The first fibula bears the following
Elder Futhark inscription containing the names of
Wodan and
Þonar. The inscription is in two parts: :I:
awa leubwini :II:
logaþore / wodan / wigiþonar Part (I) is written in a single line, across most of the width of the fibula; part (II) is arranged upside-down with respect to part (I), in three lines crowded to one side of the fibula, with one word per line. The sequence
awa leubwini is a woman's name, Awa, and a man's name Leubwini (literally meaning "dear friend"). The second part, apparently added to the conventional dedication, is an exceptional testimony of continental Germanic paganism. The explicit mention of theonyms is extremely rare in all of the runic corpus, including the later
Younger Futhark Scandinavian tradition. The prefix
wigi- before the name of Þonar is interpreted either as from
*wīgian "to hallow" or as from
*wīgan "to fight" (so the thunder god is called either "holy Þonar" or "battle Þonar"). Norbert Wagner argues that "battle Þonar" is the most likely given that a form
wiggi- 'battle' is known in
Old High German. It would seem plausible for
logaþore to be the name of another god, yielding a divine
triad, but there is no obvious identification in surviving sources regarding
Germanic paganism as we know it. ==Nordendorf II==