title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Unlike many of the city's other public housing projects such as Rockwell Gardens or Robert Taylor Homes, Cabrini-Green was situated in an affluent part of the city. The poverty-stricken projects were actually constructed at the meeting point of Chicago's two wealthiest neighborhoods, Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast. Less than a mile to the east sat Michigan Avenue with its high-end shopping and expensive housing. Specific gangs "controlled" individual buildings, and residents felt pressure to ally with those gangs in order to protect themselves from escalating violence.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: During the worst years of Cabrini-Green's problems, vandalism increased substantially. Gang members and miscreants covered interior walls with graffiti and damaged doors, windows, and elevators. Rat and cockroach infestations were commonplace, rotting garbage stacked up in clogged trash chutes (it once piled up to the 15th floor), and basic utilities (water, electricity, etc.) often malfunctioned and were left in disrepair.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: On the exterior, boarded-up windows, burned-out areas of the façade, and pavement instead of green space—all in the name of economizing on maintenance—created an atmosphere of decay and government neglect. The balconies were fenced in to prevent residents from emptying garbage cans into the yard, and from falling or being thrown to their deaths. This created the appearance of a large prison tier, or of animal cages, which further enraged community leaders of the residents.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In the 1980s, a Catholic lay worker, William "Brother Bill" Tomes Jr., frequently visited Cabrini–Green in an effort to stop the violence. His efforts received national attention and he was interviewed by "Time" magazine and several television networks.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Residents organized over the years both to pressure the city for assistance and to protect and support each other. Community leader Marion Stamps was the most visible Cabrini tenant to organize strikes and protests against the Chicago Housing Authority, Mayor of Chicago and many others on behalf of Cabrini residents from the 1960s until her death in 1996. In 1996, the federal government mandated the destruction of 18,000 units of public housing in Chicago (along with tens of thousands of other units nationwide).


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Some Cabrini–Green tenant activists organized to prevent themselves from becoming homeless and to protect what they and their supporters saw as a right to public housing for the city's poorest residents. The activists succeeded in obtaining a consent decree guaranteeing that some buildings will remain standing while the new structures are built, so that tenants can remain in their homes until new ones are available. The document also guarantees displaced Cabrini residents a home in the new neighborhood.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In 2001, a tenants group sued the CHA over relocation plans for displaced residents of Cabrini–Green under the city's Plan for Transformation, a $1.4 billion blueprint for public housing renewal. Richard Wheelock, an attorney representing the tenants, said the authority's demolition program had outpaced its reconstruction program, thus leaving families with their own responsibilities to find options beyond equally dangerous and segregated areas elsewhere in the city, or simply to become homeless.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In 1997, the same year as the attack on Girl X, community leaders formed the Alliance for Community Peace for "mentoring and recreation to area youth" which later expanded citywide.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: While Cabrini–Green was deteriorating during the postwar era, causing industry, investment, and residents to abandon its immediate surroundings, the rest of Chicago's Near North Side underwent equally dramatic upward changes in socioeconomic status. First, downtown employment shifted dramatically from manufacturing to professional services, spurring increased demand for middle-income housing; the resulting gentrification spread north along the lakefront from the Gold Coast, then pushed west and eventually crossed the river.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Then, in the 1980s, the Lower North Side industrial area just across the river from the Loop, west of Michigan Avenue, and south of Near North Side's Cabrini–Green was transformed into the "River North" neighborhood, a focus of arts and entertainment, now home to the city's technology sector. By the 1990s, developers had converted thousands of acres of former industrial lands near the north branch of the Chicago River (and directly north, south, and west of the former Cabrini–Green projects) to lucrative office, retail, and housing developments.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Over time, Cabrini–Green's location became increasingly desirable to private developers. Speculators began purchasing property immediately adjacent to the projects, with the expectation that the complex would eventually be demolished. Finally, in May 1995, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took over management of the CHA and almost immediately began demolishing the first of the vacant "Reds" buildings in Cabrini Extension, intending to make Chicago a showpiece of a new, mixed-income approach to public housing. Shortly thereafter, in June 1996, the city of Chicago and the CHA unveiled the Near North Redevelopment Initiative, which called for new development on and around the Cabrini–Green site. Under a ten-year Plan for Transformation, which was officially enacted in 2000, the city plans to demolish almost all of its high-rise public housing, including much of Cabrini–Green, except for a few of the run-down row houses, which tentatively remain.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Demolition of Cabrini Extension was completed in 2002. Part of the site was added to Seward Park, and construction of new, mixed-income housing on the remainder of the site began in 2006. Subsidized development of mixed-income housing on vacant or underused parcels adjacent to Cabrini–Green, including a long-shuttered Oscar Mayer sausage factory, the former headquarters of Montgomery Ward, and an adjacent senior housing project named Orchard Park, began in 1994.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: New market-rate housing now almost completely surrounds the remaining public housing. Cabrini–Green once housed 15,000 residents. New housing built on the Cabrini–Green site will include 30% public-housing replacement homes and 20% "workforce affordable" housing, while many adjacent developments (almost all targeted at luxury buyers) include 20% affordable housing, half targeted as public-housing replacement, with a goal of 505 replacement units built off-site.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In February 2006, a unique partnership between CHA, Holsten, Kimball Hill Urban Centers and the Cabrini–Green LAC Community Development Corporation began a 790-unit, $250-million redevelopment of the Cabrini Extension site, to be called Parkside at Old Town. Plans completed the demolition of Green Homes in 2011, while the majority of Cabrini's dilapidated row houses are abandoned and slated for demolition and future redevelopment. The Plan for Transformation's relocation process was the subject of a lawsuit, "Wallace v. Chicago Housing Authority", which alleged that many residents were hastily forced into substandard, "temporary" housing in other slums, did not receive promised social services during or after the move, and were often denied the promised opportunity to return to the redeveloped sites.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: The lawsuit was settled in June 2006, as the parties agreed to two relocation programs for current and former CHA residents: (1) CHA's current relocation program, encouraging moves to racially integrated areas of metropolitan Chicago and providing for case-managed social services, would be applied to families initially moving from public housing; and (2) an agreed-upon modified program run by CHA's voucher administrator, CHAC Inc., would encourage former CHA residents to relocate to economically and racially integrated communities as well as give them increased access to social services.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Some former CHA residents have moved out of Chicago to nearby south suburbs such as Harvey or to other housing developments in nearby cities. New residents have successfully moved into CHA replacement housing, and to date, residents of the mixed-income developments have reported fewer crime related problems. The last two families in Cabrini–Green were forced out by a federal judge's decree on December 1, 2010.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Crime has dramatically decreased as the area's black population has shifted; in the first half of 2006, only one murder occurred. Demolition of Cabrini–Green continued slowly and was completed in 2011. Plaintiffs in "Wallace" and others allege that CHA's hasty removal of residents has exacerbated socioeconomic and racial segregation, homelessness, and other social ills that the Plan for Transformation aimed to address by forcing residents to less-visible but still impoverished neighborhoods, largely on the south and west sides of the city.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Retail chain Target has built on the site at Division and Larrabee Streets, formerly occupied by 1230 N. Larrabee Street and 624 W. Division Street high-rises of the Green Homes. The new address is at 1200 N. Larrabee, and it opened to the public in October 2013.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Though Chicago has had a number of notorious public housing projects, including the Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens on the South Side, and Rockwell Gardens and the Henry Horner Homes on the West Side, Cabrini–Green's name and its problems were the most publicized, especially beyond Chicago. Cabrini–Green often gained press coverage for its chaotic New Year's Eve celebrations when gang members fired handguns into the air, causing police to block off nearby streets every year. Several infamous incidents contributed to Cabrini–Green's reputation.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: An unanticipated result of the steel fencing installed to secure the previously open gangways at Cabrini–Green was that it became difficult for Chicago police officers to see through the steel mesh from outside. On July 17, 1970, Chicago police patrolman Anthony N. Rizzato and Sergeant James Severin were shot and killed by gang members while patrolling community housing for an all-volunteer "Walk and Talk" project. As the officers proceeded across the Cabrini–Green baseball field, the assailants opened fire from an apartment window. The purpose of the shooting was to seal a pact between two rival gangs. Both officers were killed in the attack. Three adults and one juvenile were later charged with murder. The two shooters were sentenced to 100–199 years in prison for two counts of murder. In 1981, the gang killings of 11 made national attention.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In March 1981, in an effort to demonstrate a commitment to making the complex safer, then-Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne moved into a fourth-floor apartment in the 1160 N. Sedgwick Street building with her husband. Backed by a number of police officers and a substantial personal bodyguard presence, she stayed for only three weeks, and this incident contributed to public perception of Cabrini–Green as the worst of the worst of public housing. As a security measure, the rear entryway of the unit Byrne stayed in was welded shut. This had the impact of creating a fortification for gang members when Byrne left. Many other gangs copied this technique in other units.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: On October 13, 1992, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot in the head and killed by a sniper's bullet while walking to Jenner Elementary School with his mother.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: On January 9, 1997, nine-year-old "Girl X" (since identified as Shatoya Currie) was raped, poisoned, and strangled in a stairwell of the 1121 N. Larrabee Street building, leaving her permanently blind, paralyzed, and mute due to brain damage. The attacker used a marker to scrawl gang symbols on her abdomen in an attempt to mislead any investigation and left her for dead, face down in the snow, in the dangerously unlit corridor to be found by a janitor who quit the same day. The Gangster Disciples, the primary gang in Cabrini, were so incensed at this that they ordered members to find the attacker, police said. Patrick Sykes, a neighboring 25-year-old male who was not a gang member, was later apprehended by police, gave a detailed confession, and was sentenced to the state maximum of 120 years in prison. During her recovery, Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan visited Girl X's hospital and prayed at her bedside.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: With her grandmother having recently relinquished custody, her mother was investigated for neglect. Having been barely publicized as a matter of routine, two Chicago reporters soon indicted the Chicago community's indifference to its living conditions and cited Girl X. The story soon got national attention because professional community organizer and former total stranger Beverly Reed sacrificed her job in favor of spending all her time publicizing it on talk shows such as "Geraldo", "Leeza", and "The Oprah Winfrey Show". Contrasted with the recent tragedy of affluent White European child JonBenét Ramsey, the masked identity of Girl X helped all audiences to sympathize as if it could be anyone's child of any stature or race, raising more than mostly in small donations like $5.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Girl X testified in a court case four years after the attack. The judge, Joseph Urso, awarded the family a $3 million payment by the Chicago Housing Authority on the grounds of negligence of maintenance and security of the facility, with the money dedicated to the child's long-term care.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In 2002, five years after the attack, the family first revealed her identity as 14-year-old Toya Currie in the hope of publicizing Governor George Ryan's impending defunding and shutdown of her state care facility. Her care fund was depleted by 2009 when she aged out of the state facility at 22 years old , she was 28 years old at an assisted living facility and, , Patrick Sykes was still pleading innocence on grounds of a tortured confession during a 56-hour police interrogation depriving him of food, sleep, and epilepsy medication.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Though many nonresidents regarded Cabrini–Green with almost unalloyed horror, long-term residents interviewed by a "Chicago Tribune" reporter in 2004 described mixed feelings about the end of the Cabrini–Green era. They told the reporter that, in the face of their hardships living in such squalor, many residents had developed bonds of community and mutual support. They lamented the uprooting and scattering of that community, and worried about what would become of the residents who were being relocated to make way for urban redevelopment. Local Little League baseball coach Daniel Coyle wrote a book "Hardball: A Season in the Projects" (1994), summarizing the blight and violence as "That's the story of Cabrini. A well-meaning person shows up three times a week. But nothing changes."


