View allAll Photos Tagged Externsteine
A bit of Gimp-Action. I wasn't satisfied with the original photo and so I tried to improve it. This is the result and I think it is quite good~
A few days later, I visited again the Externsteine. The weather had completely changed. Instead of the 7°C on the previous days the temperature had dropped to a freezing -3°C (29F). Also the strong winds had moved some place else. Everything seemed to be caught in a kind of winter stasis - except snow was missing. Btw., the white stuff on the grass and in the woods in the background is hoar frost.
Die Externsteine sind eine Felsengruppe im Teutoburger Wald bei Horn - Bad Meinberg.
The Extern Stones are a rock group in the Teutoburg Forest in Horn - Bad Meinberg.
Les pierres Extern sont un groupe de rock dans la forêt de Teutoburg en Horn - Bad Meinberg.
EXTERNSTEINE-ALEMANIA-GERMANY-DEUTSCHLAND-MONTAÑAS-MAGIA-PINTURA-PAINTINGS-ART-ERNEST DESCALS-
EXTERNSTEIN en Alemania, la montaña mágica, autentico complejp megalitico de antiguas piedras que impresionan por su especial forma y por su aura de energia telurica.El reflejo en el agua acentua la impresion optica que desprenden sus milenarias piedras.Pinturas del Artista Pintor ERNEST DESCALS en cuadros al oleo sobre los centros de poder energetico.Conexion Religiosa que fue apropiada por los primeros cristianos alemanes, aunque su importancia se encuentra en los tiempos antiguos,lugar de culto de los antiguos germanos que acudian desde tiempos inmemoriables para celebrar sus ritos religiosos.Monumentos naturales y con fuerte personalidad en las Obras de Arte.
Die Externsteine sind eine Felsengruppe im Teutoburger Wald bei Horn - Bad Meinberg.
The Extern Stones are a rock group in the Teutoburg Forest in Horn - Bad Meinberg.
Les pierres Extern sont un groupe de rock dans la forêt de Teutoburg en Horn - Bad Meinberg.
full version here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng84VHKwR6Y
music by brian ingram (via youtube- audio swap)
made with windows live movie maker
After Bishop Meinwerk had finished the work on the destroyed cathedral, he (re)founded and (re)built the Abdinghof-Abbey (St. Peter and St. Paul) in 1014, that was like the cathedral burnt down in the year 1000.
The abbey later was known for it´s library and it´s scriptorium. 1093 the abbey bought the Externsteine, that´s when the sulptures on the stones were carved. It burnt down a couple of times over the centuries, got raided during the Thirty-Years War. 1803 the last monks had to leave the abbey. 1815 the prussian armee moved into the buildings.
Mid 1860 this is a ruin, but gets rebuilt and in 1871 this is the first protestant parish church in Paderborn. Bombed and burned down in March 1945 the abbey was lost, but the church got reconstructed during the 1950s.
The westwork, we see today is a "reconstruction" of the 19th century. Archeologists proved, that the church from around 1050 had an apse in the west and probably smaller spires.
bei einem wiedrigen Tag an den Externsteinen aufgenommen, habe versucht das beste daraus zu machen :-)
An Irminsul (Old Saxon, probably "great/mighty pillar" or "arising pillar") was a sacral pillar-like object attested as playing an important role in the Germanic paganism of the Saxon people. The oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air. The purpose of the Irminsuls and the implications thereof have been the subject of considerable scholarly discourse and speculation for hundreds of years.
A Germanic god Irmin, inferred from the name Irminsul and the tribal name Irminones, is sometimes presumed to have been the national god or demi-god of the Saxons. It has been suggested that Irmin was more probably an aspect or epithet of some other deity – most likely Wodan (Odin). Irmin might also have been an epithet of the god Ziu (Tyr) in early Germanic times, only later transferred to Odin, as certain scholars subscribe to the idea that Odin replaced Tyr as the chief Germanic deity at the onset of the Migration Period. This was the favored view of early 20th century Nordicist writers, but it is not generally considered likely in modern times.
The Old Norse form of Irmin is Jörmunr, which just like Yggr was one of the names of Odin. Yggdrasil ("Yggr's horse") was the yew or ash tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connected the nine worlds. Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin with Old Norse terms like iörmungrund ("great ground", i.e. the Earth) or iörmungandr ("great snake", i.e. the Midgard serpent).
According to the Royal Frankish Annals (772AD), during the Saxon wars, Charlemagne is repeatedly described as ordering the destruction of the chief seat of their religion, an Irminsul. The Irminsul is described as not being far from Heresburg (now Obermarsberg), Germany. Jacob Grimm states that "strong reasons" point to the actual location of the Irminsul as being approximately 15 miles (24 km) away, in the Teutoburg Forest and states that the original name for the region "Osning" may have meant "Holy Wood."
