Elen of the Ways, Parts One & Two

Quest 207, September 2021, pp. 15-22. Elen of the Ways Part One Celestial Reindeer and the Tree of Life Chris Wood Elen of the Ways has become increasingly important to the Pagan community. The legendary Welsh patroness of Roman road-building, Elen of the Hosts, and Saint Helen of the Cross together seem to have formed a vessel for the reawakening of a very ancient Deer Spirit of the land, journeying and pilgrimage. Elen of the Ways Elen has been calling to people over recent decades, coming to them in dreams and manifesting in folklore and legend. Two people most frequently associated with Her are Caroline Wise and Elen Sentier.1 It was Wise who gave us the name, Elen of the Ways.2 Elen is often antlered. She is a Deer Goddess, with roots back to the time when Reindeer roamed what is now Britain. Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, also known in North America as the Caribou) is the only species in which both males and females carry antlers. They also migrate, according to the availability of food and to avoid insect pests. Elen seems to represent the reindeer matron, guiding the herd, and the spirit with whom the hunter must commune, much like Mintiš, the “mistress of the wild reindeer”, who seems to have transformed into Pots Hozjik, “the lady of the [domestic] reindeer”, of the Kola Saami.3 1 Caroline Wise (ed.) (2015) Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways, Eala; Elen Sentier (2013) Elen of the Ways: Following the Deer Trods, the Ancient Shamanism of Britain, Moon. 2 Caroline Wise (op. cit.), note 1, p. 21. 3 Åke Hultkrantz (1985) ‘Reindeer nomadism and the religion of the Saamis’, in Louise Bäckman and Åke Hultkrantz (eds.) Saami Pre-Christian Religion: Studies on the oldest traces of religion among the Saamis, Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 25, Almqvist & Wiksell, pp. 11-28. As trees re-established themselves in the wake of glacial retreat, other deer arrived and people found their tracks, or trods, useful routes to follow. This co-operative journeying through the land, daily life as pilgrimage, is part of Elen’s being too, as are the trees, source of life and plant corollary to Her antlers. She is the land and Caitlín Matthews sees Her as an aspect of the Celtic Goddess of Sovereignty.4 Elen is also linked to migratory birds, the swans and geese which fill the empty winter skies with sound, and to dogs. She is a mother, giving Her white milk, and guiding Her offspring across the snow. In the Arctic and boreal forest, it is common to see drinking scoops, fashioned of horn, bone, wood, birch bark or tin, sometimes used for catching the milk of semi-domesticated reindeer. Their shape is practical and significant. The utensil is also known as a dipper, with the shape of the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, which, particularly in America, are called the Big and Little Dipper respectively. Celestial Aspects Elen is not only associated with the movement of humans and animals across the land. The journeys of celestial bodies are also part of Her being. The Pole Star is currently one of those in Ursa Minor, but for 3500 years, until 15,000 years ago, it was in the constellation of Cygnus, also known as the Northern Cross, which is significant, as will be seen.5 The Pole Star marks the point about which the Heavens appear to rotate, the axis mundi, or World Tree. Elen’s antlers represent this tree and are reminiscent of other world myths, such as that of the celestial Ganges gushing down from the region of the circumpolar stars to be caught in Śiva’s hair, thence to run in a beneficent fashion out over the Earth.6 Caitlín Matthews (2015) ‘Elen as Goddess of Sovereignty’, in Caroline Wise (op. cit.), note 1, pp. 45-55. 5 Andrew Collins (2015) ‘Elen and the Celestial Deer Path: The Quest for the Origins of the Primordial Mother of Life’, in Caroline Wise (op. cit.), note 1, pp. 93-123. 6 Heinrich Zimmer (1972) Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Princeton University Press, p. 115. 