Every Easter she makes the rounds again: „Ostara, the Germanic spring goddess". Only – she is largely an invention of Jacob Grimm. What did the Germanic peoples really celebrate at the spring equinox? We bring honest light to a rather tangled matter.
In short: yes, there were pagan „spring feasts". But they had nothing to do, in name or date, with the Christian Easter. And there was no securely attested goddess named Ostara.
The only old trace is the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede (8th c.): he derives the month-name Eosturmonath (April) from a „goddess Eostre" – a single, brief mention, with nothing further known about her. From this Jacob Grimm in 1835 reconstructed a continental „Ostara" by linguistics. His error: he assumed a single „common Germanic religion" – as if a deity attested anywhere must have been worshipped by all tribes. Exactly that is now regarded as outdated.
English Easter and German Ostern go back to Germanic austrō = „dawn" (Greco-Roman Aurora/Eos). In almost all other countries – including Norse Scandinavia – the name of the feast derives instead from Aramaic-Hebrew pascha/Pessach. So „Easter" first of all simply means „dawn/east" – not necessarily „a goddess’s feast".
In the North we know two feasts often (wrongly) lumped together. The Várblót at the equinox is in effect the „Easter" feast: honoured above all are the Vanir – Nerthus, Njörðr, Freyr and Freyja – as well as Idun, the light-god Baldr and the earth-goddess Jörð. The Sigrblót, by contrast, falls on the full moon of the 4th month and marks the start of summer – the victory feast over the frost-giants, with Odin, Thor, Freyr and Freyja at its centre. Important: the Germanic peoples knew only two seasons (summer & winter); celebrating „the start of spring" is a Mediterranean idea.
The lovely customs are almost all younger than the myth claims. The Easter fire is a medieval Catholic tradition (Christ as the light of the world). The dyeing of eggs reached Germany only in the late Middle Ages via the Christianised Sorbs; the egg is a widespread fertility and resurrection symbol. And the Easter hare linked to Ostara is a purely modern connection – often derived via the Rhenish goddess Nehalennia (with fruit-basket and dog), which is speculation.
If anyone, then an earth and fertility goddess. The Corvey field-blessing invokes „Eostar, Eostar, eordhan modor" – „earth mother" – which fits Nerthus better, who returns from the womb of the earth in spring. Idun too (renewal, apple and nut) bears traits of a spring figure. Perhaps the right question is not „Was there an Ostara?" but „Which deity lies behind the name?".
Nerthus · Idun · Kolovrat or Black Sun?.
Bede, De temporum ratione. Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (1835). Jürgen Udolph, Ostern – Geschichte eines Wortes (2011). Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; Philip A. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World (2011); Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte.