The Warni (Latin Varini) were a Germanic tribe in the north of Germania. Tacitus counts them among the peoples who jointly worshipped the earth goddess Nerthus – together with the Angles and others.
From Frankish times a Lex Angliorum et Werinorum survives – a sign that Angles and Warni were regarded as a legal community. The historian Procopius also tells the dramatic tale of a broken betrothal between a Warni king and an Anglian princess that ended in a military expedition.
"The Reudigni, Aviones, Angles, Warni … together worship Nerthus, that is Mother Earth."after Tacitus, Germania 40 (public domain, own translation)
The Warni (Latin Varini) were a Germanic people in the north whose seats are assumed on the North Sea and Baltic coast. Over centuries they appear in the sources – from Tacitus into the age of the great Migration Period.
Tacitus counts the Warni in his "Germania" among the seven peoples who together worshipped the earth goddess Nerthus. In a sacred grove on an island her wagon was led about – a time of peace in which all weapons rested. The Warni thus belonged to an old cult league of the coastal tribes.
Remarkably, the Warni even left a law book of their own: the Lex Angliorum et Werinorum ("law of the Angles and Warni"), recorded in Carolingian times. Their name thus stayed alive in legal history long after their heyday.
The Byzantine historian Procopius tells a dramatic story: the Warni king Hermegisclus decreed that his son Radigis should marry an Anglian king's daughter. When Radigis broke the promise, the jilted princess crossed the sea with an army, defeated the Warni and forced him into the marriage – a tale of pride, betrayal and a warlike woman.
Where exactly the Warni sat is disputed. Some connect their name with the river Warnow in Mecklenburg, others place them further west. What is certain: they belonged to the peoples from whose merging later came the Anglo-Saxons and North German tribes.
The Warni combine cult, law and legend in a single people. At GLANZ & GRAVUR we tell such stories from the sources – from the Nerthus procession to Procopius's account of the warlike princess.
The Warni belong to the coastal world of the Nerthus peoples. Continue with the Angles and the goddess Nerthus.
The Angles · The Saxons · The Frisians · The Chauci · The North Frisian ring forts.
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