4 Elen is also associated with those closer, directly vital luminaries, the Sun and the Moon. The Saami Sun Goddess, Baei’vi, Biei’ve or Biejjie, mother to all creatures, is associated with reindeer,7 and the spark of light between antlers as a promise of the returning Sun is a widespread image, from the Christ stag of Sts. Eustace and Hubert, to the candle on the stang of Traditional Witchcraft. Reindeer are also associated with spirit flight to the Sun across the North of Eurasia.8 It was in 1886 that Sir John Rhys linked Elen of the Hosts (see below) with the Dawn and the Dusk, an idea which has stuck. However, Rhys changed his mind enigmatically right at the end of his text, linking Her to the Moon.9 On one level, it is all the same: no-one who has seen the Moon or Sun rise or set over the sea will forget the shining path on the water, leading to their feet. Elen of the Hosts Elen’s name owes a very great deal to Elen of the Hosts, a legendary Romano-British princess found in The Mabinogion. In the tale, The Dream of Maxen (or Macsen Wledig), Elen appears to the Roman Emperor in a dream and he becomes obsessed with her. Eventually, she is found and insists that he comes to her, not the other way around. Elen asks that three fortresses be built, at Caernarvon, Caerleon and Carmarthen. She then orders roads to be built connecting the three, which (along with a link to Conway) later became known as Sarn Helen.10 Maxen stays with her in Wales for seven years, after which he is disbarred from continuing as Emperor. Assisted by a small, highly effective armed ‘host’ led by Elen’s brothers, however, Maxen reconquers the Empire.11 Bo Lundmark (1985) ‘”They consider the sun to be a mother to all living creatures”: The sun-cult of the Saamis’, in Louise Bäckman and Åke Hultkrantz, note 3, pp. 179-88 8 Piers Vitebsky (2005) Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, Harper. 9 Sir John Rhys (1888) The Hibbert Lectures, 1886: Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom, Williams and Norgate, pp. 161 & 167. On page 678, at the end of his ‘Additions and Corrections’, Rhys writes, “With regard to Rhiannon, I am now inclined to identify her with the moon rather than with the dawn, and similarly in the case of several others whom I have loosely treated as goddesses of dawn or dusk.” He does not mention dawn in relation to Rhiannon, which may here be an error for Arianrhod. 10 Ivan D. Margery (1973) Roman Roads in Britain, Third Edition, John Baker. 11 Jeffrey Gantz (trans.) (1976) The Mabinogion, Penguin, pp. 118-27. 7 ‘Maxen’ seems to be a conflation of the Imperial pretender, Maxentius, defeated by Constantine (see below) at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E., and the Spanish usurper Magnus Maximus, who was proclaimed Emperor by his troops in Britain in 383 and was nearly successful in taking over the Empire. The story is taken and altered from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, where Maximus (called by Geoffrey, erroneously, Maximianus) comes to Britain to marry an unnamed woman. The name ‘Elen’ seems to come from a confusion between the unnamed wife of Maximus and the daughter, Helen, of Geoffrey’s fictitious King Coel, who marries Constantius, who takes back Roman power after Coel’s death. They have a son named Constantine.12 Geoffrey himself was writing a political polemic to bolster the position of the ethnically British people of what, in the 1130s, was still the new Norman Kingdom of England.13 Elen of the Hosts in legend becomes Saint Helen of Caernarvon. Her feast day is, rather suspiciously, on the 22nd of May. Saint Helen(a) of the Cross The real Helen, erstwhile wife of Constantius and mother of Constantine the Great, was not British, probably coming from Bithynia, in the north of Asia Minor (Turkey). Constantine was proclaimed Emperor by his army in 306 C.E., in Britain, which was enough to spawn patriotic legends about his and his sainted mother’s nativity.14 St. Helen is best known for supposedly finding the True Cross some time in the years 326-328 C.E. This event came to be celebrated as the Invention of the Cross on 3rd May and the relic’s return from being captured by the Persians (in 629) was celebrated as the Exultation of 12 Jeffrey Gantz (op. cit.), note 11, pp. 118-9; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Lewis Thorpe (trans.) (1966) The History of the Kings of Britain, Penguin, pp. 131-46. Rupert Jackson (2021) The Roman Occupation of Britain and its Legacy, Bloomsbury, pp. 212 & 242-3. 