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The Rällinge statuette is a seated figure in bronze, discovered in
Södermanland Södermanland ( or ), locally Sörmland, sometimes referred to under its Latin form ''Sudermannia'' or ''Sudermania'', is a historical province or ''landskap'' on the south eastern coast of Sweden. It borders Östergötland, Närke, Västman ...
, Sweden in 1904 and dated to the
Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period The ...
. The seven-centimetre-high figure, who wears a conical headdress, clasps his pointed beard and has an erect penis, has often been assumed to be the god
Freyr Freyr (Old Norse: 'Lord'), sometimes anglicized as Frey, is a widely attested god in Norse mythology, associated with kingship, fertility, peace, and weather. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was especially associated with Sweden an ...
. This is due to an 11th-century description of a phallic Freyr statue in the Temple at Uppsala, but the identification is uncertain. It has also been suggested that the figure is a gaming piece, a flute player, and the god
Thor Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing ...
blowing his beard to create wind. If it is the image of a god, it could be a small, devotional statuette of a type mentioned in Old Norse
saga is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to the Pl ...
s. The object is in the collection of the Swedish History Museum.


Discovery and description

The object was discovered in the spring of 1904 at the farm Rällinge in Lunda parish,
Södermanland Södermanland ( or ), locally Sörmland, sometimes referred to under its Latin form ''Sudermannia'' or ''Sudermania'', is a historical province or ''landskap'' on the south eastern coast of Sweden. It borders Östergötland, Närke, Västman ...
, Sweden. According to the original report, it was found by Edvard Holmgren in the farm's garden under "a vast morass of stones, earth and several large trees and bushes". In 1990, the archivist Thomas Skalm presented documents which instead say that it had been found by the 12-year-old boy Gustav Karlsson in the farm's potato field; Karlsson had sold it to Holmgren for 25
öre Öre () is the centesimal subdivision of the Swedish krona. In the Swedish language, the plural of ''öre'' is either ''öre'' or ''ören''. The name ''öre'' derives from the Latin word ''aereus/aurum'', meaning gold. The corresponding subdivisio ...
, and Holmgren had gone to the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm where he received 20 kronor for it. The museum still has it in its possession. The statuette is made of bronze and has been dated to the late
Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period The ...
, around the year 1000. It is high and weighs . Based on the design, and how it differs from contemporary artworks from continental Europe, it is assumed to have been made by a Scandinavian sculptor. The figure sits cross-legged and clasps his beard with his right hand while his left hand rests on his knee, with a part of the left arm missing. He wears a bracelet on each wrist and a conical helmet or pointed cap on his head. The beard is pointed and long and is accompanied by a large, upturned moustache. The figure is ithyphallic, which means he is depicted with an erect penis. The back of his shoulders and his buttocks are decorated with curly patterns.


Identity


Freyr

The earliest suggestion for the figure's identity was that it is the god
Freyr Freyr (Old Norse: 'Lord'), sometimes anglicized as Frey, is a widely attested god in Norse mythology, associated with kingship, fertility, peace, and weather. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr, was especially associated with Sweden an ...
. This position was taken by the archeologist
Bernhard Salin Carl Bernhard Salin (14January 1861, Örebro20October 1931, Stockholm), was a Swedish archaeologist, cultural historian and museum curator. Bernhard Salin took the matriculation examination at the Public Grammar School in Nyköping 28May 1880 an ...
in the earliest scholarly article about the object, published in 1913. The identification with Freyr remains the most accepted and is repeated in many works about
Old Norse religion Old Norse religion, also known as Norse paganism, is the most common name for a branch of Germanic religion which developed during the Proto-Norse period, when the North Germanic peoples separated into a distinct branch of the Germanic peop ...
and the Viking Age. It is however uncertain, and is supported only by the phallus, which is associated with Freyr through the 11th-century chronicler
Adam of Bremen Adam of Bremen ( la, Adamus Bremensis; german: Adam von Bremen) (before 1050 – 12 October 1081/1085) was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. Adam is most famous for his chronicle '' Ges ...
, who made a single, possibly unreliable mention of a phallic statue of Freyr supposed to have stood in the Temple at Uppsala. The Rällinge figure does not display any of the known attributes of Freyr from his myths, such as his
sword A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed t ...
,
ship A ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Ships are generally distinguishe ...
or
boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is ...
. According to the historian of religions Olof Sundqvist, the statuette could be connected to Freyr's association with royalty and his function as a model for kings. Freyr was associated with battle and fertility, and Sundqvist writes that the statuette's helmet could represent the god's warrior aspect and the phallus his fertility aspect. This would correspond to a human king's responsibility to provide the military protection needed to keep the land of a kingdom fertile.


