The symbol of Jumis (pr. Yoo-mis), the Baltic Pagan God who personified the harvest. The symbol of Jumis is two stylized, crossed grain stalks, a glyph which may be related to the sanskrit word for ‘twin.’ The two tied stalks are reminiscent of offerings left after the gathering in of the grain; they represent the two faces of the God, who is also related to the Roman Janus.
The symbol is one of prosperity and good fortune, and is often found on clothing and decorative painting.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
When this symbol was painted on the stones using the ashes, it must probably had a meaning of spelt, the uncultured species of grain, but no way of corn
See the previous response, please.
Lol, corn, tobacco and all sorts of goodies that Americans think only America has were all around the world before the mediaeval ages… When Columbus “discovered” America (again) lots of trading, of all sorts of goods, was already in place by the Norseman, Asians, Egyptians.. Waaaay before Christ…
It might well be, but corn doesn’t grow well here and was introduced only due to whim of the Soviets, which is ridiculed even today (some people do grow it, but it is unlikely it would work without modern advances in agriculture). It would make a bad fertility symbol, even if people had heard of corn when the symbol was invented. Even if they got corn from trade, this comes from a tradition to leave last bit of crop on the field and tie the stalks together to form Jumis, so it can’t come from something that was not grown locally. The text probably simply has a typo in it and was meant to say ”crop stalks” – if you’d tie together two stalks of cereal grain like rye or wheat they would form this kind of shape because they naturally tend to be slightly bent.
“Corn” here is used in the original universal sense (ie, any grain crop), and not to represent maize. Only in recent history has the word become associated with the latter.
people were traveling and trading before you think the Americas were discovered. History is wrong. for one you are looking at viking symbols . they find mummies in egypt with tobacco and cocaine in their dna . we have amnesia . and we have been here for a long time. traveling
Corn stalks???Corn came to Europe only after America was discovered,and much later reached Baltic countries.Soviets tried to feed it to cows
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Yes, this is true- but you will see corn used as a motif all over medieval europe all the same.
In this context “corn” means any kind of grain.
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/home/indexen.html
Columbus was a joke.
I just love these symbols…