13 Marion Gibson (2013) Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and goddesses in literature and history since the Dark Ages, Routledge, p. 13-6; Antonina Harbus (2002) Helena of Britain in Medieval Legend, Brewer. 14 Antonina Harbus (op. cit.), note 13; Rupert Jackson (op. cit.), note 12, p. 211; Graham Jones (2007) Saints in the Landscape, Tempus. the Cross on 14th September, although the dates were the reverse until the late 7th century. St. Helen’s dedications in both England and Greece show a marked relationship with those to the Holy Cross, in that regions with the one tend not to have the other. Whilst St. Helen’s own feast day in the Roman Catholic Church falls on 18th August, the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican Churches celebrate it together with that of Constantine on 21st May. The popularity of this joint celebration seems to be that Constantine and his mother were seen as the Medieval ideal of royalty. Meanwhile, the 3rd May celebration, which became known as Ellenmas by the late Middle Ages, seems to have replaced Beltane in the North of England, and taken on its associations with transhumance of livestock.15 Similarly, the image of St. Helen appears to have taken on aspects of earlier Greek female figures of that name: Helen of Troy and a nature spirit or goddess, Helen of the Tree. In particular, St. Helen’s Cross corresponds to a tree, to the mast and yard-arm of a ship, and to a windlass, which as well as being nautical equipment, was the instrument of martyrdom of St. Elmo. The glow around masts known as St. Elmo’s Fire was previously known as St. Helen’s Fire and, before that, associated with the Dioskouroi, the brothers of Helen of Troy (thus perhaps linking Her to Dawn and Dusk as well). Images of Helen being led aboard a ship also appear to reflect ideas of Sacred Marriage in the Hellenic world.16 Helen of Troy was fathered on either Leda or Nemesis by Zeus, whether consensually or not, in the form of a swan, and born from an egg. Her brothers, Kastor and Polydeuces, possibly born in a similar fashion, laid siege to and defeated Athens in order to reclaim Helen when she had been abducted and raped (as a child…) by that allround good-guy, Theseus.17 The next city besieged and defeated in her name was Troy. It is entirely possible that the affair of Helen was only an excuse (perhaps after the fact) for the Bronze-Age war 15 Graham Jones (op. cit.), note 14. Graham Jones (op. cit.), note 14; Jack Lindsay (1974). Helen of Troy: Woman and Goddess, Rowman and Littlefield. 17 Lindsay (op. cit.), note 16; Natalie Haynes (2020) Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Picador, pp. 57-84. 16 between mainland Greece and Troy,18 but it is interesting that it was used in later, Hellenic literature as an example of Greece coming together in the fight against Persia19 – from where, later still, the True Cross would have to be retrieved. Indeed, the Cross, as Tree of Life and World Tree (axis mundi), carried off and returned (or found in the first place) could be seen as a development of Helen of Troy, Herself evolving from the Goddess of Sacred Marriage and the Tree Goddess. Elen of the Hosts and Helen of Troy both precipitate sieges, with Elen’s brothers, Kynan and Avaon, being instrumental in the defeat of Rome on behalf of Maxen, corresponding thereby to the Dioskouroi in their sack of Athens. Both draw important men to them by dreams or divine agency – the difference being that Elen stays put with Maxen, whilst Helen follows Paris back to Troy. Helen also appears to be associated with both the Moon and the Dawn.20 Other Elens There are other Elens too. Not least, there are many people called ‘Elaine’ or similar in the Arthurian romances. These are relatively late and teasing out their evolution is a whole literary field in itself. Of most interest, perhaps, are names of water spirits. Sir John Rhys found a tradition in the region of Caernarvon of Arianrhod having three sisters, namely Gwennan, Maelan and Elen, who lived with Her in Her castle in the sea.21 There are many river names that seem related, such as the Ellen, Allan, Alne and Lyne. These names seem to come from a British and Gaulish stem, Alauna/us, which, given the diversity of its application, seems unlikely to have been a deity’s name as such, but more likely an adjective, such as ‘mighty’, ‘holy’ or ‘shining’.22 It can be dangerous to read too much into the apparent similarity of names across languages and time, but it is striking that words for 18 Lord William Taylour (1983) The Myceneans, Thames and Hudson, p. 159. Lindsay (op. cit.), note 16, p. 159. 