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Chicago Public Schools (CPS) operates public schools in the area around Cabrini-Green. Most of the Cabrini–Green teenagers attended William H. Wells High School, Waller High School (now known as Lincoln Park High School), also serves area students. Near North Career Metropolitan High School, located at Larrabee and Blackhawk, evolved from Cooley Vocational High School and served area students from 1979 until 2001.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: At Cabrini–Green's height when over 15,000 residents lived in the neighborhood, there were five neighborhood elementary schools operated by Chicago Public Schools serving the neighborhood: Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, Jenner Academy of the Arts, Manierre School, Schiller Community Academy, and Truth School.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In the 1970–1971 school year, there were 6,144 students attending five grade schools in Cabrini-Green: Cooley Upper Grade Center, and Byrd, Jenner, Manierre, and Schiller elementary schools. By 1997 Cooley Upper had closed, and by that year the combined enrollment of the remaining four schools was 2,361. Between the 1970s and 1997 two high-rise buildings were demolished, family sizes decreased, more apartment units became vacant, and the demographic makeup of residents became more proportionately of adults. As of 2008, only three of the schools remain in use. only Manierre and Jenner remained as K–8 schools.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Cabrini-Green is served by Ogden International School, which has its preschool and middle school campus in the Cabrini-Green area. Prior to 2018 the building housed the standalone K-8 school Jenner Academy of the Arts (K-8). In 2016 it had 239 students, 98% African-American and almost all low income; its building capacity was 1,060. Enrollment had declined after Cabrini-Green was demolished. Jenner began the process of merging into Ogden International.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: In the 2010s CPS considered merging Jenner and Manierre together, but concerns involving students crossing gang territorial lines meant that both schools remained open. Manierre is in "Sedville", a gang territory area in Old Town. it is considered a low performing school.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: During the 2003–2004 school year, fifth-grade students from Room 405 at Richard E. Byrd Community Academy developed a comprehensive action plan to push the City of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Education to fulfill an old promise of building a new school for the community. They cited that their school had no lunchroom, no gym, and no auditorium. The heat often did not work and students were forced to wear hats, gloves, and coats in the classroom, among many other inadequacies. As they researched reasons for the decrepit and shameful conditions of their school, they examined issues related to equity in school funding.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: To further their cause and implement their plan, the young activists wrote letters and emails, surveyed, petitioned, interviewed legislators, developed and produced a DVD, video documentaries, and a website in an effort to "get the word out" and garner support in hopes of seeing the new school built. Their fight for the new building garnered local and national attention. In 2004 Byrd students were rezoned to Jenner and Byrd closed. As of 2008, the school's students have transferred to other schools in the Chicago area and the school has been left vacant.


title: Cabrini–Green Homes

text: Freidrich von Schiller School served the William Green Homes. Initially it occupied two buildings at 640 West Scott Street; one was built circa 1963 and the other was about one century old. In 1969 the city approved the site for the new Schiller. It was planned as a two-building campus on a plot of land, with an expected cost of $2.5 million. It was scheduled to open in September 1970. Initially the school was to designate one of its buildings as a "Schome" (meaning "school-home") for preschool children while another building was to house elementary grades. The campus was scheduled to have a capacity of 1,635. In 2009 Schiller closed and students were redirected to Jenner. Skinner North, a selective enrollment (or "test-in") school, occupies the building formerly held by Schiller Elementary.


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai Sampath is an Indian actor and musician working in Tamil films. The nephew of noted composer Deva & the cousin of Srikanth Deva, Jai had made his acting debut in a supporting role in "Bagavathi" (2002). In 2007, he successfully auditioned for a leading role in Venkat Prabhu's sports film "Chennai 600028". His movie "Subramaniapuram" (2008) was also a big success, and Jai was praised for his performance.


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai subsequently garnered more praise for diverse roles, including a villager on holiday in "Goa" (2010), a timid factory worker in "Engaeyum Eppothum" (2011) and a customer care executive in the romantic drama "Raja Rani" (2013), which became his biggest commercial successful film. He made his debut as a singer in the film "Jarugandi" (2018).


title: Jai (actor)

text: Born into a family of musicians, Jai has stated that music was close to his heart and that it influenced him in his "growing years", particularly crediting his uncle, the composer Deva. He completed his schooling in Lamech School, Valasaravakkam, Chennai. He completed fifth grade in keyboard from Trinity College London and has said that he likes to be involved in the music compositions of his films. He has called himself a "huge fan" of Yuvan Shankar Raja's work, saying that he has "often dreamt of surpassing his work as a composer someday".


title: Jai (actor)

text: In an interview with Ananda Vikatan, he confirmed on the rumors about him embracing Islam, that he has been practising Islam for seven years and thinking of changing his name to Ajeesh Jai in future.


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai made his film debut at age 16 as Vijay's younger brother in the 2002 film "Bhagavathi", with director A. Venkatesh choosing Jai as a result of his striking similarity in appearance to Vijay. Jai was then set to make his debut in a lead role in a remake of the Telugu film "6 Teens", but the film remained unreleased despite being complete. He was also expected to feature in Velmurugan's "Ammu" and Nambiraj's "Touch" but neither film materialised. Several other offers came his way including roles in "Alai" (2003) and "Devathayai Kanden" (2005), but Jai was insistent that he earn his place in the film, rather than being chosen on the basis that he was music composer Deva's nephew. He instead chose to concentrate on a career in music, often working for Deva's films a keyboardist alongside his cousins, music composers Srikanth Deva and Bobo Shashi.


title: Jai (actor)

text: His friend, the singer Yugendran, recommended Jai to audition for a role in Venkat Prabhu's directorial debut "Chennai 600028" (2007), based on gully cricket. He was the only actor to be auditioned amongst the eleven lead roles and was the final selection for the film. The success of the film began an association with Venkat Prabhu and Jai has repeatedly collaborated in Prabhu's ventures through leading or cameo roles. He was then selected to play a leading role by debutant director Sasikumar in "Subramaniapuram" (2008), after he had seen him at Deva's residence and Jai signed up for the film without hearing the script under the basis that it was to be produced by director Ameer. The film, set in a Madurai village of the 1980s, told the story of a series of violent happenings on the backdrop of a love story and Jai grew a long beard to reflect the 1980s look for the project. Critics raved about Jai's performance in the film, with a reviewer noting: "Jai, as the romantic killer is the pick of the lot" and that he "lives the role".


title: Jai (actor)

text: After finding himself unable to appear in a role in Venkat Prabhu's "Saroja" due to his long beard, he organised and helped plan a scene that would feature cameo appearances from several actors from their first films. Jai subsequently chose to make a switch from acting in off-beat films and attempted to make a career as an actor in commercial films.


title: Jai (actor)

text: In March 2009, Jai ran into trouble for making controversial comments about the potential box office fare of his future films that he had signed in that period. The actor, who was filming for "Vaamanan", "Aval Peyar Thamizharasi", "Adhe Neram Adhe Idam" and "Arjunan Kadhali" at the time, revealed that only "Vaamanan" would do well and the rest would become financial failures. The producer of his films also revealed they wanted to take action against Jai for "making such irresponsible and damaging statements about his own films." Initially, the Nadigar Sangam council had asked him to complete his pending assignments before he could start work on any other project, beginning with Venkat Prabhu's "Goa". The film's producer, Soundarya Rajinikanth, intervened and bailed Jai out of the ban. His next release Ahmed's "Vaamanan" (2009), an action thriller featuring Priya Anand, Lakshmi Rai and Rahman, marked his first commercial role with a critic noting: "from swift stunts to rapid dance movements, Jai has got it all". The film did not replicate the commercial success of his previous ventures, though his performance was described as "commendable". Meanwhile, "Adhe Neram Adhe Idam" opened to unanimous negative reviews, with a reviewer noting that Jai "with his sleepy eyes looks like he really doesn't want to be in this film at all".


