The Sacrificial Bog of Oberdorla

While Uppsala is famous above all from a text, Thuringia holds the best-excavated Germanic sanctuary in the ground: the sacrificial bog of Oberdorla. A moor in which, for over a thousand years, idols were set up and offerings made – animals and humans alike.

The sacrificial bog at Oberdorla and Niederdorla in the Unstrut valley was used from about the 6th century BC into the Migration Period – over a thousand years of religious continuity at a sacred lake. It is one of the most important sites for Germanic belief anywhere.

A Bog Full of Gods

Around a small body of water the archaeologists (above all Günter Behm-Blancke) uncovered numerous cult places: fenced precincts, hearths, offering pits – and again and again wooden idols. Some are simple forked branches or plank figures in which deities were worshipped.

Idols and Sacrifices

In the wet peat survived what otherwise perishes: besides pottery, animal bones and weapons, there were human sacrifices – bog bodies, some with signs of a violent death. The bog gave and took; it was a threshold to the Otherworld, where people made contact with the powers.

The Nerthus Connection

Exactly such water- and earth-cults are described by the Roman Tacitus for goddesses like Nerthus: a holy place in the bog, processions, sacrifice in the lake. Oberdorla is thus a tangible archaeological counterpart to the ancient written sources – and it lies in the middle of Germany.

A bog sanctuary in Thuringia

The sacrificial bog near Oberdorla in Thuringia is one of the most important Germanic cult sites of Central Europe. Over many centuries – from the pre-Roman Iron Age into the Migration Period – people here made offerings to the gods.

Wooden god-images

In the bog simple god-images carved from wood were found – poles and figures representing the worshipped powers. They attest that the Germani certainly knew cult images, if plain and perishable.

Offerings in the water

Around sacred pools and pits people offered animals, food, weapons and implements. The moist earth of the bog has preserved much over millennia – a unique archive of Germanic religion.

A place over centuries

The remarkable thing about Oberdorla is the continuity: for about a thousand years the place remained sacred. Today an open-air museum makes this old cult site tangible again – a window into the faith of our ancestors.