This image shows the 9th-century Kingmoor ring, a gold finger ring found in Cumbria, England, which features an unintelligible runic inscription thought to be a magical charm.

Hans Mallon Ehrenmal (Hitlerjugend Ehrenmal)

The Hitler Youth Hans Mallon mausoleum near Bergen on the island of Rügen, which was inaugurated in 1937 and demolished in 1945, is largely unknown today. It was built between 1935 and 1937 in honour of Hitler Youth member Hans Mallon, who was murdered by communists. The sponsor was the Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) under the direction of the architect Robert Tischler. 

The impressive monument integrated a preexisting but much smaller war monument into its design and was a representation of a Germanic longhouse from the Bronze Age. The thatched roof construction of solid beech rested on granite blocks. The entrance was a bronze door with swastikas.

Mallon’s body was interred inside and an annual march was held to mark his death. The area to the front of the building contained four large columns, each of which supported a ceremonial bowl. Above the entrance there was an inscription from the Edda: “Ewig ist der Toten Tatenruhm” (“The deeds of the dead live on for eternity”).

The house acted as a central meeting point for the Hitler Youth in Pommern prior to embarking on the annual “Adolf Hitler March” to Nürnberg, and one such ceremony is shown in the in the film “Der Marsch zum Führer”. A “Thingplatz” was also constructed close to the house and this still exists today. The space is currently an open-air theatre (Rugard-Bühne)

In 1945 all of the flags from the Hitler Youth formations in the east of Germany were brought to the house for storage. It was intended that they should be returned to their original locations once the territories lost to Russia had been recaptured. However, with the Soviet forces approaching, the house was subsequently demolished to avoid its desecration. Another source gives the following description of events:

“In 1945 the Hans Mallon house served as the final location for the flags of the HJ from eastern Germany. To prevent their desecration at the hands of the Red Army an HJ officer set light to the thatched roof just as the Soviets were approaching.”

Nikola-Lenivets, Ceremonial burning of a wicker tower in the final day of Maslenitsa, (13th March 2021)

Aryan Migrations

What are the implications of the two theories about the Proto-Indo-European homeland? Were they farmers in one place (Anatolia) or riders, hunters or warriors from elsewhere (such as the Steppes)?

The "mainstream" theory is that they were horsemen from the Steppes c 4,500 BC, who spread their culture comparatively quickly. The alternative view is that they were farmers in Anatolia who had been there since c 6,500 BC and whose influence only spread slowly.

One would like to imagine of course that they might have been both - that they could have been the people who lived at Çatalhöyük and who then became the fearsome horse-lords of the Caucasus.

But that is almost certainly fanciful.

A Seiðr drum

The Green King

Central to the design is the motif of the Green Man, an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign. The shape of the Green Man, crowned in natural foliage, is formed of leaves of oak, ivy and hawthorn, and the emblematic flowers of the United Kingdom. 

[A new photograph of The King and The Queen Consort | The Royal Family]

'Crying The Neck' at St Columb Major (2008)

The Clay and the Flint

Horace Bolingbroke Woodward, 'A geological map of Great Britain and neighbouring islands (excluding Ireland)' (Detail), from Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Edward Stanford, 1904)

For Kipling, the distinction between the ancient Britons "of the clay" and "of the flint" was significant. 

London is of course built on clay. Those of us who have lived in south London all our lives know this well. Every Victorian house has cracks in its plaster work. Every semi-suburban pavement is at least slightly crazy. The Sussex Weald - which in Kipling was Puck's 'secret Weald' - is also "clay". And thus we have Julius Fabricius in 'The Land', for example, addressing Hobdenius 'a Briton of the Clay', whereas the flints that we find 'now and then' when 'cleaning ditches' are from Lewes. It is perhaps a pity then that the land where Kipling's house stands today is about seven hours' walk from Lewes, rather than twenty, and that it's probably on Hastings sand rather than clay - although the South Downs are indeed (famously!) chalk!*

In 'The Knife and the Naked Chalk' we learn the imaginary prehistory of a "flint man" from the South Downs who kept sheep there some three thousand years ago. Since his people's clumsy stone weapons are inadequate to protect the flock from the encroaching wolf-pack, he makes a journey to the Weald, to parley with the men of the forest for their magic knives, which are of course forged out of Kipling's "cold iron". In exchange for the new weaponry though, he agrees to sacrifice one of his eyes, and thus he returns to the Downs as the saviour both of his flock and of his people. But the price of his success is that he must live out the rest of his days effectively as a god - a venerable but lonely existence!

This is of course an interesting early spin on Norse mythology, implicitly presenting an origin story for the myth of how Odin sacrificed his eye (not to mention Tyr and his hand). Perhaps more interestingly, Kipling tells his story - in a "proto-Tolkienian" manner - in quite deliberately Christian terms. There can be little doubt, after all, about the origin of the idea of the good shepherd defending his sheep against the wolves and then sacrificing himself not just for his sheep but for his people as well.

It is also quite probably the eeriest of all Kipling's "children's" tales.

*Perhaps we can put such things down (or, er, chalk them up) to poetic licence.

Devil's Bridge, Worm's Head, Wales

Church in St. Etienne, France

Vajrakali, 'Scrying Mirror'

The King in Thule

Pierre Jean Van der Ouderaa, The King of Thule (1896)

Es war ein König in Thule,

Gar treu bis an das Grab,

Dem sterbend seine Buhle

einen goldnen Becher gab.

Es ging ihm nichts darüber,

Er leert' ihn jeden Schmaus;

Die Augen gingen ihm über,

So oft er trank daraus.

Und als er kam zu sterben,

Zählt' er seine Städt' im Reich,

Gönnt' alles seinen Erben,

Den Becher nicht zugleich.

Er saß beim Königsmahle,

Die Ritter um ihn her,

Auf hohem Vätersaale,

Dort auf dem Schloß am Meer.

Dort stand der alte Zecher,

Trank letzte Lebensglut,

Und warf den heiligen Becher

Hinunter in die Flut.

Er sah ihn stürzen, trinken

Und sinken tief ins Meer,

die Augen täten ihm sinken,

Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr.

There was a king in Thule,

Was faithful till the grave,

To whom his mistress, dying,

A golden goblet gave.

Nought was to him more precious;

He drained it at every bout;

His eyes with tears ran over,

As oft as he drank thereout.

When came his time of dying,

The towns in his land he told,

Nought else to his heir denying

Except the goblet of gold.

He sat at the royal banquet

With his knights of high degree,

In the lofty hall of his fathers

In the castle by the sea.

There stood the old carouser,

And drank the last life-glow;

And hurled the hallowed goblet

Into the tide below.

He saw it plunging and filling,

And sinking deep in the sea:

Then fell his eyelids for ever,

And never more drank he!

['Der König in Thule', by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]

The poem was later set to music by Franz Schubert. (The visuals in the video are from Fritz Lang’s 1924 film Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, and are not directly related to the poem.)

Trank nie einen Tropfen mehr? Well, I've just given up alcohol for St Martin's Lent. (We'll see how that goes.)

John William Waterhouse, The Crystal Ball (1902)

UPDATE: The "Christian" counterpart of this painting, finished by the artist in the same year, is here.