title: Jai (actor)

text: He was then seen in Venkat Prabhu's romantic comedy "Goa" (2010), where he played a villager on a coming-of-age trip to Goa alongside Vaibhav Reddy and Premgi Amaren. Jai's temporary ban from films had delayed the project and he once again grew a beard to portray his character of Ramarajan. Despite positive hype surrounding the film prior to release, it only won average reviews and collections at the box office. He appeared in "Aval Peyar Thamizharasi" with different looks throughout the film to reflect his character's growth, with the main ones being that of an eighteen-year-old boy and a twenty-eight-year-old man. He shed weight to sport the school boy look and later added weight and muscle to look a matured man in his late twenties for the film. Critics lauded Jai's performance, citing: "he shows that he is in the process of grooming himself to become a well-rounded actor" and "that he can bring in complex emotions on his face at the drop of a hat", but the film did not fare well at the box office. Similarly, his performance in the romantic film "Kanimozhi" was described "as endearingly likeable" and that "he had come out with a natural performance", but the film failed commercially. Discussing his five consecutive failure films, Jai admitted that during that period in his career, he had chosen to feature in films without considering the true scope of its potential success, only to avoid a long gap between releases. Since then, he has actively chosen to associate himself with big banner films rather than ventures by debut production houses in order to ensure that his films are well publicized prior to release.


title: Jai (actor)

text: After his string of failures, Jai signed up to play a role in AR Murugadoss's debut production "Engaeyum Eppothum" (2011), after being impressed by Saravanan's script. Portraying a timid working class professional, his role was well received and the film performed well at the box office. A critic noted: "the highlight of the film is its lead actors Anjali, Ananya, Jai and Sharwanand who live the role of the characters they play". Jai then accepted to play a secondary role in Atlee's "Raja Rani" (2013), and admitted he was initially apprehensive about accepting the offer, only choosing to do so after being convinced by the film's climax. He mentioned that he wanted to portray a memorable guest role like that of Karthik in Mani Ratnam's "Mouna Raagam", and worked hard to get into the skin of his character, Surya, taking close to ten takes in certain scenes.


title: Jai (actor)

text: His second release of the year was the fantasy comedy "Naveena Saraswathi Sabatham" (2013), where Jai played a Siddha doctor who becomes deserted on an island after a bachelor party with his three friends. The film opened to mixed reviews and became an average grosser at the box office.


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai carried on featuring as the lead actor, as opposed to multi-starrer films, between 2014 and 2016 albeit to limited success. His first release in the period, the comedy film "Vadacurry" (2014) opened to positive reviews from critics and performed well at the box office, with a critic noting: "Jai is good with romance and comedy, so the role is perfect for him". His subsequent releases including Aascar Films' romantic-comedy "Thirumanam Ennum Nikkah" (2014) alongside Nazriya and "Valiyavan" (2015), co-starring Andrea Jeremiah, where the former performed average and the latter performed poorly at the box office, while also receiving negative reviews. Likewise, his two releases in 2016, Manimaran's social drama "Pughazh" (2016) and Gautham Vasudev Menon's long-delayed production "Tamilselvanum Thaniyar Anjalum" (2016), where he portrayed a mail carrier, also performed average at the box office. During the period, producer T. Siva spoke out against Jai for failing to promote his films despite his lack of stardom. Following a string of unsuccessful films, Jai experienced critical and commercial acclaim with his role in Venkat Prabhu's sequel "Chennai 600028 II" (2016), where he reprised his role of Raghu from the original film. The story revolved around the reunion of the old cricket team for the wedding of Jai's character, and opened to positive reviews in December 2016, with critics stating that Jai made "a good comeback". In 2017, Jai appeared in the romantic comedy film "Enakku Vaaitha Adimaigal", portraying an IT worker who is unlucky in love. In late 2018, he signed "Madhura Raja" alongside Mammootty marking his debut in Malayalam Cinema which was release in April 2019. Then next, "Neeya 2" (2019), a romantic horror film. His 25th film, "Capmaari" was directed by S. A. Chandrasekhar. In 2020, "Triples" is Jai’s first OTT offering and is in the form of a web-series, another first for the actor as well.


title: Jai (actor)

text: The year 2022 begins with two action films, "Veerapandiyapuram" and "Kuttram Kuttrame" directed by Suseenthiran. The next, he acted as the psycho killer in "Pattampoochi" directed by Badri. Then, the action thriller "Yenni Thuniga".


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai is also a car racer. "Crazy about racing" since his childhood, he said he was inspired by Tamil actor Ajith Kumar to get into racing. In June 2014, he participated in his first car racing tournament, the JK Tyre National Racing Championship at the Irungattukottai Race Track in Sriperumbudur.


title: Jai (actor)

text: Jai was arrested for allegedly driving a car under the influence of alcohol and hitting a divider in Adyar. Sources said the actor was booked in 2014 after his vehicle rammed a median near Kasi Theatre. The police have recommended the cancellation of his license.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Carlos Castañeda (December 25, 1925 – April 27, 1998) was an American writer. Starting with "The Teachings of Don Juan" in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that purport to describe training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda's first three books—"", "A Separate Reality", and "Journey to Ixtlan"—were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He wrote that these books were ethnographic accounts describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as "don Juan Matus", a Yaqui Indian from northern Mexico. The veracity of these books was doubted from their original publication, and they are now widely considered to be fictional. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: At the time of his death in 1998, Castaneda's books had sold more than eight million copies and had been published in 17 languages.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: According to his birth record, Carlos Castañeda was born Carlos César Salvador Arana, on December 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru, son of César Arana and Susana Castañeda, both of them single. Immigration records confirm the birth record's date and place of birth. Castaneda moved to the United States in 1951 and became a naturalized citizen on June 21, 1957.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda's first three books—"", "A Separate Reality", and "Journey to Ixtlan"—were written while he was an anthropology student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He wrote that these books were ethnographic accounts describing his apprenticeship with a traditional "Man of Knowledge" identified as "don Juan Matus", an Indigenous Yaqui from northern Mexico. The veracity of these books was doubted from their original publication, and they are now widely considered to be fictional. Castaneda was awarded his bachelor's and doctoral degrees based on the work described in these books.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: In 1974 his fourth book, "Tales of Power", chronicled the end of his apprenticeship with Matus. Castaneda continued to be popular with the reading public, and subsequent publications appeared describing further aspects of his training with don Juan.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda wrote that don Juan recognized him as the new "nagual", or leader of a party of seers of his lineage. Matus also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable by man—implying that, for his own party of seers, Matus was a connection to that unknown. Castaneda often referred to this unknown realm as "nonordinary reality."


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: While Castaneda was a well-known cultural figure, he rarely appeared in public forums. He was the subject of a cover article in the March 5, 1973 issue of "Time," which described him as "an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a tortilla". There was controversy when it was revealed that Castaneda might have used a surrogate for his cover portrait. Correspondent Sandra Burton, apparently unaware of Castaneda's principle of freedom from personal history, confronted him about discrepancies in his account of his life. He responded: "To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics ... is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all." Following that interview, Castaneda completely retired from public view until the 1990s.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Scholars have debated "whether Castaneda actually served as an apprentice to the alleged Yaqui sorcerer don Juan Matus or if he invented the whole odyssey." Castaneda's books are classified as non-fiction by their publisher, although there is consensus among critics that they are largely, if not completely, fictional.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Author and Castaneda critic Richard de Mille published two books—"Castaneda's Journey: The Power and the Allegory" and "The Don Juan Papers"—in which he argued that don Juan was imaginary, based on a number of arguments, including that Castaneda did not report on the Yaqui name of a single plant he learned about, and that he and don Juan "go quite unmolested by pests that normally torment desert hikers." "Castaneda's Journey" also includes 47 pages of quotes Castaneda attributed to don Juan which were actually from a variety of other sources, including anthropological journal articles and even well known writers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and C. S. Lewis. De Mille's work has also come under criticism of its own, however. Walter Shelburne contends that "the Don Juan chronicle cannot be a literally true account."


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: According to Jay Fikes's research in Mexico, Castaneda spent some time with Ramón Medina Silva, a Huichol "mara'akame" (shaman) and artist who may have inspired the don Juan character. Silva was murdered during a brawl in 1971.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: In the 1990s, Castaneda once again began appearing in public to promote Tensegrity, described in promotional materials as "the modernized version of some movements called magical passes developed by Indigenous shamans who lived in Mexico in times prior to the Spanish conquest."


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda, with Carol Tiggs, Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar, created Cleargreen Incorporated in 1995, whose stated purpose was "to sponsor Tensegrity workshops, classes and publications.". Tensegrity seminars, books, and other merchandise were sold through Cleargreen.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda married Margaret Runyan in Mexico in 1960, according to Runyan's memoirs. He is listed as the father on the birth certificate of Runyan's son C.J. Castaneda, even though the biological father was a different man.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: In an interview, Runyan said she and Castaneda were married from 1960 to 1973; however, Castaneda obscured whether the marriage occurred, and his death certificate stated he had never been married.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Castaneda died on April 27, 1998 in Los Angeles due to complications from hepatocellular cancer. There was no public service; he was cremated and the ashes were sent to Mexico. His death was unknown to the outside world until nearly two months later, on 19 June 1998, when an obituary, "A Hushed Death for Mystic Author Carlos Castaneda" by staff writer J. R. Moehringer appeared in the "Los Angeles Times".


