Being Human: Art 3: the Dagenham Idol

Dagenham, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a borough London, UK. The names of both Dagenham (Daeccanham, meaning the 'ham' or farmstead of a man named Daecca) and the nearby, Barking (from Berecingum, meaning Berica's people) were first recorded in Anglo-Saxon times. Both were among the earliest Saxon settlements in Essex.

Yet people had already been living in the area for a very long time, even before Saxon times.

Hand axes and other flint implements from the Middle Palaeolithic to late Bronze Age eras have been found at various sites in the Borough. The earliest hand axes date to around 300,000 years ago and were found at sites including Chadwell Heath (at the golf course 10 MP handaxes), Ripple Road (19 Middle Palaeolithic handaxes), also similar finds at Gale Street, Five Elms, Beacontree Heath, Gores Brook and the Beam Washlands.

The most remarkable object from the Neolithic period (between ca. 4000 and 2000 BC) is the Dagenham Idol, uncovered in 1922 in marshland just south of Ripple Road. It is carved from Scots Pine and is around 4,300 years old, making it almost 1,000 years older than Stonehenge and one of the earliest examples of human representation in Europe.

The Idol is believed to have been an offering to the gods to increase the fertility of the land. Buried beside it was the skeleton of a deer, possibly sacrificed for the same reason. As of 2010, the Dagenham Idol has been on permanent loan to the Valence House Museum in Dagenham, from Colchester and Ipswich Museums. There is also a copy in the Museum of London.

The Dagenham Idol. A replica in the Museum of London. Image by White (2018).

The statue was found in marshland on the north bank of the River Thames to the east of London, south of Ripple Road in Dagenham, during excavation for sewer pipes in 1922, now on the site of Ford Dagenham. In Old English a ‘ripple’ was a strip of land and Ripple Street was in existence here by the 16th century, later becoming Ripple Side before taking its modern form, Ripple Road. It was buried in a layer of peat about 3 metres (9.8 ft) below ground level, near the skeleton of a deer. The statue may have been buried with the deer as a votive fertility sacrifice.

The statue is made of Scots pine and stands 18 inches (46 cm) high. It has two legs but no arms; hips and buttocks narrowing to a waist and then broadening to shoulders; and a rounded head. There are straight markings cut across both legs. A hole in the pubic region can be interpreted as indicating a female, but with the insertion of a phallic peg (now lost) would indicate a male. There appears to be damage to the left eye, recalling Odin's sacrifice of an eye at Mímir's Well in return for wisdom in Norse myth. I will expand on this point later.

The supposition, that the idol is Norse in origin, undoubtedly originates with Wright (1923).  He describes the circumstances of the find and its appearance thus: “During the autumn of 1922, excavations on the edge of the marshes at Dagenham brought to light one of the most interesting relics of the past ever found in the county.

At a depth of about 9 feet from the surface, at a point a few yards south of the London and Tilbury road where it crosses the Gores brook, the workmen came on what appeared to them to be an old "wooden doll," and about 30 yards south, in soil of a peaty nature, what was supposed to be the skeleton of a deer; this was unfortunately lost.

..On its arrival, I at once recognised its close resemblance to some figures found in 1836 at Roos, near Holderness, now preserved in the Municipal Museum, Hull, and a reference to the admirable paper on the find by Mr. Thomas Sheppard, M.Sc., Curator of the Hull Museums, confirmed my belief as to its origin, purpose and date.

The Dagenham figure, is carved out of a branch of Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris). It is 19 ½ inches high, the breadth at shoulders and hips being 3 ½ and 3 1/8 inches respectively; the head is globular in form with flattened face, and measures 3! inches in thickness by 4 inches in depth; arms are wanting, but the legs are round and straight without feet, and are 6 ½ inches in length.

The Dagenham Idol from Wright (1923).

One interesting feature of the Dagenham figure, not referred to in descriptions of the Roos and other specimens, with the exception of that from Kingsteignton, is the steatopygous [an excessive development of fat on the buttocks] treatment of the posterior. This is a characteristic feature in early representations of the human figure and of Bushman drawings in more recent days.

Above the crotch is a circular depression which was intended for the insertion of a phallus. The eye sockets were probably furnished with small quartz pebbles. In the Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society for 1901, Mr. Thomas Sheppard, in the paper before mentioned, fully describes all the then known finds of these interesting figures. He has kindly permitted me to make such extracts that I think may be useful in coming to some conclusion as to the use and date of the Dagenham "doll."”

White goes on to speculate on the date and origin of the Dagenham Idol and with reference to Pengelly (1875); Christison (1881); Sheppard (1902 and 1903); and Dowie (1922), and after consultation with staff at the British Museum, arrives at a Norse origin and on the use of the Idol in fertility rites.

