The Suebian Knot and the Valknutby Lyfing

The Osterby Man

According to Tacitus in Germania..

"This people are remarkable for a peculiar custom, that of twisting their hair and binding it up in aknot. It is thus the Suevians are distinguished from the other Germans, thus the free Suevians fromtheir slaves."

Alby Stone in The Knots of Death has said..

"It would be reasonable to suppose that this hair-knot marked a warrior as a follower of an earlyform of Odin in his role of war god."

Following Tacitus further..

"Of all the Suevians, the Semnones recount themselves to be the most ancient and most noble. Thebelief of their antiquity is confirmed by religious mysteries. At a stated time of the year, all theseveral people descended from the same stock, assemble by their deputies in a wood; consecratedby the idolatries of their forefathers, and by superstitious awe in times of old. There by publiclysacrificing a man, they begin the horrible solemnity of their barbarous worship. To this groveanother sort of reverence is also paid. No one enters it otherwise than bound with ligatures, thenceprofessing his subordination and meanness, and the power of the Deity there. If he fall down, he isnot permitted to rise or be raised, but grovels along upon the ground. And of all their superstition,

this is the drift and tendency; that from this place the nation drew their original, that here God, thesupreme Governor of the world, resides, and that all things else whatsoever are subject to him andbound to obey him."

With Kveldulf Gundarsson pointing out in Wotan: The Road to Valhalla..

"The death of the hero Helgi Hunding’s-Bane is presented in a similar manner: “Dagr, the son ofHögni (whom Helgi had killed in order to win Högni’s daughter Sigrún as his bride), made anoffering to Óðinn for avenging his father. Óðinn lent Dagr his spear. Dagr found Helgi, hiskinsman, at the place which is called Fetter-Grove. He went against Helgi with the spear. Helgi fellthere.” When Dagr tells his sister Sigrún what she has done, she curses him, to which he replies,

“Óðinn alone shaped all ill,because among siblings strife-runes he bore.”

The “Fetter-Grove” of this poem has often been associated with the holy grove of the Semnoneswhich Tacitus talks about, a place given to the “god who rules all” where human sacrifice ispracticed, and which “no one enters . . . unless he has been bound with a cord”. For Helgi to bekilled with Óðinn’s spear in a grove whose name hints strongly at an association with the god, andto be received in Valhalla afterwards, suggests that, indeed, his death is an offering to Óðinn."

We have arrived at a powerful set of associations betwixt the Suebian knot and the Valknut. On theone hand we have with the Suevians a custom of tying their hair in a knot, and on the other ofoffering human sacrifice to Odin while in the Fetter-Grove bound with ligatures.Another, and maybe the most significant of all, instance of this knot appears on the TjängvideStone.

The Tjängvide Stone

The eight-legged horse and his rider can be no others than Sleipnir and Odin. Notice the Valknuts

stirred up with his striding and the way in which the Lady presenting the horn has her hair..tied in aknot..a Valknut..

The Tjängvide Stone "Valkyrie"