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Four months after Castaneda's death, C. J. Castaneda, also known as Adrian Vashon, whose birth certificate shows Carlos Castaneda as his father, challenged the authenticity of Castaneda's will in probate court. The challenge was ultimately unsuccessful. Carlos' death certificate states metabolic encephalopathy for 72 hours prior to his death, yet the will was purportedly signed 48hours before Castaneda's death.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: After Castaneda stepped away from public view in 1973, he bought a large multi-dwelling property in Los Angeles which he shared with some of his followers, including Taisha Abelar (formerly Maryann Simko) and Florinda Donner-Grau (formerly Regine Thal). Like Castaneda, Abelar and Donner-Grau were students of anthropology at UCLA. Each subsequently wrote books about being followers of Castaneda's teachings from a feminist perspective.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Around the time Castaneda died, his companions Donner-Grau, Abelar and Patricia Partin informed friends they were leaving on a long journey. Amalia Marquez (also known as Talia Bey) and Tensegrity instructor Kylie Lundahl also left Los Angeles. Weeks later, Partin's red Ford Escort was found abandoned in Death Valley. Luis Marquez, Bey's brother, went to police in 1999 over his sister's disappearance, but could not convince them that it merited investigation.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: In 2003, Partin's sun-bleached skeleton was discovered by a pair of hikers in Death Valley's Panamint Dunes area and identified in 2006 by DNA testing. The investigating authorities ruled the cause of death as undetermined. However, Castaneda often talked about suicide, and associates believe the women killed themselves in the wake of Castaneda's death.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: The veracity of Castaneda's work has been doubted since their original publication, even while reviewers praised the writing and storytelling. For example, while Edmund Leach praised "The Teachings of Don Juan" as "a work of art," he doubted its factual authenticity. Anthropologist E. H. Spicer offered a somewhat mixed review of the book, highlighting Castaneda's expressive prose and his vivid depiction of his relationship with don Juan. However, Spicer noted that the events described in the book were not consistent with other ethnographic accounts of Yaqui cultural practices, concluding it was unlikely that don Juan had ever participated in Yaqui group life. Spicer also wrote, "[It is] wholly gratuitous to emphasize, as the subtitle does, any connection between the subject matter of the book and the cultural traditions of the Yaquis."


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: In a series of articles, R. Gordon Wasson, the ethnobotanist who made psychoactive mushrooms famous, similarly praised Castaneda's work, while expressing doubts regarding some of the claims' accuracy.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: An early unpublished review by anthropologist Weston La Barre was more critical. He questioned the book's accuracy, calling it a "pseudo-profound deeply vulgar pseudo-ethnography." The review, initially commissioned by "The New York Times Book Review", was rejected and replaced by a more positive review from anthropologist Paul Riesman.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Beginning in 1976, Richard de Mille published a series of criticisms that uncovered inconsistencies in Castaneda's field notes, as well as 47 pages of apparently plagiarized quotes.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Those familiar with Yaqui culture also questioned Castaneda's accounts, including anthropologist Jane Holden Kelley. Other criticisms of Castaneda's work include the total lack of Yaqui vocabulary or terms for any of his experiences, and his refusal to defend himself against the accusation that he received his PhD from UCLA through deception.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: John Dedrick, a Protestant missionary who lived among the Yaqui Indians of Vicam, Sonora, from 1940 to 1979 said that, "I've only read "The Teachings of Don Juan", and before I got to the third part of the book I knew that he [Castaneda] did know of the Yaquis and that he had not been to the Rio Yaqui river, or that there is no terminology in the Yaqui language for any of the instructions and explanations that "Don Juan" was giving it to him [Castaneda].


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Clement Woodward Meighan points out that, for the most part, the books do not describe Yaqui culture at all, with its emphasis on Catholic upbringing and conflict with the Federal State of Mexico, but rather focus on the international movements and life of Don Juan, who was described in the books as traveling and having many connections, and abodes, in the Southwestern United States (Arizona), Northern Mexico, and Oaxaca.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: According to William W. Kelly, chair of the anthropology department at Yale University:I doubt you'll find an anthropologist of my generation who regards Castaneda as anything but a clever con man. It was a hoax, and surely don Juan never existed as anything like the figure of his books. Perhaps to many it is an amusing footnote to the gullibility of naive scholars, although to me it remains a disturbing and unforgivable breach of ethics.David Silverman sees value in the work even while considering it fictional. In "Reading Castaneda" he describes the apparent deception as a critique of anthropology field work in general—a field that relies heavily on personal experience, and necessarily views other cultures through a lens. He said that the descriptions of peyote trips and the work's fictional nature were meant to place doubt on other works of anthropology.


title: Carlos Castaneda

text: Donald Wieve cites Castaneda to explain the insider/outsider problem as it relates to mystical experiences, while acknowledging the fictional nature of Castaneda's work.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: The Taking of Deborah Logan is a 2014 American found footage supernatural horror film, which serves as the feature film directorial debut of Adam Robitel, who co-wrote the screenplay and edited the film with Gavin Heffernan. The film stars Jill Larson, Anne Ramsay and Michelle Ang. Set in Virginia, it tells the story of a documentary crew making a film about Alzheimer's patients who uncover something sinister while documenting a woman who has the disease. The film was produced by Jeff Rice and Bryan Singer and was released on October 21, 2014.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: Mia Medina, Gavin, and Luis are a team of students who want to create a documentary about Deborah Logan, an elderly woman who has Alzheimer's disease. As the film crew records her daily life, Deborah starts to exhibit increasingly bizarre actions that her personal physician states are normal for someone with an aggressive form of Alzheimer's. However, cameraman Luis begins to notice that her actions defy normal explanations and expresses concern that something supernatural is occurring. Things grow more tense after Luis and Gavin record audio of Deborah speaking in French, talking about sacrifices and snakes. They notice that the line for 337 at her switchboard continually rings; the line belonged to local physician Henri Desjardins, who disappeared after a series of cannibalistic ritualized murders of four young girls. Deborah's behavior becomes so extreme that she is hospitalized for her own safety. Dismayed, Gavin quits the film.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: The others discover that Desjardins was supposedly trying to recreate an ancient Monacan ritual that would make him immortal but required the deaths of five girls that recently had their first period. They wonder whether Deborah is possessed by Desjardins. Deborah's daughter Sarah, along with Mia and Luis discover that Deborah had unsuccessfully tried to abduct Cara Minetti, a young cancer patient. At the hospital, Harris Sredl, Deborah's friend, visits her and she begs him to kill her. He tries to comply but is knocked out by the entity possessing her. Sarah learns from Harris that years ago, Deborah found out that Desjardins planned to use Sarah as his fifth victim. It had prompted her to murder the doctor before he could accomplish his plan, and she buried his body in the yard. The group finds the body's remains and tries to burn them, but fails.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: Deborah succeeds in abducting Cara and taking her to the location where Desjardins had killed his previous victims. After discovering Deborah has gone into the mines, Sheriff Linda Tweed follows behind, only to be killed. Sarah and Mia find Deborah as she is trying to swallow Cara's head in a snake-like manner and manage to burn Desjardins' corpse. The film then cuts to news footage of reporters stating that Deborah was deemed unfit to stand trial for her crimes and abduction of Cara, her health having deteriorated rapidly in the months following the incident. Cara has overcome her cancer and is celebrating her 10th birthday. As the reporter begins to wrap up the story, Cara turns to the camera and gives a sinister smile, hinting that Desjardins' ritual was completed and he is now in control of her body.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: The filming took place in Charlotte Region, North Carolina and Creative Network Studios. Additional stunt doubles were used in place of Mia, Deborah and others. Vincent Guastini did the special effects. He said that he was impressed with the script and wanted to work with the filmmakers. He described his relationship with Robitel as "truly a collaborative effort". He agreed with Robitel's choice to limit the amount of footage seen of the transformation, as he felt this "added more believability and truth".


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: "The Taking of Deborah Logan" released via electronic sell-through on October 21, 2014 and was followed by releases on video on demand and DVD on November 4, 2014.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: The film holds an 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews from 11 critics, and the average score is 6.40/10.


title: The Taking of Deborah Logan

text: "Ain't it Cool News" called it "found footage done right... one of the most effective entries in the popular subgenre" while "The Wrap" named it a "Netflix Horror Gem", calling the film "one of the freshest entries in American possession horror". "Nerdist" and "Dread Central" both wrote mostly positive reviews for the film, with "Dread Central" commenting that while the film would not appeal to everyone, "if you're looking for a spooky little film that's free of pretension and sometimes logic and are into getting some quick shivers, you really cannot go wrong". In contrast, "Bloody Disgusting" panned the film, stating that it was unduly derivative of other similarly themed works to be truly effective and that other than a specific scene near the end, "the film brings nothing new to the table".


title: Germanic paganism

text: Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germany, and at times other parts of Europe, the beliefs and practices of Germanic paganism varied. Scholars typically assume some degree of continuity between Roman-era beliefs and those found in Norse paganism, as well as between Germanic religion and reconstructed Indo-European religion and post-conversion folklore, though the precise degree and details of this continuity are subjects of debate. Germanic religion was influenced by neighboring cultures, including that of the Celts, the Romans, and, later, by Christian religion. Very few sources exist that were written by pagan adherents themselves; instead, most were written by outsiders and can thus can present problems for reconstructing authentic Germanic beliefs and practices.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Some basic aspects of Germanic belief can be reconstructed, including one or more origin myths, a myth of the end of the world, a general belief in the inhabited world being a "middle-earth", as well as some aspects of belief in fate and the afterlife. The Germanic peoples believed in a multitude of gods, and in other supernatural beings such as jötnar (often glossed as giants), dwarfs, elves, and dragons. Roman-era sources, using Roman names, mention several important male gods, as well as several goddesses such as Nerthus and the matronae. Early medieval sources identify a pantheon consisting of the gods *Wodanaz (Odin), *Thunraz (Thor), *Tiwaz (Tyr), and *Frijjō (Frigg), as well as numerous other gods, many of whom are only attested from Norse sources (see Proto-Germanic folklore).