The Benedictine monk Rudolf of Fulda (AD 865) provides a description of an Irminsul in chapter 3 of his Latin work De miraculis sancti Alexandri. Rudolf's description states that the Irminsul was a great wooden pillar erected and worshipped beneath the open sky and that its name, Irminsul, signifies universal all-sustaining pillar.
Under Louis the Pious in the 9th century, a stone column was dug up at Obermarsberg in Westphalia, Germany and relocated to the Hildesheim cathedral in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, Germany. The column was reportedly then used as a candelabrum until at least the late 19th century. In the 13th century, the destruction of the Irminsul by Charlemagne was recorded as having still been commemorated at Hildesheim on the Saturday after Laetare Sunday.
The commemoration was reportedly done by planting two poles six feet high, each surmounted by a wooden object one foot in height shaped like a pyramid or a cone on the cathedral square. The youth then used sticks and stones in an attempt to knock over the object. This custom is described as existing elsewhere in Germany, particularly in Halberstadt where it was enacted on the day of Laetare Sunday by the Canons themselves.
Awareness of the significance of the concept seems to have persisted well into Christian times. For example, in the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik an Irminsul is mentioned in three instances:
Concerning the origin of the Wednesday:
ûf ainer irmensiule / stuont ain abgot ungehiure, / daz hiezen si ir choufman.
"On an Irminsul / stands an enormous idol / which they call their merchant"
Concerning Julius Caesar:
Rômâre in ungetrûwelîche sluogen / sîn gebaine si ûf ain irmensûl begruoben
"The Romans slew him treacherously / and buried his bones on an Irminsul"
Concerning Nero:
ûf ain irmensûl er staich / daz lantfolch im allez naich.
"He climbed upon an Irminsul / the peasants all bowed before him"
Hypotheses - A number of theories surround the subject of the Irminsul.
Germania
In Tacitus' Germania, the author mentions rumors of what he describes as "Pillars of Hercules" in land inhabited by the Frisii that had yet to be explored. Tacitus adds that these pillars exist either because Hercules actually did go there or because the Romans have agreed to ascribe all marvels anywhere to Hercules' credit. Tacitus states that while Drusus Germanicus was daring in his campaigns against the Germanic tribes, he was unable to reach this region, and that subsequently no one had yet made the attempt. Connections have been proposed between these "Pillars of Hercules" and later accounts of the Irminsuls. Hercules was probably frequently identified with Thor by the Romans due to the practice of interpretatio romana.
Externsteine relief and site
On the Externsteine Descent from the Cross relief, the bent structure in the right centre is popularly identified as Irminsul.
Though this may be correct, it is not supported by any contemporary sources.
According to one particularly well-known suggestion, an Irminsul was situated at or near the Externsteine, a famous rock formation near Detmold, Germany. A Christian relief on the Externsteine (see photo above) depicts what has been described as a bent tree-like design at the feet of Nicodemus. This artwork, variously dated to the early ninth to early twelfth century AD, is popularly believed to represent the bent or fallen Irminsul beneath a triumphant Christianity.
While both the artwork and the Irminsul were known to scholars for centuries - Goethe for example discussed the relief in detail -, they were not connected until the 1929 interpretation of lay archaeologist Wilhelm Teudt. In 1934 to 1935, the Ahnenerbe undertook extensive fieldwork in an attempt to uncover material evidence of the use of the Externsteine as a place of Germanic paganism worship, yet no such evidence was found.
Few modern scholars consider it anything but an outright invention of Teudt, who did not provide evidence to back his claims.
Today it is generally accepted by historians that there is no historic attestation connecting the Externsteine to the Irminsul. Certainly, the Eresburg was only about 45 kilometers (c.28 miles) from the Externsteine, and there indeed was an Irminsul "near the Externsteine", but extensive archaeological studies of the Externsteine have failed to yield any material evidence for their use as a sacred site between Mesolithic and pre-Christian times. Thermoluminescence dating of firesites suggests that the site was occasionally used as a rock shelter in Saxon times, but apparently not to the extent one would expect from a major place of worship.
Jupiter Columns
Comparisons have been made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns that were erected along the Rhine in Germania around CE 2 and 3. Scholarly comparisons were once made between the Irminsul and the Jupiter Columns; however, Rudolf Simek states that the columns were of Gallo-Roman religious monuments, and that the reported location of the Irminsul in Eresburg does not fall within the area of the Jupiter Column archaeological finds (Wikipedia).
-14°C.....
The Externsteine are a natural outcropping of five sandstone pillars, the tallest of which is 37.5 m (123 ft) high and form a wall of several hundred metres in length, in a region that is otherwise largely devoid of rocks. The pillars have been modified and decorated by humans over the centuries.[1] The geological formation consists of a hard, erosion-resistant sandstone, laid down during the early Cretaceous era about 120 million years ago, near the edge of a large shallow sea that covered large parts of Northern Europe at the time.
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