20 Lindsay (op. cit.), note 16. 21 Sir John Rhys (op. cit.), note 9, p. 161. 22 Eilert Ekwall (1928) English River Names, OUP, pp. 6-8; A.L.F. Rivet and Colin Smith (1979) The Place-Names of Roman Britain, Batsford, pp. 243-4. 19 ‘deer’ in several Indo-European languages take forms similar to ‘Elen’. It is jelen in Czech, Croatian and Polish, jelena in Serbian, el(le)nis in Lithuanian, olen in Russian, eláfi in Greek. ‘Fawn’ is elain in Welsh. ‘Elk’ is eland in Dutch (which in turn gave the English name for certain antelopes). Whatever the mythological development of the name, Elen or Helen is entirely appropriate for a Deer Goddess. Echoes or Premonitions There are many signs of Elen around Britain in addition to the major legends described above. I am not saying that these are necessarily survivals, simply that they can be seen as hints from the spirit world that we should be looking out for a Deer Goddess. St. Helen provides the most common saint dedication for holy wells in England (50 wells), which seems to result from Her being the favoured patroness for new dedications after about 1100, when the myth of Her Britishness was at its height.23 The famous annual Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance is carried out with six sets of reindeer antlers. Today, it is ritual of local identity, protection and prosperity, akin to a ‘beating of the bounds’ derived from a hunting rite. Whilst the age of the tradition is unclear, the antlers themselves have been dated to the 11th century, many centuries after reindeer became extinct in Britain.24 In Norfolk, the legend of the Anglo-Saxon royal Saint Withburga is resonant. She does Her first miracle (connected to church building) at Holkham, which is a modern deer park. Her main career saw Her building a nunnery at East Dereham. She prayed to the Virgin Mary for resources and was rewarded with two does who came and allowed themselves to be milked, giving sufficient to sell to feed all the workmen. The local reeve did not like this and hunted the does, but was fatally thrown from his horse. 23 Jeremy Harte (2008) English Holy Wells: a sourcebook, Volume One: The making of the English Holy Well, Heart of Albion, pp. 69-72. 24 Theresa Buckland (1980) ‘The Reindeer Antlers of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance: A reexamination’, Lore and Language 3(2A), pp. 1-8. As well as St. Withburga, and the associations of Our Lady of Walsingham with milk, today’s Nameless Tradition in Norfolk venerates the Lady of the Chalk and the Lord of the Flint. The Chalk is the bedrock of this region, providing land from the sea and life from what has gone before. The Flint is in turn born of the Chalk and provides tools, buildings and defence. The Chalk Lady can be seen as antlered or at times wearing the horns of the chalky Moon on Her head.25 We also have St. Helen’s Well at Santon Downham and five churches dedicated to Her in the county. Lastly, there are aspects of Elen that overlap with other goddesses. Her associations with swans, large herbivores, the sky and fire also apply to Brigid, for instance, but are clearly distinct. Goddess in the Mist In a mist of antiquarian confusion (where it is assumed that political polemic pseudo-history is true) and optimistic etymology (where every name containing ‘l’ and ‘n’ appears to derive from ‘Elen’), the famed Romano-British Elen of the Hosts becomes as insubstantial as that mist. But, this is actually a wonderful thing. From this mystical realm of immaterial ghosts an ancient Goddess has re-emerged, treading a path through the shifting sands and leaving enduring prints, creating a vessel for Herself in the modern consciousness. She is a Goddess, now known as Elen of the Ways, not seen in Britain perhaps since the Mesolithic. She has not been plucked from the past out of context; Her form has accreted from evolving human imagination. She is a prime example of deity and humans co-creating a godform that works for today. And we