title: Germanic paganism

text: Textual and archaeological sources allow the reconstruction of aspects of Germanic ritual and practice. These include well-attested burial practices, which likely had religious significance, such as rich grave goods and the burial in ships or wagons. Wooden carved figures that may represent gods have been discovered in bogs throughout northern Europe, and rich sacrificial deposits, including objects, animals, and human remains, have been discovered in springs, bogs, and under the foundations of new structures. Evidence for sacred places includes not only natural locations but also early evidence for the construction of structures such as temples and the worship of standing poles in some places. Other known Germanic religious practices include divination and magic, and there is some evidence for festivals and the existence of priests.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Germanic religion is principally defined as the religious traditions of speakers of Germanic languages (the Germanic peoples). The term "religion" in this context is itself controversial, Bernhard Maier noting that it "implies a specifically modern point of view, which reflects the modern conceptual isolation of 'religion' from other aspects of culture". Never a unified or codified set of beliefs or practices, Germanic religion showed strong regional variations and Rudolf Simek writes that it is better to refer to "Germanic "religions"". In many contact areas (e.g. Rhineland and eastern and northern Scandinavia), Germanic paganism was similar to neighboring religions such as those of the Slavs, Celts, or Finnic peoples. The use of the qualifier "Germanic" (e.g. "Germanic religion" and its variants) remains common in German-language scholarship, but is less commonly used in English and other scholarly languages, where scholars usually specify which branch of paganism is meant (e.g. Norse paganism or Anglo-Saxon paganism). The term "Germanic religion" is sometimes applied to practices dating to as early as the Stone Age or Bronze Age, but its use is more generally restricted to the time period after the Germanic languages had become distinct from other Indo-European languages (early Iron Age). Germanic paganism covers a period of around one thousand years in terms of written sources, from the first reports in Roman sources to the final conversion to Christianity.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Because of the amount of time and space covered by the term "Germanic religion", controversy exists as to the degree of continuity of beliefs and practices between the earliest attestations in Tacitus and the later attestations of Norse paganism from the high Middle Ages. Many scholars argue for continuity, seeing evidence of commonalities between the Roman, early medieval, and Norse attestations, while many other scholars are skeptical. The majority of Germanic gods attested by name during the Roman period cannot be related to a later Norse god; many names attested in the Nordic sources are similarly without any known non-Nordic equivalents. The much higher number of sources on Scandinavian religion has led to a methodologically problematic tendency to use Scandinavian material to complete and interpret the much more sparsely attested information on continental Germanic religion.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Most scholars accept some form of continuity between Indo-European and Germanic religion, but the degree of continuity is a subject of controversy. Jens Peter Schjødt writes that while many scholars view comparisons of Germanic religion with other attested Indo-European religions positively, "just as many, or perhaps even more, have been sceptical". While supportive of Indo-European comparison, Schjødt notes that the "dangers" of comparison are taking disparate elements out of context and arguing that myths and mythical structures found around the world must be Indo-European just because they appear in multiple Indo-European cultures. Bernhard Maier argues that similarities with other Indo-European religions do not necessarily result from a common origin, but can also be the result of convergence.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Continuity also concerns the question of whether popular, post-conversion beliefs and practices (folklore) found among Germanic speakers up to the modern day reflect a continuity with earlier Germanic religion. Earlier scholars, beginning with Jacob Grimm, believed that modern folklore was of ancient origin and had changed little over the centuries, which allowed the use of folklore and fairy tales as sources of Germanic religion. These ideas later came under the influence of völkisch ideology, which stressed the organic unity of a Germanic "national spirit" (), as expressed in Otto Höfler's "Germanic continuity theory". As a result, the use of folklore as a source went out of fashion after World War II, especially in Germany, but has experienced a revival since the 1990s in Nordic scholarship. Today, scholars are cautious in their use of folkloric material, keeping in mind that most was collected long after the conversion and the advent of writing. Areas where continuity can be noted include agrarian rites and magical ideas, as well as the root elements of some folktales.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Sources on Germanic religion can be divided between primary sources and secondary sources. Primary sources include texts, structures, place names, personal names, and objects that were created by devotees of the religion; secondary sources are normally texts that were written by outsiders.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Examples of primary sources include some Latin alphabet and Runic inscriptions, as well as poetic texts such as the Merseburg Charms and heroic texts that may date from pagan times, but were written down by Christians. The poems of the Edda, while pagan in origin, continued to circulate orally in a Christian context before being written down, which makes an application to pre-Christian times difficult. In contrast, pre-Christian images such as on bracteates, gold foil figures, and rune and picture stones are direct attestations of Germanic religion. The interpretation of these images is not always immediately obvious. Archaeological evidence is also extensive, including evidence from burials and sacrificial sites. Ancient votive altars from the Rhineland often contain inscriptions naming gods with Germanic or partially Germanic names.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Most textual sources on Germanic religion were written by outsiders. The chief textual source for Germanic religion in the Roman period is Tacitus's "Germania". There are problems with Tacitus's work, however, as it is unclear how much he really knew about the Germanic peoples he described and because he employed numerous topoi dating back to Herodotus that were used when describing a barbarian people. Unlike some other Roman authors, Tacitus had not visited Germanic territories. Furthermore, Tacitus' reliability as a source can be characterized by his rhetorical tendencies, since one of the purposes of "Germania" was to present his Roman compatriots with an example of the virtues he believed they were missing. Julius Caesar, Procopius, and other ancient authors also offer some information on Germanic religion.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Textual sources for post-Roman continental Germanic religion are written by Christian authors: Some of the gods of the Lombards are described in the 7th-century "Origo gentis Langobardorum" ("Origin of the Lombard People"), while a small amount of information on the religion of the pagan Franks can be found in Gregory of Tours's late 6th-century ("History of the Franks"). An important source for the pre-Christian religion of the Anglo-Saxons is Bede's "Ecclesiastical History of the English People" (c. 731). Other sources include historians such as Jordanes (6th century CE) and Paul the Deacon (8th century), as well as saint lives and Christian legislation against various practices.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Textual sources for Scandinavian religion are much more extensive. They include the aforementioned poems of the Poetic Edda, Eddic poetry found in other sources, the Prose Edda, which is usually attributed to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (13th century CE), Skaldic poetry, poetic kennings with mythological content, Snorri's "Heimskringla", the "Gesta Danorum" of Saxo Grammaticus (12th-13th century CE), Icelandic historical writing and sagas, as well as outsider sources such as the report on the Rus' made by the Arab traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan (10th century), the "Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum" by bishop Adam of Bremen (11th century CE), and various saints' lives.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Germanic religion has been influenced by the beliefs of other cultures. Celtic and Germanic peoples were in close contact in the first millenium BCE, and evidence for Celtic influence on Germanic religion is found in religious vocabulary. This includes, for instance, the name of the deity *"Þun(a)raz" (Thor), which is identical to Celtic *"Toranos" (Taranis), the Germanic name of the runes (Celtic *"rūna" 'secret, magic'), and the Germanic name for the sacred groves, *"nemeđaz" (Celtic "nemeton"). Evidence for further close religious contacts is found in the Roman-era Rhineland goddesses known as matronae, which display both Celtic and Germanic names. During the Viking Age, there is evidence for continued Irish mythological and Insular Celtic influence on Norse religion.


title: Germanic paganism

text: During the Roman period, Germanic gods were equated with Roman gods and worshiped with Roman names in contact zones, a process known as ; later, Germanic names were also applied to Roman gods ().


title: Germanic paganism

text: This was done to better understand one another's religions as well as to syncretize elements of each religion. This resulted in various aspects of Roman worship and iconography being adopted among the Germanic peoples, including those living at some distance from the Roman frontier.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In later centuries, Germanic religion was also influenced by Christianity. There is evidence for the appropriation of Christian symbolism on gold bracteates and possibly in the understanding of the roles of particular gods. The Christianization of the Germanic peoples was a long process during which there are many textual and archaeological examples of the co-existence and sometimes mixture of pagan and Christian worship and ideas. Christian sources frequently equate Germanic gods with demons and forms of the devil ().


title: Germanic paganism

text: It is likely that multiple creation myths existed among Germanic peoples. Creation myths are not attested for the continental Germanic peoples or Anglo-Saxons; Tacitus includes the story of Germanic tribes' descent from the gods Tuisto (or Tuisco), who is born from the earth, and Mannus ("Germania" chapter 2), resulting in a division into three or five Germanic subgroups. Tuisto appears to mean "twin" or "double-being", suggesting that he was a hermaphroditic being capable of impregnating himself. These gods are only attested in "Germania". It is not possible to decide based on Tacitus's report whether the myth was meant to describe an origin of the gods or of humans. Tacitus also includes a second myth: the Semnones believed that they originated in a sacred grove of fetters where a particular god dwelled ("Germania" chapter 39, for more on this see "Sacred trees, groves, and poles" below).


