead, erected in prominent places in the landscape.
Most of them date from the 8th to the 12th century. The 9th-century Snoldelev stone is a famous runestone from Denmark which is unusual in three ways. It boasts the only example of a triskele composed of three drinking horns.
It also has a fylfot. The third thing is that the memorial inscription is for a man named Gunnvald, who is described as a Þulʀ, which denotes an important rank of some kind—likely a reciter of poems or prayers—either of which would be seen as Odinic. In the poem Hávamál, Odin himself is called Fimbulþulr, "the great thyle"—so in this context, the fylfot may have been a way to signify the special rank of the deceased which pertained to the cult of Odin.
This runestone from Sköns church in Västernorrland, Sweden, is dated to the Viking Age and is classed as a Christian cross stone. Although the four L shapes interlocking to create a fylfot was a pre-Christian design, this variant ensures that the outline of the four parts makes a clear cross—marking it clearly as a Christian sign unrelated to earlier Germanic swastikas. Most runestones are actually Christian monuments like this.
There are other runestones with this kind of swastika, such as this one at Stockholm airport, but they should not be included in a survey of the Germanic pagan swastika. This is clearly a Christian cross. A major flaw of most shoddy scholarship on the swastika worldwide, and also specifically within the Germanic context, is failing to define what is and isn’t the same symbol.
For instance, the triskele looks like a three-armed version of the fylfot but is usually more curved. I don't think they're the same since they sometimes appear together. Then again, multiple swastikas can be shown together too, so maybe they are.
Triskelions are also found in Celtic and Roman contexts and could have been borrowed into Germanic art from either. In Germanic art, both the four-armed fylfot and the triskelion can be seen with animal heads at the ends of their arms, like birds, snakes, or horses. This zoomorphic triskelion zierscheibe is from 7th century Germany—probably Alemannic.
This roughly contemporary Anglo-Saxon example was found in the Cotswolds. They are very similar to the four-armed fylfot variants found all over the Germanic world and are as old as the non-zoomorphic fylfot. This one is Lombardic, dated to 5th century Austria.
It is hard for the untrained eye to recognize them, but each of the four terminals represents the head of a bird with a large garnet for an eye. Here’s a sort of zierscheibe from Lent in the Netherlands, also dated to the 5th century. The animals are not so easy to identify.
It looks a lot like this fylfot design on the bottom of a richly ornamented Anglo-Saxon bowl found in the famous 7th century royal burial of Sutton Hoo. The bowl must have had a very important, perhaps ritual function. The fylfot was, of course, not visible except when the bowl was turned over, such as if a libation was being poured out.
The style is also very similar to the zoomorphic triskelion seen on. . .
This Swedish shield boss from Valsgärde, 7th century, is evidently a protective symbol. It is also seen on the famous snake-witch stone of Gotland, dated to the 5th or 6th century. Here we can clearly see one of the animals is a boar, and one is a bird; the other could be anything.
The zoomorphic triskelion is also available on shirts and hoodies in my web shop. Is there a significant difference between the zoomorphic triskeles and fylfots? Should they be classified differently depending on which animals are shown?
These could be important distinctions. While the geometric Germanic swastika might be borrowed from the Romans or Celts, the zoomorphic triskelions and swastikas have very obvious parallels in Scythian and Thracian art from the steppe, which could have entered the Germanic world via the Huns. By far, the most common animal on the zoomorphic fylfots seems to be the bird heads, as on this 7th century Frisian example from Wiuwert, this beautiful 6th or 7th century mount from the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire hoard, and this 6th century Merovingian mount from Northern France.
It is hard to make out, but these 7th century mounts from Sweden are also zoomorphic swastikas. The four outer circles are the eyes of the bird heads. This kind of curly-beaked bird is usually identified as a raven because they are also very often depicted in pairs, and it is known that Odin owned two ravens.
So, if we accept that the birds are ravens, then we can say that the triskelions and the fylfots with birds are related to his cult. But what about the triskeles and fylfots with other kinds of animals? The boar would more likely be associated with the god Frey.
Also, is there a difference between a zoomorphic fylfot and a normal Germanic fylfot with no animals? Should they be classed as separate symbols? Additionally, what about these wavy spiral-type swastikas seen on Gotland picture stones?
Is that just a stylistic variant or something else entirely? Its context seems to connect it to solar symbols seen on other Gotland picture stones rather than to Odinic fylfots. But then again, the snake-witch stone is a Gotland picture stone as well!
As in the Zierscheibe, we see that a four-armed swastika-like shape is used in a context interchangeably with other allegedly solar symbols. Obviously, there is a lot we just can’t say with any certainty, but there are also clear patterns emerging when we look at all the examples. Hilda Ellis Davidson, a respected scholar, once suggested in 1964 that the Germanic swastika represented Thor's hammer.
However, the evidence we've explored in this video doesn't support this idea. Over 1,000 Mjölnir pendants have been discovered, and none that I know of bear a swastika. Instead, the Germanic fylfot appears to be more closely tied to the god Odin.
Here's why: it is connected to death and status. From its use on urns, runestones, and bracteates, the fylfot seems linked to the dead, to high-status males like kings, poets, and warriors, and even to the magical ALU runes, which are also associated with death. All of these things, as I have shown, are associated with the god Odin.
While some might see parallels with solar symbols, and there is some connection, particularly on Gotland stones, the overall evidence for associating the fylfot with the sun goddess Sunna or Sol is weak. There's also no substantial evidence linking it to the stars. On women's jewelry, it acts as a protective charm, while on weapons, runestones, and other artifacts, it marks men of high status, like warriors, poets, or kings, all under Odin's domain.
As far as I know, I am the first person to argue a specific Odin connection, even though artists in the early 20th century did depict the raven banner and Odin himself with the fylfot. If some other historian reached this conclusion before me, then please let me know in the comments. In summary, the fylfot in Germanic cultures seems to symbolize much more than just the sun or protection against evil spirits; it embodies the essence of Odin, connecting the aristocracy with the divine, the warrior with his god, and the mortal with the mysteries of death.
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