9. Equivalence with Classical figures

We have two processes that give useful early information about the religions of the North and their gods by means of interpreting equivalences between the Germanic gods and Classical ones. These two processes are know as Interpretatio romana and Interpretatio germanica, the former being where people connected with the Roman world interpret an apparent Germanic deity as a Roman one; the latter where the reverse process takes place by Germanic people (Simek 1993, 174‑5).

9.1. Interpretatio romana

In Tactitus’s Germania (c. 90 CE) there are a number of gods named as worshiped by the peoples he describes. In one instance (ch. 9; pp. 142-5) he names the principal gods as Mercury, Hercules and Mars. This does not provide particularly solid evidence for the identification with particular Germanic deities in itself but the features of these gods can be linked to the Germanic gods Óðinn, Thor and Týr by various means, including as a triad of chief male deities.

Hercules, although a demi-god, has similarities with Thor that can be expressed by certain attributes, including using a blunt weapon (Hercules carries a club; Thor a hammer), fighting monsters and otherworldly creatures (Hercules fights the Hydra and captures Cerberus; Thor fights giants, the World Serpent, etc.).

The constellation of attributes can be mapped to the tables outlined above: beings, beings’ attributes, attributes and attributions in texts; the last of these is built on a broad range of evidence which may not need detailed incorporation into the database in order to be useful. The classical material may be incorporated more sparingly, as the Northern material will generally have more detail relevant to the project.

For or the Hercules-Thor interpretatio, we can record the two gods as beings, the attributions for each of them that coincide, and the texts that evidence these attributions together with their primary witnesses. The equivalence of the gods can then be built on the linking of these attributes and the source base for it.

Particular manifestations of worship of these equivalent deities is found in votive inscriptions, such as that to Hercules Magusanus which occurs in a number of locations (cf. Simek 1993, 141-2). Here the second element (magusanus ‘mighty’) provides a further corroboration, although disputed; the relevant interpretations (e.g Wagner 1977) should be incorporated into the structure and marked as disputed.

Figure 11: Interpretatio romana

9.2. Interpretatio germanica

The process by which Roman gods were interpreted by Germanic-speaking people as equivalent to or identical with their own gods has found its way in particular into the weekday names found in most Germanic languages. These provide a way of linking the worship of certain manifestations of Roman deities with those of the Germanic world.

A similar structure to the one in Figure 11 can be used for the interpretatio germanica. The primary attributes are the day of the week that each god is associated with (e.g. Jupiter and Thor for the fifth day of the week). These can be linked to both the Roman and Northern gods in the ‘Beings’ attributes’ table, and references to the weekday names in sources can be linked to the textual and inscription corpus using the ‘Attributions in text’ table.

References