title: Germanic paganism

text: The only Nordic comprehensive origin myth is provided by the "Prose Edda" book "Gylfaginning". According to "Gylfaginning", the first being was the giant Ymir, who was followed by the cow Auðumbla, eventually leading to the birth of Odin and his two brothers. The brothers kill Ymir and make the world out of his body, before finally making the first man and woman out of trees (Ask and Embla). Some scholars suspect that "Gylfaginning" had been compiled from various contradictory sources, with some details from those sources having been left out. Besides "Gylfaginning", the most important sources on Nordic creation myths are the Eddic poems "Vǫluspá", "Vafþrúðnismál", and "Grímnismál". The 9th-century Old High German Wessobrunn Prayer begins with a series of negative pairs to describe the time before creation that show similarity to a number of Nordic descriptions of the time before the world, suggesting an orally transmitted formula.


title: Germanic paganism

text: There may be a continuity between Tacitus's account of Tuisto and Mannus and the "Gylfaginning" account of the creation of the world. The name "Tuisto", if it means 'twin' or 'double-being', could connect him to the name of the primordial being Ymir, whose name probably has a similar meaning. On the other hand, the form "Tuisco" may suggest a connection to Tyr. Similarly, both myths have a genealogy consisting of a grandfather, a father, and then three sons. Ymir's name is etymologically connected to the Sanskrit Yama and Iranian Yima, while the creation of the world from Ymir's body is paralleled by the creation of the world from the primordial being Purusha in Indic mythology, suggesting not only a Proto-Germanic origin for Ymir but an even older Indo-European origin (see Indo-European cosmogony).


title: Germanic paganism

text: There is evidence of a myth of the end of the world in Germanic mythology, which can be reconstructed in very general terms from the surviving sources. The best known is the myth of Ragnarök, attested from Old Norse sources, which involves a war between the gods and the beings of chaos, leading to the destruction of almost all gods, giants, and living things in a cataclysm of fire. It is followed by a rebirth of the world. The notion of the world's destruction by fire in the Southern Germanic area seems confirmed by the existence of the word (probably "world conflagration") to refer to the end of the world in Old High German; however, it is possible that this aspect derives from Christian influence. Scholarship on Ragnarök tends to either argue that it is a myth with composite, partially non-Scandinavian origins, that it has Indo-European parallels and thus origins, or that it derives from Christian influence.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Information on Germanic cosmology is only provided in Nordic sources, but there is evidence for considerable continuity of beliefs despite variation over time and space. Scholarship is marked by disagreement about whether Snorri Sturlason's "Edda" is a reliable source for pre-Christian Norse cosmology, as Snorri has undoubtedly imposed an ordered, Christian worldview on his material.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Midgard ("dwelling place in the middle") is used to refer to the inhabited world or a barrier surrounding the inhabited world in Norse mythology. The term is first attested as in Gothic with Wulfila's translation of the bible (c. 370 CE), and has cognates in Saxon, Old English, and Old High German. It is thus probably an old Germanic designation. In the "Prose Edda", Midgard also seems to be the part of the world inhabited by the gods. The dwelling place of the gods themselves is known as Asgard, while outside of Midgard, the giants dwell in lands sometimes referred to as Jötunheimar. The ash tree Yggdrasill is at the center of the world, and propped up the heavens in the same way as the Saxon pillar Irminsul was said to. The world of the dead (Hel) seems to have been underground, and it is possible that the realm of the gods was originally subterranean as well.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Some Christian authors of the Middle Ages, such as Bede (c. 700) and Thietmar of Merseburg (c. 1000), attribute a strong belief in fate and chance to the followers of Germanic religion. Similarly, Old English, Old High German, and Old Saxon associate a word for fate, "wyrd", as referring to an inescapable, impersonal fate or death. While scholarship of the early 20th century believed that this meant that Germanic religion was essentially fatalistic, scholars since 1969 have noted that this concept appears to have been heavily influenced by the Christianized Greco-Roman notion of ("fatal fortune") rather than reflecting Germanic belief. Nevertheless, Norse myth attests the belief that even the gods were subject to fate. While it is thus clear that older scholarship exaggerated the importance of fate in Germanic religion, it still had its own concept of fate. Most Norse texts dealing with fate are heroic, which probably influences their portrayal of fate.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In Norse myth, fate was created by supernatural female beings called Norns, who appear either individually or as a collective and who give people their fate at birth and are somehow involved in their deaths. Other female beings, the disir and valkyries, were also associated with fate.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Early Germanic beliefs about the afterlife are not well known, however, the sources indicate a variety of beliefs, including belief in an underworld, continued life in the grave, a world of the dead in the sky, and reincarnation. Beliefs varied by time and place and may have contradictory in the same time and place. The two most important afterlives in the attested corpus were located at Hel and Valhalla, while additional destinations for the dead are also mentioned. A number of sources refer to Hel as the general abode of the dead.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The Old Norse proper noun "Hel" and its cognates in other Germanic languages are used for the Christian hell, but they originally refer to a Germanic underworld and/or afterlife location that predates Christianization. Its relation to the West Germanic verb ("to hide") suggests that it may have originally referred to the grave itself. It could also suggest the idea that the realm of the dead is hidden from human view. It was not conceived of as a place of punishment until the high Middle Ages, when it takes on some characteristics of the Christian hell. It is described as cold, dark, and in the north. Valhalla ("hall of the slain"), on the other hand, is a hall in Asgard where the illustrious dead dwell with Odin, feasting and fighting.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Old Norse material often include the notion that the dead lived in their graves, and that they can sometimes come back as revenants. Several inscriptions in the Elder Futhark found on stones marking graves seem intended to prevent this. The concept of the Wild Hunt of the dead, first attested in the 11th century, is found throughout the Germanic-speaking regions.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In Germanic mythology, the numbers three, nine, and twelve play an important role. The symbolic importance of the number three is attested widely among many cultures, and the number twelve is also attested as significant in other cultures, meaning that foreign influence is possible. The number three often occurs as a symbol of completeness, which is probably how the frequent use in Germanic religion of triads of gods or giants should be understood. Groups of three gods are mentioned in a number of sources, including Adam of Bremen, the Nordendorf Fibula, the Old Saxon Baptismal Formula, "Gylfaginning", and "Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts". The number nine can be understand as three threes. Its importance is attested in both mythology and worship.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The Germanic gods were a category of supernatural beings who interacted with humans, as well as with other supernatural beings such as giants (jötnar), elves, and dwarfs. The distinction between gods and other supernaturally powerful beings might not always be clear. Unlike the Christian god, the Germanic gods were born, can die, and are unable to change the fate of the world. The gods had mostly human features, with human forms, male or female gender, and familial relationships, and lived in a society organized like human society; however, their sight, hearing, and strength were superhuman, and they possessed a superhuman ability to influence the world. Within the religion, they functioned as helpers of humans, granting ("good luck, good fortune") for correct religious observance. The adjectival form (English "holy") is attested in all Germanic languages, including Gothic on the Ring of Pietroassa.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Based on Old Norse evidence, Germanic paganism probably had a variety of words to refer to gods. Words descended from Proto-Germanic *"ansuz", the origin of the Old Norse family of gods known as the Aesir (singular Áss), are attested as a name for divine beings from around the Germanic world. The earliest attestations are the name of a war goddess ("battle goddess") that appears on a Roman inscription from Tongeren and a Runic belt-buckle found at Vimose, Denmark from around 200 CE. The historian Jordanes mentions the Latinized form in the "Getica", while the Old English rune poem attests the Old English form , and personal names also exist using the word from the area where Old High German was spoken. The Indo-European word for god, "*deiuos", is only found in Old Norse, where it occurs as ; it mostly appears in the plural () or in compound bynames.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In Norse mythology, the Aesir is one of two families of gods, the other being the Vanir: the most important gods of Norse mythology belong to the Aesir and the term can also be used for the gods in general. The Vanir appear to have been mostly fertility gods. There is no evidence for the existence of a separate Vanir family of gods outside of Icelandic mythological texts, namely the Eddic poem "Vǫluspá" and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and Ynglinga Saga. These sources detail a mythical Æsir–Vanir War, which, however, is portrayed quite differently in the different accounts.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Giants (Jötnar) play a significant role in Germanic myth as preserved in Iceland, being just as important as the gods in myths of the cosmology and the creation and the end of the world. They appear to have been various types of powerful, non-divine supernatural beings who lived in a kind of wilderness and were mostly hostile to humans and gods. They have human form and live in families, but can sometimes take on animal form. In addition to , the beings are also commonly referred to as , both terms having cognates in West Germanic; is probably derived from the verb "to eat", either referring to their strength, or possibly to cannibalism as a characteristic trait of giants. Giants often have a special association with some phenomena of nature, such as frost, mountains, water, and fire. Scholars are divided as to whether there were any religious offerings or rituals offered to giants in Germanic religion. Scholars such as Gro Steisland and Nanna Løkka have suggested that the division of the gods from giants is not actually very clear.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Germanic religion also contained various other mythological beings, such as the monstrous wolf Fenrir, as well as beings such as elves, dwarfs, and other non-divine supernatural beings.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Elves are beings of Germanic lower mythology that are mostly male and appear as a collective. Snorri Sturluson divides the elves into two groups, the dark elves and the light elves; however, this division is not attested elsewhere. People's understanding of elves varied by time and place: in some instances they were godlike beings, in others dead ancestors, nature spirits, or demons. In Norse pagan belief, elves seem to have been worshiped to some extent. The concept of elves begins to differ between Scandinavia and the West Germanic peoples in the Middle Ages, possibly under Celtic influence. In Anglo-Saxon England, elves seem to have been potentially dangerous, powerful supernatural beings associated with woods, fields, hills, and bodies of water.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Like elves, dwarfs are beings of Germanic lower mythology. They are mostly male and imagined as a collective; however, individual named dwarfs also play an important role in Norse mythology. In Norse and German texts, dwarfs live in mountains and are known as great smiths and craftsmen. They may have originally been nature spirits or demons of death. Snorri Sturluson equates the dwarfs to a subgroup of the elves, and many high medieval German epics and some Old Norse myths give dwarfs names with the word or ("elf") in them, suggesting some confusion between the two. However, there is no evidence that the dwarfs were worshiped. In Anglo-Saxon England, dwarfs were potentially dangerous supernatural beings associated with madness, fever, and dementia, and have no known association with mountains.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Dragons occur in Germanic mythology, with Norse examples including Níðhöggr and the world-serpent Jörmungandr. It is difficult to tell how much existing sources have been influenced by Greco-Roman and Christian ideas about dragons. Based on the native word (, related to , "snake"), the early description in "Beowulf", and early pictorial depictions, they were probably imagined as snake-like and of large size, able to spit poison or fire, and dwelled under the earth. Some dragons are described as crawling, while others are said to be able to fly.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Due to the scarcity of sources and the origin of the Germanic gods over a broad period of time and in different locations, it is not possible to reconstruct a full pantheon of Germanic deities that is valid for Germanic religion everywhere; this is only possible for the last stage of Germanic religion, Norse paganism. People in different times and places would have worshiped different individual gods and groups of gods. Placename evidence containing divine names gives some indication of which gods were important in particular regions, however, such names are not well attested or researched outside Scandinavia.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The following section first includes some information on the gods attested during the Roman period, then the four main Germanic gods *Tiwaz (Tyr), Thunraz (Thor), *Wodanaz (Odin), and Frijjō (Frigg), who are securely attested since the early Middle Ages but were probably worshiped during Roman times, and finally some information on other gods, many of whom are only attested in Norse paganism.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The Roman authors Julius Caesar and Tacitus both use Roman names to describe foreign gods, but whereas Caesar claims the Germani worshiped no individual gods but only natural phenomena such as the sun, moon, and fire, Tacitus mentions a number of deities, saying that the most worshiped god is Mercury, followed by Hercules, and Mars; he also mentions Isis, Odysseus, and Laertes. Scholars generally interpret Mercury as meaning Odin, Herculus as meaning Thor, and Mars as meaning Tyr. As these names are only attested much later, however, there is some doubt about these identifications and it has been suggested that the gods Tacitus names were not worshiped by all Germanic peoples or that he has transferred information about the Gauls to the Germans.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The Germani themselves also worshiped gods with Roman names at votive altars constructed according to Roman tradition; while isolated instances of Germanic bynames (such as "Mars Thingsus") indicate that a Germanic god was meant, often it is not possible to know if the Roman god or a Germanic equivalent is meant. Most surviving dedications are to Mercury. Female deities, on the other hand, were not given Roman names. Additionally, the Germanic speakers also translated Roman gods' names into their own languages () most prominently in the Germanic days of the week. Usually the translation of the days of the week is dated to the 3rd or 4th century CE; however, they are not attested until the early Middle Ages. This late attestation causes some scholars to question the usefulness of the days of the week for reconstructing early Germanic religion.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Tacitus mentions a divine pair of twins called the Alcis worshipped by the Naharvali, whom he compares to the Roman twin horsemen Castor and Pollux. These twins can be associated with the Indo-European myth of the divine twin horsemen (Dioscuri) attested in various Indo-European cultures. Among later Germanic peoples, twin founding figures such as Hengist and Horsa allude to the motif of the divine twins; Hengist and Horsa's names both mean "horse", strengthening the connection. In Scandinavia, images of divine twins are attested from 15th century BCE until the 8th century CE, after which they disappear, apparently as a result of religious change. Norse texts contain no identifiable divine twins, though scholars have looked for parallels among gods and heroes.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In "Germania", Tacitus mentions that the Lombards and Suebi venerated a particular deity, Nerthus. He describes this wagon procession in some detail: Nerthus's cart is found on an unspecified island in the "ocean", where it is kept in a sacred grove and draped in white cloth. Only a priest may touch it. When the priest detects Nerthus's presence by the cart, the cart is drawn by heifers. Nerthus's cart is met with celebration and peacetime everywhere it goes, and during her procession no one goes to war and all iron objects are locked away. In time, after the goddess has had her fill of human company, the priest returns the cart to her "temple" and slaves ritually wash the goddess, her cart, and the cloth in a "secluded lake". According to Tacitus, the slaves are then immediately drowned in the lake.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The majority of modern scholars identify Nerthus as a direct etymological precursor to the Old Norse deity Njörðr, attested over a thousand years later. However, Njörðr is attested as male, leading to many proposals regarding this apparent change, such as incest motifs described among the Vanir, a group of gods to which Njörðr belongs, in Old Norse sources.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Collectives of three goddess known as matronae appear on numerous votive altars from the Roman province of Germania inferior, especially from Cologne, dating to the third and fourth centuries CE. The altars depict three women in non-Roman dress. About half of serving matronae altars can be identified as Germanic because of their bynames; other have Latin or Celtic bynames. The bynames are often connected to a place or ethnic group, but a number are associated with water, and many of them seem to indicate a giving and protecting nature. Despite their frequency in the archaeological record, the matronae receive no mention in any written source.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The matronae may be connected to female deities attested in collectives from later times, such as the Norns, the disir and valkyries; Rudolf Simek suggests that a connection to the disir is most likely. The disir may be etymologically connected to minor Hindu deities known as dhisanās, who likewise appear in a group; this would give them an Indo-European origin. Since Jacob Grimm, scholars have sought to connect the disir with the found in the Old High German First Merseburg Charm and with a conjecturally corrected place name from Tacitus; however, these connections are contested. The disir share some functions with the Norns and valkyries, and the Nordic sources suggest a close association between the three groups of Norse minor female deities. Further connections of the matronae have been proposed: the Anglo-Saxon pagan festival of ("night of the mothers") mentioned by Bede has been associated with the matronae. Likewise, the poorly attested Anglo-Saxon goddesses Eostre and Rheda may be connected with the matronae.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Besides Nerthus, Tacitus elsewhere mentions other important female deities worshiped by the Germanic peoples, such as Tamfana by the Marsi ("Annals", 1:50) and the "mother of the gods" () by the Aestii ("Germania", chapter 45).


