Nehalennia is almost always depicted with marine symbols and a large, benign-looking
dog at her feet. She must have been a Celtic or Germanic deity to whom was attributed power over
trading,
shipping, and possible
horticulture and
fertility. In sculptures and reliefs, she is depicted as a young woman, generally seated. Typically she wears a short cloak over her shoulders and chest. This garment is unique to her and therefore might have belonged to the costumes usual at that period in this region. Often she is accompanied by a dog; she has as attributes a basket of apples or bread
loaves and ship parts.
Hilda Ellis Davidson describes the votive objects: Nehalennia, a Germanic goddess worshipped at the point where travellers crossed the North Sea from the Netherlands, is shown on many carved stones holding loaves and apples like a
Mother Goddess, sometimes with a prow of a ship beside her, but also frequently with an attendant dog which sits looking up at her (Plate 5). This dog is on thirteen of the twenty-one altars recorded by Ada Hondius-Crone (1955:103), who describes it as a kind of
greyhound. Davidson further links the motif of the ship associated with Nehalennia with the Germanic
Vanir pair of
Freyr and
Freyja as well as the Germanic goddess
Nerthus. She notes that Nehalennia features some of the same attributes as the
Matres. The loaves that Nehalennia is depicted with on her altars have been identified as
duivekater, "oblong sacrificial loaves in the shape of a shin bone". Davidson says that loaves of this type may take the place of an
animal sacrifice or animal victim, such as the
boar-shaped loaf baked at
Yule in Sweden. In
Värmland, Sweden, "within living memory," there was a custom of grain from the last
sheaf of the harvest customarily being used to bake a loaf in the shape of a little girl; this is subsequently shared by the whole household. Davidson provides further examples of elaborate harvest loaves in the shape of sheaves, and displayed in churches for the fertility of fields in
Anglo-Saxon England, with parallels in Scandinavia and
Ireland. A depiction of an enthroned goddess with children at her breast, with lap dogs, or with baskets of fruit is characterized by Lothar Schwinden as a
mother goddess (like the Gallo-Roman version of the Celtic
Aveta). In 2005, a replica of the temple was built in
Colijnsplaat. The design of temple and its sculpture is based on the finds from the nearby area, as well as archaeological study of the type of sanctuaries in the
Roman provinces of
Gaul and
Germania. For the reconstruction, authentic materials and techniques were used as much as possible. ==Temples==