Nerthus- Germanic GodDeity"Terra Mater"

The Procession and the Lake

In chapter 40 of the Germania (98 CE), Tacitus describes the worship of Nerthus, whom he calls Terra Mater, Mother Earth, among the tribes of what is now Denmark and northern Germany. On an island in the ocean stands a sacred grove containing a consecrated chariot draped in cloth. Only the priest may touch it. He alone senses when the goddess is present in her sanctuary, and when she is, he yokes cattle to the chariot and accompanies it on a journey through the tribal lands.

Wherever Nerthus travels, there is feasting and celebration. No one goes to war. Weapons are locked away. Peace prevails for as long as the goddess moves among her people, until, satisfied with mortal contact, she is returned to her temple.

Then comes the ritual's dark conclusion. The chariot, the cloth, and (Tacitus hints) the divine image itself are washed in a secret lake. The slaves who perform this service are immediately drowned. "Hence arises holy terror," Tacitus writes, "and a pious ignorance about the nature of that which is only seen by those about to die." The knowledge of what lies beneath the cloth dies with those who gain it.

The Bogs and the Name

Archaeological evidence lends weight to the account. Bog bodies recovered from Danish and German peatlands, among them the Tollund Man and Grauballe Man, show signs of elaborate ritual killing and deposition in water, some dating from the period Tacitus describes. Whatever Nerthus's procession looked like in life, the lakes and bogs of the north kept their own record.

Her name shares a Proto-Germanic root, Nerþuz, with the Norse god Njörðr, though by the time the Norse sources were written, the name belonged to a male sea-god rather than a female earth-goddess.