title: Germanic paganism

text: In addition to the collective , votive altars from Roman Germania attest a number of individual goddesses. A goddess Nehelenia is attested on numerous votive altars from the 3rd century CE on the Rhine islands of Walcheren and Noord-Beveland, as well as at Cologne. Dedicatory inscriptions to Nehelenia make up 15% of all extant dedications to gods from the Roman province Germania inferior and 50% of dedications to female deities. She appears to have been associated with trade and commerce, and was possibly a chthonic deity: she is usually depicted with baskets of fruit, a dog, or the prow of a ship or an oar. Her attributes are shared with the Hellenistic-Egyptian goddess Isis, suggesting a connection to the Isis of the Suebi mentioned by Tacitus. Despite her obvious importance, she is not attested in later periods.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Another goddess, Hludana, is also attested from five votive inscriptions along the Rhine; her name is cognate with Old Norse Hlóðyn, one of the names of Jörð (earth), the mother of Thor. It has thus been suggested she may have been a chthonic deity, possibly also connected to later attested figures such as Hel, Huld and Frau Holle.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The god *Tiwaz (Tyr) may be attested as early as 450-350 BCE on the Negau helmet. Etymologically, his name is related to the Vedic Dyaus and Greek Zeus, indicating an origin in the reconstructed Indo-European sky deity *Dyēus. He is thus the only attested Germanic god who was already important in Indo-European times. When the days of the week were translated into Germanic, Tyr was associated with the Roman god Mars, so that (day of Mars) became "Tuesday" ("day of *Tiwaz/Tyr"). A votive inscription to "Mars Thingsus" (Mars of the thing) suggests he also had a connection to the legal sphere.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Scholars generally believe that Tyr became less and less important in the Scandinavian branch of Germanic paganism over time and had largely ceased to be worshiped by the Viking Age. He plays a major role in only one myth, the binding of the monstrous wolf Fenrir, during which Tyr loses his hand.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Thor was the most widely known and perhaps the most widely worshiped god in Viking Age Scandinavia. When the days of the week were translated into Germanic, he was associated with Jupiter, so that ("Day of Jupiter") becomes "Thursday" ["day of Thunraz/Thor"]). This contradicts the earlier , where Thor is generally thought to be Hercules. Textual sources such as Adam of Bremen as well as the association with Jupiter in the suggest he may have been the head of the pantheon, at least in some times and places. Alternatively, Thor's hammer may have been equated with Jupiter's lightning bolt. Outside of Scandinavia, he appears on the Nordendorf fibulae (6th or 7th century CE) and in the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow (9th century CE). The Oak of Jupiter, destroyed by Saint Boniface among the Chatti in 723 CE, is also usually presumed to have been dedicated to Thor.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Viking age runestones as well as the Nordendorf fibulae appear to call upon Thor to bless objects. The most important archaeological evidence for the worship of Thor in Viking Age Scandinavia is found in the form of Thor's hammer pendants. Myths about Thor are only attested from Scandinavia, and it is unclear how representative the Nordic corpus is for the entire Germanic region. As Thor's name means "thunder", scholars since Jacob Grimm have interpreted him to be a sky and weather god. In Norse mythology, he shares features with other Indo-European thunder gods, including his slaying of monsters; these features likely derive from a common Indo-European source. In the extant mythology of Thor, however, he has very little association with thunder.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Odin (*Wodanaz) plays the main role in a number of myths as well as well-attested Norse rituals; he appears to have been venerated by many Germanic peoples in the early Middle Ages, though his exact characteristics probably varied in different times and places. In the Germanic days of the week, Odin is equated with Mercury ( [day of Mercury] which became "Wednesday" ["day of *Wodanaz/Odin"]), an association that accords with the usual scholarly interpretation of the and is also found in early medieval authors. It may have been inspired by both gods' connections to arcane knowledge and the dead.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The age of the cult of Odin is disputed. Archaeological evidence for Odin is found in the form of his later bynames on Runic inscriptions found in Danish bogs from 4th or 5th century AD; other possible archaeological attestations may date to the 3rd century CE. Images of Odin dating to the late migration period are known from Frisia, but appear to have come there from Scandinavia. The earliest textual reference to Odin by name may be in Jonas of Bobbio's "Life of Saint Columbanus" from the 640s.