Subsequently, the statue has been carbon dated to around 2250 BC, during the late Neolithic period or early Bronze Age, making it one of the oldest human representations found in Europe.

3D Scan of the Dagenham Idol, by Archaeoptics Ltd from Hidden London (2020).

I can only say, that despite While’s extensive literature review and correspondence with all the most prominent archaeologists of his day, his conclusion about the origin of the Idol was obviously incorrect as it dated much earlier.

However, the Norse Gods, such as Odin have their origin in earlier religious beliefs from the region. It is just possible, that Odin is a God whose history stretches back to the Neolithic. In which case White & co. could be right in a roundabout way.

Conversely, as Norse ‘religion’ was an oral tradition with no contemporary written sources we rely on copies of earlier documents made in Iceland in the 1200’s, such as Snorri's Edda (ca. 1220) and the Codex Regius (ca. 1270-1280). Further translations of these works into English, made a wider range of scholars aware of the myths surrounding Odin the ‘Allfather’. Firstly, these include the description of Odin having hung himself upside-down for nine days and nights on the cosmological tree Yggdrasil to gain knowledge of the runic alphabet. Secondly, there is Odin’s quest for wisdom. On another occasion, he ventured to Mimir’s Well and asked the eponymous guardian for a draught of the water. The well’s guardian, knowing the value of such a draught, refused unless the seeker offered an eye in return. Odin – whether straightaway or after anguished deliberation, we can only wonder – gouged out one of his eyes and dropped it into the well. Having made the necessary sacrifice, Mimir dipped his horn into the well and offered the now-one-eyed god a drink.

What however was the significance of this act? According to McCoy (2019) we can see Odin’s sacrifice in this way: “The fact that Odin specifically sacrificed an eye is surely significant. In all ages, the eye has been “seen” as a poetic symbol for perception in general – consider the astonishing number of expressions, both in everyday usage and in the works of the great canonical poets, that use vision as a metaphor for perceiving and understanding something. Given that Odin’s eye was sacrificed in order to obtain an enhanced perception, it seems highly likely that his pledge of an eye symbolizes trading one mode of perception for another.

What mode of perception was exchanged for what other mode, then? The answer to this question lies in the character of Mimir. Mimir, whose name means “The Rememberer,” seems to have been the being who told the gods how to live in accordance with ancestral tradition, and with wisdom more generally.

In the tale of Odin’s discovery of the runes, Odin sacrificed what we might call his “lower self” to his “higher self.” Here, his relinquishment of an eye should surely be understood along similar lines: he exchanged a profane, everyday mode of perception, beleaguered with countless petty troubles, for a sacred mode of perception informed by divine, ancestral wisdom.”

Thus the idea that the Dagenham Idol was Norse in origin and represented a link back to this search for ancient wisdom must have seemed seductive. It may also have resonated with those Victorian and Edwardian archaeologists as it echoed their own.

Despite the parallels between the Norse myth and the apparent deliberate carving of the left eye as damaged, there is a chronological problem with this supposition.

Andrén (2011), described Old Norse religion as a "cultural patchwork" which emerged under a wide range of influences, both from earlier Scandinavian religions and elements introduced from elsewhere. It may have had links to Nordic Bronze Age: while the putatively solar-oriented belief system of Bronze Age Scandinavia is believed to have died out around 500 BCE, a number of Bronze Age motifs—such as the wheel cross—reappear in later Iron Age contexts. It is often regarded as having developed from earlier religious belief systems found among the Germanic Iron Age peoples. The Germanic languages likely emerged in the first millennium BCE in present-day northern Germany or Denmark, after which they spread; several of the deities in Old Norse religion have parallels among other Germanic societies. As the Scandinavian Iron Age began around 500 to 400 BCE it seems tenuous to directly link the Dagenham Idol to this culture.

A little research on the earliest representations of Odin as one-eyed seem to bear this out. The earliest I could find were the Lindby image from Skåne, Sweden and later gold bracteates (amulet worn on a chain round the neck) of the 5^th and 6^th century A.D.

Lindby bronze statuette, assigned to the Swedish Iron Age (400-750 CE), by Gabriel Hildebrand from Historiska (2011).

Vadstena bracteate showing Odin riding his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. It was dug up in the town of the same name in 1774. Image from Kringla (2020).

Another struck using the same die was found in the nearby town of Motala in 1906.

Obviously it does not show Odin with a missing eye, but the bracteate does show a full listing of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. As Odin was mythologically associated with receiving the runic alphabet during his self-sacrifice on the world-tree of Yggdrasil, this confirms that it is a representation of him.