surely need Her today. However, did the Goddess we can now call Elen of the Ways disappear before the Neolithic agricultural revolution? Or did She adapt to changing circumstances? One of the figures associated with Elen in modern discourse is the North Sea goddess, Nehalennia, and She could potentially be the closest we have to an aspect of the Palaeolithic Reindeer Goddess surviving into history and archaeology – and literally emerging from the sea – of which more in Part Two… 25 Val Thomas (2019) Of Chalk and Flint: A Way of Norfolk Magic, Troy, pp. 19-33. Quest 208, December 2021, pp. 21-28. Elen of the Ways Part Two Elen and Nehalennia: A View from Doggerland Chris Wood Part one of this article (in Quest no. 207) described the emergence of Elen of the Ways in modern consciousness. She seems to be an ancient Deer Goddess who has filled a vessel created by the legends of Elen of the Hosts and Saint Helen of the Cross. Another important figure associated with Elen in modern discourse is the Roman-era, North Sea Goddess, Nehalennia. This link was first proposed by Harold Bayley, who associated Her with St. Helen and, less plausibly, with the name of the Cornish port, Newlyn, and London’s Isle of Dogs.26 Aspects of Her iconography, not least Her dog, have influenced the form of Elen of the Ways. On the other hand, Caroline Wise feels Nehalennia to be a separate entity to Elen,27 and on one level this is surely the case. However, Nehalennia has clearly influenced the modern godform of Elen of the Ways. As a living, evolving deity, She can be both part of Elen and separate – part of Elen’s modern being and Her own, North Sea Goddess. In addition, She could potentially be the closest we have to an aspect of the Palaeolithic Reindeer Goddess surviving into history and archaeology – and literally emerging from the sea. 26 Harold Bayley (1935) The Lost Language of London, Jonathan Cape. The relevant chapter, ‘Great St. Helen’, is reproduced as Appendix 3 of John Matthews and Chesca Potter (eds.) (1990) The Aquarian Guide to Legendary London, Aquarian, pp. 281-7. 27 Caroline Wise (2015) ‘Elen of the Waters’, in Caroline Wise (ed.) (2015) Finding Elen: The Quest for Elen of the Ways, Eala, pp. 211-5. Aspects of Nehalennia Nehalennia is known principally from Roman-era votive altars recovered from coastal contexts in the Netherlands. In 1647, erosion revealed the remains of a temple at Domburg. Unfortunately, much of the material found was destroyed when the church in which it was housed was struck by lightning, although the artefacts had at least been drawn. Similar finds were made by fishermen and divers in 1970/1, off Colijnsplaat, on the Oosterschelde estuary. The images dedicated to ‘Deae Nehalenniae’ vary, and clearly owe much to the style of the common reliefs of Matronae, but usually portray a seated woman, with baskets of fruit (or a cornucopia), a dog at Her feet, nautical symbols, and frequently a shell canopy.28 Altar to Nehalennia discovered at Domburg, on the Dutch coast, in 1647 Etching by Noach van der Meer II, after Engelbertus Matthias Engelberts, 17511822. Accession number RP-P-OB-23.446, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities), Public Domain. 28 Miranda Green (1992) Symbol & Image in Celtic Religious Art, Second Edition, Routledge, pp. 10-6; Ada Hondius-Crone (1955) The Temple of Nehalennia at Domburg, Meulenhoff, Amsterdam. At Domburg and Colijnsplaat, Nehalennia is clearly shown as a goddess of seafarers or to whom seafarers made devotions. The altars are votive offerings, generally given in thanks for a successful voyage. She may well have ruled over the post-mortem journey as well.29 It may well be that Nehalennia was honoured at the other ends of trading routes too. Indeed, Wim Bonis speculates that the Shell Grotto in Margate may have been dedicated to Her.30 Uninscribed clay figurines of a female seated in a high-backed chair, with a dog in Her lap, have been found along the Mosel and Rhine, particularly at Trier and Cologne, and also in Canterbury. In Trier they were found along with a statue of a seated woman with a dog at Her side and a basket of fruit in her lap, and reliefs similar to the figurines have also been found here, suggesting that the same being is intended as at Domburg and Colijnsplaat.31 