title: Germanic paganism

text: In Norse myths, Odin plays one of the most important roles of all the gods. He is also attested in myths outside of the Norse area. In the mid-7th century CE, the Franco-Burgundian chronicler Fredegar narrates that "Wodan" gave the Lombards their name; this story also appears in the roughly contemporary "Origo gentis Langobardorum" and later in the "Historia Langobardorum" of Paul the Deacon (790 CE). In Germany, Odin is attested as part of a divine triad on the Nordendorf fibulae and the second Merseburg charm, in which he heals Balder's horse. In England, he appears as a healing magician in the Nine Herbs Charm and in Anglo-Saxon genealogies. It is disputed whether he was worshiped among the Goths.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The only major Norse goddess also found in the pre-Viking period is Frigg, Odin's wife. When the Germanic days of the week were translated, Frigg was equated with Venus, so that ("day of Venus") became "Friday" ("day of Frijjō/Frigg"). This translation suggests a connection to fertility and sexuality, and her name is etymologically derived from an Indo-European root meaning "love". In the stories of how the Lombard's got their name, Frea (Frigg) plays an important role in tricking her husband Vodan (Odin) into giving the Lombards victory. She is also mentioned in the Merseburg Charms, where she displays magical abilities. The only Norse myth in which Frigg plays a major role is the death of Baldr, and there is only little evidence for a cult of Frigg in Scandinavia.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The god Baldr is attested from Scandinavia, England, and Germany; except for the Old High German Second Merseburg Charm (9th century CE), all literary references to the god are from Scandinavia and nothing is known of his worship.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The god Freyr was the most important fertility god of the Viking Age. He is sometimes known as Yngvi-Freyr, which would associate him with the god or hero *"Ingwaz", the presumed progenitor of the Inguaeones found in Tacitus's "Germania", whose name is attested in the Old English rune poem (8th or 9th century CE) as Ing. A minor god named Forseti is attested in a few Old Norse sources; he is generally associated with the Frisian god Fosite who was worshiped on Helgoland, but this connection is uncertain. The Old Saxon Baptismal Formula and some Old English genealogies mention a god Saxnot, who appears to be the founder of the Saxons; some scholars identify him as a form of Tyr, while others propose that he may be a form of Freyr.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The most important goddess in the recorded Old Norse pantheon was Freyr's sister, Freyja, who features in more myths and appears to have been worshiped more than Frigg, Odin's wife. She was associated with sexuality and fertility, as well as war, death, and magic. It is unclear how old the worship of Freyja is, and there is no indisputable evidence for her or any of the vanir gods in the southern Germanic area. There is considerable debate about whether Frigg and Freyja were originally the same goddess or aspects of the same goddess.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Besides Freyja, many gods and goddesses are only known from Scandinavia, including Ægir, Höðr, Hönir, Heimdall, Idunn, Loki, Njörðr, Sif, and Ullr. There are a number of minor or regional gods mentioned in various medieval Norse sources: in some cases, it is unclear whether or not they are post-conversion literary creations. Many regional or highly local gods and spirits are probably not mentioned in the sources at all. It is also likely that many Roman-era and continental Germanic gods do not appear in Norse mythology.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Julius Caesar and Tacitus claimed that the Germani did not venerate their gods in human form; however, this is a topos of ancient ethnography when describing supposedly primitive people. Archaeologists have found Germanic statues that appear to depict gods, and Tacitus appears to contradict himself when discussing the cult of Nerthus ("Germania" chapter 40); the Eddic poem Hávamál also mentions wooden statues of gods, while Gregory of Tours ("Historia Francorum" II: 29) mentions wooden statues and ones made of stone and metal. Archaeologists have not found any divine statues dating from after the end of the migration period; it is likely that they were destroyed during Christianization, as is repeatedly depicted in the Norse sagas.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Roughly carved wooden male and female figures that may depict gods are frequent finds in bogs; these figures generally follow the natural form of a branch. It is unclear whether the figures themselves were sacrifices or if they were the beings to whom the sacrifice was given. Most date from the first several centuries CE. For the pre-Roman iron age, board-like statues that were set up in dangerous places encountered in everyday life are also attested. Most statues were made out of oak wood. Small animal figurines of cattle and horses are also found in bogs; some may have been worn as amulets while others seem to have been placed by hearths before they were sacrificed.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Holy sites from the migration period frequently contain gold bracteates and gold foil figures that depict obviously divine figures. The bracteates are originally based on motifs found on Roman gold medallions and coins of the era of Constantine the Great, but have become highly stylized. A few them have runic inscriptions that may be names of Odin. Others, such as Trollhätten-A, may display scenes known from later mythological texts.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The stone altars of the matronae and Nehalennia show women in Germanic dress, but otherwise follow Roman models, while images of Mercury, Hercules, or Mars do not show any difference from Roman models. Many bronze and silver statues of Roman gods have been found throughout Germania, some made by the "Germani" themselves, suggesting an appropriation of these figures by the "Germani". Heiko Steuer suggests that these statues likely were reinterpreted as local, Germanic gods and used on home altars: a find from Odense dating c. 100-300 CE includes statues of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Apollo. Imported Roman swords, found from Scandinavia to the Black Sea, frequently depicted the Roman god Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger").


title: Germanic paganism

text: Caesar and Tacitus claimed that the ancient Germans had no temples and only worshiped in sacred groves. However, while groves, bogs, trees, springs, and lakes undoubtedly were seen as holy places by the "Germani", there is archaeological evidence for temples. Archaeology also indicates that neolithic structures and Bronze Age tumuli were used as places of worship. Steuer argues that finds of sacrificial places enclosed with a palisade in England indicate that similarly enclosed areas in northern Germany and Jutland may have been holy sites. Large fire pits near settlements, found in many sites including those from the Bronze Age, the pre-Roman iron age, and the migration period, probably served as ritual, political, and social locations. Large halls in settlements probably also fulfilled ceremonial religious functions.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Tacitus mentions a temple of the goddess Tamfana in "Annales" 1.51, and also uses the word in reference to Nerthus in "Germania", though this could simply mean a consecrated place rather than a building. Later Christian sources refer to temples () used by the Franks, Lombards, continental Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons, while the post-conversion Lex Frisionum (Frisian Law) continued to include punishments for those who broke into or desecrated temples. A temple dedicated to Hercules from the territory of the Batavi at Empel in the Netherlands shows a typical Romano-Celtic building style. Other Roman-style temples dedicated to the matronae are known from the Lower Rhine region.


title: Germanic paganism

text: An early Scandinavian temple has been identified at Uppåkra, modern Sweden. The building, a very large hall with two entrances, was rebuilt on exactly the same site 7 times from 200 to 950 CE. Architecturally, the temple resembles later Scandinavian stave churches in construction. The building was surrounded by animal bones and a few human bones. A similar building has been found at Møllebækvej on Zealand dating from the 3rd century CE, while the later stages of a ritual house at Tissø in Zealand (850-950 CE) likewise resemble a stave church.


title: Germanic paganism

text: The most important description of a Scandinavian temple is of the Temple of Uppsala by Adam of Bremen (11th century): he describes the temple as containing the idols of Borr, Thor, Odin, and Frey (Fricco). Glosses mention the existence of a large tree and well nearby where sacrifices were made. Some aspects of Adam's description appear to be inaccurate, possibly influenced by Norse mythology. Archaeology has shown that Uppsala became an important cult center around 500 CE, with a main royal hall dating from 600-800 CE and having large doors with iron spirals flat against the wood. Four large grave mounds were constructed southwest of the main hall, and there were ritual roads with rows of large wooden posts and lines of fireplaces. The arrangements indicate that there were different processions and rituals both inside and around Gamla Uppsala. The only material remains from the rituals once performed there are of animals; the age of the animals indicates that they were deposited in March, which agrees with the written sources on the Dísablót.


title: Germanic paganism

text: Sacred trees occur as important symbols in many pre-modern cultures, particularly those of Indo-European origin. Modern scholars, on the basis of Greco-Roman religious understanding, usually distinguish between sacred groves and trees, where a god is worshiped, and the worship of trees as divine (tree cult); it is unclear whether this distinction is valid for Germanic religion. Tacitus describes the ancient Germani as worshiping in sacred groves, including the grove of fetters of the Semnones and the grove where the Alcis were worshipped by the Nahanarvali. Tacitus mentions the following functions for Germanic sacred groves: the display of captured enemy standards and weapons, the keeping of the animal-shaped standards of the Batavii (Tac. hist. 4.22), and human sacrifice. Reconstructed Germanic words for sacred groves include *"nimið-", *"alh-", and *"haruh-", which may have originally described different functions of the groves.