Other theories

The archeologist Kristján Eldjárn wrote that the Rällinge statuette might not be an image of a mythological figure but a gaming piece. Because of similarities in age and design, Eldjárn wrote that it "seems doubtless" that it belongs to the same artistic tradition as the Eyrarland statue from Iceland. The latter is often assumed to be a representation of the god
Thor Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing ...
, but also resembles a smaller Icelandic whalebone figure, found in a grave in Baldursheimur together with black and white gaming pieces and a die. Eldjárn suggested that the statuettes are king pieces from ''hnefatafl'' game sets. Another suggestion came from the philologist Lotte Motz, who wrote that the statuettes from Eyrarland, Baldursheimur and Rällinge could represent musicians. She wrote that the Rällinge statuette probably depicts a flute player, and compared it to images of "phallic flutists" from other regions. The Norse studies scholar Richard Perkins writes that the statuette could be a depiction of Thor who blows in his beard to create wind. Even if the figure is Freyr, which Perkins does regard as the most likely identity, some tradition could have attributed Freyr rather than Thor with the ability to control the wind with his beard. Perkins further suggests that the figure has adopted features from the
Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in ...
, inspired by depictions such as found on the island of Helgö, not far from Rällinge. Not only could the position of the legs be inspired by the Buddha, writes Perkins, but the conical headdress could be a stylised version of the '' ushnisha''. The archeologist Neil Price writes that if the identification is based solely on the phallus, a symbol for a sexually active man, there is no lack of candidates from Norse myth, legend and history: in addition to Freyr, it is not possible to rule out other gods such as Odin, other beings like dwarfs,
jötunn A (also jotun; in the normalised scholarly spelling of Old Norse, ; ; plural / ) or, in Old English, (plural ) is a type of supernatural being in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, they are often contrasted with gods (Æsir and Vanir ...
s and
elves An elf () is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology. They are subsequently mentioned in Snorri Sturluson's Icelandic Prose Edda. He distinguishes "lig ...
, and human kings and earls such as
Hakon Jarl Haakon Sigurdsson ( non, Hákon Sigurðarson , no, Håkon Sigurdsson; 937–995), known as Haakon Jarl (Old Norse: ''Hákon jarl''), was the '' de facto'' ruler of Norway from about 975 to 995. Sometimes he is styled as Haakon the Powerful ( ...
.


Parallels in sagas and archeology

Although nothing is known for certain about the Rällinge statuette's original purpose, there are attestations of small devotional statuettes in the Old Norse
saga is a series of science fantasy role-playing video games by Square Enix. The series originated on the Game Boy in 1989 as the creation of Akitoshi Kawazu at Square. It has since continued across multiple platforms, from the Super NES to the Pl ...
literature. The '' Hallfreðar saga'' tells how Hallfreðr, the favourite poet of the Christian king Olaf Tryggvason, secretly carried a small ivory statuette of Thor which he worshipped, and Ingimundar Þorsteinsson is said in the '' Vatnsdæla saga'' to have kept a silver statuette of Freyr. These religious statuettes might have been called ''hlutir''. The philologist E. O. G. Turville-Petre wrote that the Rällinge and Eyrarland statuettes, like the statuettes in the sagas, may have been for personal devotional purposes. In 2002, three small phallic figurines from the Iron Age were uncovered at the farm Lunda in
Strängnäs Strängnäs is a locality and the seat of Strängnäs Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden with 15,363 inhabitants in 2020. It is located by Lake Mälaren and is the episcopal see of the Diocese of Strängnäs, one of the thirteen dioceses ...
parish, also in Södermanland. Although they differ in design from the Rällinge statuette—two of them instead show similarities to the found in
Västergötland Västergötland (), also known as West Gothland or the Latinized version Westrogothia in older literature, is one of the 25 traditional non-administrative provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish), situated in the southwest of Sweden. Vä ...
—that makes for a total of four phallic statuettes found in Södermanland. According to an article in ''
Fornvännen ''Fornvännen'' ("The Friend of the Distant Past"), ''Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research'' is a Swedish academic journal in the fields of archaeology and Medieval art. It is published quarterly by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, Histo ...
'', it might be of significance that all four were found in the vicinity of places named Lunda ("the
grove Grove may refer to: * Grove (nature), a small group of trees Places England *Grove, Buckinghamshire, a village * Grove, Dorset * Grove, Herefordshire * Grove, Kent * Grove, Nottinghamshire, a village * Grove, Oxfordshire, a village and civil ...
" in Swedish).


See also

* Odin from Lejre * Priapus *
Satyr In Greek mythology, a satyr ( grc-gre, σάτυρος, sátyros, ), also known as a silenus or ''silenos'' ( grc-gre, σειληνός ), is a male nature spirit with ears and a tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exa ...
* Viking art


References


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * {{Freyr Archaeological discoveries in Sweden Bronze sculptures in Sweden Freyr Sculptures of Norse mythology Viking art Viking Age in Sweden 1904 archaeological discoveries