Cologne has also yielded uninscribed altars very similar to those at Domburg.32 The prominence of the shell canopy is some of the reliefs is significant too. Not only does this relate to seafaring, it also brings Nehalennia into the visual realm of the modern Elen for the simple reason that the shell edges (and sometimes Her chair back) can give the impression, to the modern viewer, that the seated Lady is antlered. The meaning of Her name depends on whether one assumes Nehalennia to be Celtic, German or Roman in origin; Miranda Green suggests ‘Leader’ or ‘Steerswoman’,33 a simple ‘She of the Sea’ has been suggested from reconstructed proto-Celtic,34 whilst Rudolf Simek offers a Latinised version of Nerthus, using the seafaring imagery of Isis and etymologies of ‘death’ and ‘hidden’.35 H. Wagenvoort (1971) ‘Nehalennia and the Souls of the Dead’, Mnemosyne Fourth Series 24(3), pp. 273-92. 30 Wim Bonis (2017) ‘Nehalennia worship in England? https://eng.wimbonis.nl/wpcontent/uploads/2021/03/Nehalennia-worship-in-England.pdf [accessed 26/10/21]. 31 Frank Jenkins (1956) ‘Nameless or Nehalennia?’ Archaeologia Cantiana 70, pp. 192-200. Miranda Green, however, sees these as different (op. cit.), note 28, pp. 28-30. 32 Miranda Green (op. cit.), note 28, p. 29. 33 Miranda Green (op. cit.), note 28, p. 11. 34 Jona Lendering (2020) Nehalennia: https://livius.org/articles/religion/nehalennia [accessed 4/11/21]. 35 Rudolf Simek (1993) Dictionary of Northern Mythology, Brewer, pp. 228-9. 29 The Role of the Dog Nehalennia is very clearly related to dogs. This seems to be the origin of the modern Elen’s connection with the animal, via Bayley and perceived parallels with the hunting dogs of Diana/Artemis.36 A personal, modern experience may be relevant here. Back in July 2021, we visited Salthouse beach in North Norfolk. As I stood looking at the sea, I asked a question that I had been pondering: who is the deity of the sea? The context here is the various divine and otherworldly beings with whom we work in the Norfolk Nameless Tradition.37 Shortly afterwards, I bent down to pick up a piece of litter and a pebble caught my eye. It clearly showed a wolf in the breakers, yet was of totally natural formation. It was an answer. The wolf has been significant in East Anglia at least since the Iron Age, appearing on early Iceni coins and becoming the symbol of the Wuffing (‘little wolf’) kings of East Anglia, culminating in the legend of a wolf guarding the head of King Edmund after his execution by the invading Danes.38 The sea is Britain’s natural defence, but also its perennial enemy. Does Nehalennia tame the Sea Wolf?39 Pebble found on Salthouse beach, Norfolk, in July 2021, with natural lines giving a clear image of a wolf in the breakers Picture: Chris Wood. Caroline Wise (2015) ‘Elen of the Roads of the Country and the Town’, in Caroline Wise (op. cit.), note 27, pp. 29-44. 37 See Part One (Quest 207) and Val Thomas (2019) Of Chalk and Flint: A Way of Norfolk Magic, Troy. 38 See Chris Wood (2020) ‘The Good Wolf’: http://www.ickeny.co.uk/objects/goodwolf.html. 39 It was some time later that I happened upon Jona Lendering’s (op. cit., note 34) suggestion that Nehalennia’s dog might relate to first-century Roman poet Albinovanus Pedo’s fearsome “dogs of the sea”, which appear in a fragment describing a journey down the river Ems (see https://www.britannica.com/biography/Albinovanus-Pedo), although they are probably a poetic reference to sharks (see Michael Von Albrecht (1999) Roman Epic: An Interpretative Introduction, Brill, p. 209, note 4). 36 A View from Doggerland As well as contributing to the modern image of Elen, Nehalennia may be a contender for a direct, if evolved, survival of the Palaeolithic Reindeer Goddess. Britain was once continuous with the continent and most of the North Sea and English Channel was land. During the last glaciation, this was tundra, cold and treeless, with the great boreal, coniferous forest (or taiga) to its south. It was a landscape inhabited by people following hunter-gatherer lifestyles. There were reindeer here and people would have tracked the herds and hunted them for meat and skins. They would also have caught fish and exploited the seasonal bounties (e.g. berries and migratory birds) of what can be a surprisingly rich