Sinthgunt- Germanic GodDeity
Domains
Description
In the Second Merseburg Charm, Sinthgunt sings healing magic over Balder's lame horse alongside her sister Sunna, the sun goddess. It is the only time her name appears in any surviving text, a goddess paired with the sun whose own nature has been entirely lost.
Mythology & Lore
The Sister of the Sun
Sinthgunt is known from a single text: the Second Merseburg Charm, an Old High German healing spell preserved in a tenth-century manuscript at the Merseburg cathedral library. The charm names divine figures attempting to heal a horse's sprained leg, arranged in paired sisters:
"Then Sinthgunt sang over it, and Sunna her sister; then Frija sang over it, and Volla her sister; then Wodan sang over it, as he well could."
She appears first among the women, paired with Sunna the sun goddess, and her method is incantation. She "sang over" the injury. Each pair tries and fails before Wodan succeeds, speaks the bone-setting formula, and the horse is healed. Sinthgunt's singing opens the sequence. It does not cure. But the charm's author named her before Frija, before Volla, in a spell meant to work.
The Lost Name
Her name may contain Old High German sind ("journey") and gund ("battle" or "going"), something like "she of the great journey." Her pairing with the sun has invited guesses: a star goddess, perhaps, or a companion to Sunna's daily course. None of this can be confirmed.
Without a second attestation, without a myth, without a cult site or a votive inscription, Sinthgunt remains what the Merseburg Charm shows: a goddess who sang healing magic beside the sun, and then disappeared from every record that followed.
Relationships
- Family