The timing of the production of these bracteates/amulets is interesting. The Nordic world had been in contact with the Roman world for some time and according to Andrén (2005) their jewellry styles, particularly those representing deities were beginning to show this influence.

A further and far more interesting, braceate is that found in Grumpan, Västergötland, Sweden in 1911. Made in gold it is most unusual in that it is double sided. One can clearly see from the deformed, mirror image outlines that they are the same object seen from front and rear. Here are the two faces side by side:

The Grumpan braceate, front and rear views. The left hand image from an original photograph by Agrell (1934), while the right-hand image is from Hauck et al. (1985-9). The key point is that the rear view shows the right profile of a deity. The eye is damaged or missing. This, therefore seems to represent Odin. Again this bracteate is of the 6^th century A.D.

It is notable that I have been unable to find any Norse wooden idols from any earlier periods with an eye represented as damaged or missing. It therefore seems highly unlikely that there is a link between the Dagenham Idol and Norse representations of Odin.

Whether the myth of Odin has any connection to religious beliefs of the Scandinavian Neolithic or Bronze Age and is related to idols with similar ocular disfigurement is therefore purely conjectural. I doubt that archaeological evidence proving such a connection will ever be forthcoming.

This subject has continued to fascinate archaeologists right up to the present day. In the UK and Ireland there are wooden figurine/Idols from many locations. These include the Roos figurines from Holderness, the Kingsteignton Idol, and the God Dolly from the Somerset Levels. In Ireland there have a greater number of finds: The Ralaghan Figure from County Cavan, another from Lagore, County Meath, and a third frm Corlea, County Longford. Recently, a further significant number of anthropomorphic wooden figures have been discovered. In 2001, an anthropomorphic artefact of possible Iron Age date was discovered at a Bord na Móna (BnM) bog at Broughal, Co. Offaly. A further seven probable anthropomorphic artefacts were recovered from BnM bogs in east County Offaly between 2002 and 2003 (six from Ballykilleen townland, Cloncreen Bog; and one from Kilbeg townland, Ballykean Bog.

In a wider northern European context, over 40 more wooden idols or anthropomorphic figures are recorded. I too have found the topic so fascinating, I will undoubtedly summarise all these, in a blog post at a later date. There are so many, however, that it may take me some time!

I’ll let the Idol have the last word:

Four views of the Dagenham Idol from O’Leary (1964) Plate 3.

References:

Agrell, S. (1934). Trolldomsväsendets Historia Tvenne Kapitel Ur Lapptrummor och runmagi. Berlingska Boktryckeriet p13

Andrén, A. (2005). "Behind "Heathendom": Archaeological Studies of Old Norse Religion". Scottish Archaeological Journal. 27 (2): 105–38.

Andrén, A. (2011). "Old Norse and Germanic Religion". In Insoll, Timothy (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 846–62.

Christison, R. (1881) ‘On an ancient wooden image found in November last at Ballachulish peat-moss’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 15 (1880–1), 158–78.

Dowie, H. G. (1922). The Kinsteignton Idol. Journal of the Torquay Natural History Society 3, 137–40.

Hidden London (2020) at: https://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/rippleside/ accessed 06.07.20

Historiska (2011).

Karl Hauck et al. 1985-89. Die Goldbr-akteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit. Ikonographischer Katalog, i-iii. München.

Kringla (2020) at: http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=shm/object/110733 accessed 08.07.20

London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (2013) “Early history of Barking and Dagenham” via wayback machine at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140222201919/http://www.lbbd.gov.uk/MuseumsAndHeritage/LocalHistoryResources/Pages/EarlyHistory.aspx accessed 05.07.20

McCoy, D. (2019). Why Odin is one-eyed. At: https://norse-mythology.org/tales/why-odin-is-one-eyed/ accessed 07.07.20

O’Leary, J. G., (1964) The Book of Dagenham A History. Plate 3 between pages 16 and 17. 3^rd edition. Benham and co. Ltd. Colchester.

Pengelly, W. (1875).  Devonshire Association Transactions, Memoranda, section 1 Archaeological, item 12  Pages: 197-202

Sheppard, T. 1902. Notes on the ancient model of a boat, and warrior crew, found at Roos, in Holderness. Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society 9, 62–74.

Sheppard, T. 1903. Additional note on the Roos Carr Images. Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society 10, 76–79.

White, E.D. (2018) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Replica_of_the_Dagenham_Idol_in_the_Museum_of_London.jpg accessed 05.07.20

Wright, A. G. (1923). The Dagenham Idol. Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 16, 288–93.

Further Reading

A very personal response to the Lindby Odin is a good read:

“God as a Small Thing” at: https://wildhunt.org/2015/08/column-god-as-a-small-thing.html accessed 07.07.20.