habitat. Similarities can be seen with traditional ways of life amongst the Saami of Northern Europe, where the emphasis on hunting or fishing depends on location.40 The land that is now under the North Sea, which has become known as ‘Doggerland’, was low-lying, with plenty of marshes, lakes and rivers. The rivers of what is now East Anglia, along with the Thames, joined the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt to flow out to sea southwestwards through a chalk gorge, east of the Weald.41 It was a landscape that would have had sacred places just like any other. Indeed, some 33 metres under the sea, 6.8 km off Caister, north of Great Yarmouth, is a chalk escarpment, today called ‘the Cross Sand Anomaly’, a chalk ‘raft’ that would have stood out as a significant island in the late Mesolithic, which Jim Leary suggests could have had the same significance to Mesolithic people as does the sacred island of Äijih/Ukonsaari in Lake Inari, Finland, to the Saami.42 40 Reindeer herding and husbandry, and full nomadism, appear to have developed amongst the Saami in the 16th and 17th centuries, influenced by Norwegian pastoralism and due to over-hunting of wild reindeer for their skins. See Åke Hultkrantz (1985) ‘Reindeer nomadism and the religion of the Saamis’, in Louise Bäckman and Åke Hultkrantz (eds.) Saami PreChristian Religion: Studies on the oldest traces of religion among the Saamis, Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion 25, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, pp. 11-28. 41 Jim Leary (2015) The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age, Bloomsbury; Louise Tizzard, Andrew Bicket and Dimitri De Loecker (2015) Seabed Prehistory: Investigating the Palaeogeography and Early Middle Palaeolithic Archaeology in the Southern North Sea, Report 35, Wessex Archaeology, pp. 48-9. 42 Leary (op. cit.), note 41; Peter Murphy (2007) ‘The Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes of the Southern North Sea: Work in Progress’, Landscapes 8(1), pp. 1-22. The name, ‘Doggerland’ was coined by Bryony Coles in 1998,43 inspired by the shallow Dogger Bank, which she saw as possibly related to the dogwood tree. This is rather more poetic than Jim Leary’s “Northsealand”, but as the name ‘Dogger’ appears to derive from the old Dutch fishing boats which were well suited to the shallow waters of the drowned terminal moraine,44 it is also a product of modern perceptions of the area, but one which has captured the popular imagination. Leary’s book title, however, “The Remembered Land” has poetic merit and poignancy, although it lacks geographic specificity!45 As the glaciers declined in the late Palaeolithic, the climate became warmer and sea levels rose. The latter, combined with isostatic changes (land that was under ice is rising and land that was not is sinking), led to a slow but stepwise inundation of the land from about 11,000 years ago. By the end of the Mesolithic period, around 6000 years ago, Doggerland was gone.46 It seems plausible that a deity once associated with the Palaeolithic reindeer herds could well have become associated with changing fauna as the glaciers retreated, the land warmed and the reindeer retreated northwards, following the boreal forest. As the land became wetter, the peoples of the interior would have had decreasing habitat, perhaps further constrained by the spread of agriculture, whereas those of the coast would have found their resources increasing, despite sea-level rise, as the length of coastline increased. Some of those in the interior would have changed livelihoods; others doubtless moved. Eventually, around 7000 years ago, there was no interior; B.J. Coles (1998) ‘Doggerland: a Speculative Survey’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, pp. 45-81; Bryony Coles (2016) ‘The naming of Doggerland’, Past: The Newsletter of the Prehistoric Society 83 (Summer 2016), pp. 14-5. 44 Melissa Albert (2010) ‘Dogger Bank’, Britannica Online Encyclopedia: www.britannica.com/place/Dogger-Bank [accessed 28/10/21]. 45 Leary (op. cit.), note 41. 