Believe it or not, the oldest Mjolnir ever found, was found in Old Saxon lands. I learned this from a Heathen archaeologist I met on Saxon Heathenry, the Facebook group I founded. I met this amazing person, in Old Saxon lands as well, at the probable site of the Saxon Irminsul. He met my sons and myself there, and gave a tour, free of charge. His work is so amazing, I support him on Patreon. And I think you all should too. I am meeting him again in Hannover this summer, at the "Saxones" exhibit. (Not a typo, the exhibit is using the Latin name). I can't wait to see him and to get the tour with his amazing thoughts. Dr. Jackson Crawford, Dr. Andreas Nordberg (Swedish) and other amazing archaeologists/scholars who share their work for free, are great people, but they are not Heathen. This fine gentleman, is a Heathen, and a great one.
After reading Sven's amazing blog, I reached out to him. I shared with him the Old Saxon Passage in the Heliand, that discusses Thunar Hammers with beads. Sven responded to me stating that often the literary historical evidence doesn't match what the ground shows. But here, the evidence match. Around 830 AD, the Old Saxon Heliand poem mentions beads worn with a Thunar (Thor) hammer, and it matched what was found in the ground in Old Saxon lands,
Sven states the following in his blog: "Finally, there is another remarkable Thor’s hammer find from Dithmarschen on the German North Sea coast, which today is almost completely forgotten. During the excavation of the Immenstedt burial site in 1880, a bronze Thor’s hammer (Fig. 9) was found strung along a chain of coloured pearls. It was located in the neck area of a female inhumation grave in tumulus 14 P. The extremely fragile find was carefully excavated along with the surrounding soil, but unfortunately it largely disintegrated into dust because it was touched too early during the conservation process. The fact that this extraordinary find was recorded at all is a great stroke of luck, because the responsible excavation team headed by Johanna Mestorf did groundbreaking work for their time. Thus the original form and size of the Thorshammer was drawn in advance and even the coloured pearls were pulled back onto a string in the correct order. Mestorf herself has explicitly guaranteed the correctness of this work.26 Under the excavation conditions customary at that time, the Thor’s hammer of Immenstedt would otherwise certainly have been destroyed during the excavation process without any chance of being preserved for posterity. Thanks to the diligence of the excavators, however, it has been documented together with its context in a way that is still verifiable today. And this context is quite astonishing, because the burial is dated to the 8th or early 9th century27and shows without any doubt that the Thor’s hammer was worn around the neck as a pendant. Thus, the Thor’s hammer of Immenstedt is nothing less than the oldest evidence for these pendants worn as a necklace ever found. At the same time, it is also the oldest Thor’s hammer with the “classical” short handle, which is typical for Denmark and Sweden; only that this specimen from Northern Germany is several generations older than comparable pieces from the north. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the deceased could have emigrated from Scandinavia to Immenstedt. On the contrary: the south-north orientation of the burial (with the head in the south and the feet in the north) clearly points to the Old Saxons, for whom this burial practice is virtually a defining part of their identity. The Thor’s hammer of Immenstedt is thus undoubtedly one of the most important key finds for this early period even if there are no other comparable finds with a similar dating so far."
Here is Sven's full blog. Check it out. AMAZING work, and support him on Patreon.
https://redgeyser.net/early-thors-hammer-pendants-outside-scandinavia/?fbclid=IwAR3TrCE49AMJnSSz1ucMo-4lUsRpCJJ9C_FfGOp_UUViB_dPyMeIPHLFN3E
Here is the passage from the Old Saxon Heliand I shared with Sven, and we then discussed. This is from pages 136-137 of my published book on the Facebook group Saxon Heathenry (for free as well in PDF form in the group)
Here is another great blog of Sven's. It is about an early 8th century belt buckle found in Old Saxon lands, where Odin has one eye. Of course, there is more to the buckle than that. But this is great work. It proves that the Saxon Uuoden (Odin) mentioned in the Baptismal Vow forced on the Saxons, alluded to in the Old Saxon Heliand poem as the man with a bird on his shoulder, did indeed have one eye: https://redgeyser.net/old-saxon-wodan-image-north-of-bremen/ Figure 9 - Sven's
