In Germanic mythology, Seaxnēat (pronounced ) or Saxnôt was the national god of the Saxons. He is sometimes identified with either Tīwaz or Fraujaz (Old Norse Týr and Freyr).
Attestations
The Old English form Seaxnēat is recorded in the genealogies of the kings of Essex (as Seaxnēt, Saxnēat, Saxnat). Originally he was the first ancestor listed, with the first king of Essex, Æscwine, seven generations later. A later version of the genealogy, preserved in the 12th-century Chronicon ex chronicis, makes Seaxnēat a son of Wōden (Odin).
The Old Saxon form Saxnôt is attested in the renunciation portion of the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow along with the gods Uuôden (Odin) and Thunaer (Thor). or "companion of the Saxons", which Jan de Vries further argued was the original name of the Saxons as a people. The suggestion that the second element means "need", cognate with the Anglo-Saxon verb nēotan, is less widely accepted.
Analysis
Wōden is the divine progenitor in the other surviving Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, so presumably the earlier form of the Essex genealogy preserves a specifically Saxon tradition of a national god. Wōden may have displaced national or regional deities in the other genealogies as part of his rising influence,
Since the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow lists three gods, usually interpreted as a Germanic divine triad, Jacob Grimm argued that Saxnôt must have been a major deity, comparable in stature to UUoden and Thunaer. In 1828, he proposed that Saxnôt was another name for Freyr (Old Saxon Froho), whose sword is prominently mentioned in the Eddic poem Skírnismál. In Deutsche Mythologie, he later made the same argument in favour of identifying Saxnôt with Týr ("who else but Zio or Eor or the Greek Ares?"), and de Vries. and more recently by Swiss linguist , who sees parallels in Nuada's role in Irish mythology as progenitor, and his possession of a flashing sword.
See also
- List of Germanic deities
- West Germanic deities