46 Bryony J. Coles (2000) ‘Doggerland: the cultural dynamics of a shifting coastline’, in Kenneth Pye and John R.L. Allen (eds.) Coastal and Estuarine Environments: sedimentology, geomorphology and geoarchaeology, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, pp. 393-401; Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch and David Smith (2009) Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland, Research Report No. 160, Council for British Archaeology; Leary (op. cit.), note 41. 43 Doggerland was an archipelago. By 6000 years ago, the North Sea looked pretty much as it does today.47 Populations slowly adapting to increasingly sea-dominated territories would probably have kept their gods, but those gods would have adapted too. The coming of agriculture represented a religious change as well one of lifestyle. As John Fletcher puts it, “… hunters across many cultures are, or were, animist and totemist in their beliefs and … theist religions were only formulated by farming societies. The forager lives within the natural environment while the farmer seeks to subdue and have dominion over every living thing.”48 It is easy to see how a goddess of the pre-agricultural interior would be retained by those marginalised by farming (and reindeer are still remembered in myth and legend in Mongolia, for instance49). The Spirit of the Hunt could have taken on associations with the coast and sea, perhaps exchanging deer trods for safe passage across mudflats or navigation between sandbanks, and been transferred to the pursuit of maritime prey, perhaps eventually merging with existing water spirits. At the same time, people’s approach to this being may well have moved from relationship to worship. As Wim Bonis points out, Nehalennia could have been a local Goddess of the Dutch coast in the Roman era, honoured by seafarers out of respect for the Spirit of the Land.50 But She could have been a memory of a much older being. Ploughing the Sea It may be worth considering, by way of comparison, the figure of Gefjon in Norse mythology.51 At Oðin’s bidding, She goes to Swedish King Gylfi and asks for land. He says she can have as much as she can plough in a day and a night. She then sleeps with a giant 47 Bryony J. Coles (op. cit.), note 46. John Fletcher (2011) Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks, Windgather Press, p. 27. 49 Piers Vitebsky (2005) Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, Harper. 50 Wim Bonis (op. cit.), note 30. 51 She appears in Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga saga (Heimskringla) and, briefly, in Gylfaginning (Edda). 48 and bears four sons, whom She turns into oxen. Thus equipped, She succeeds in separating the Danish island of Sjæland from Sweden, creating the Öre Sound (or alternatively Lake Mälaren).52 Her name suggests connections with fertility and with the sea.53 Given that there was land all the way from the ice sheet over Sweden, across what is now Denmark, to beyond Ireland in the Palaeolithic, it is possible that Gefjon represents a memory of the coming of agriculture at a time of more rapid inundation in the Mesolithic. An archaeological approach to myths may well yield further evidence of the memory of inundation and incipient farming in other tales, from Grendel to the otherworldly Ladies who lead cattle (and other livestock) out of and back into bodies of water, such as the Welsh Lady of the Lake in The Physicians of Myddfai and the Finnish Wave-goddess, Vellamo. The Gefjon fountain in Copenhagen Picture: Chris Wood Conclusion Nehalennia has certainly contributed some of the imagery associated with the modern Elen of the Ways. She may also have been a deity of a disappearing land and its ways transferring to the ways of the sea. Elen’s links to water spirits and connections to seafaring, on the part of St. Helen and Her Greek antecedents, seem to add weight to the viability of an evolution from land to sea. We do not know that Nehalennia evolved in this way, but it is possible. The key thing is to remain open to the evolution of deities and their potential interconnectedness, whilst respecting their boundaries. 52 Hilda Ellis Davidson (1964) Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, Pelican (1990 Penguin edition); _____ (1999) ‘Gefjon, Goddess of the northern seas’, in Patricia Lysaght, Séamas Ó Catháin and Dáithí Ó hÓgáin (eds.) Islanders and Water-Dwellers, Four Courts, pp. 51-59; Rudolk Simek (op. cit.), note 35, pp. 101-2. 53 Hilda Ellis Davidson (1964, op. cit.), note 52, pp. 113-4.