Starting a little #ThickTrunkTuesday series today: every week a short 🧵on a different #Tree and its #historicalecology, meanings, uses, #Mythology etc.
Today it’s the #Yew - a tree I’ve been intrigued by ever since we first came across this big old yew tree next to #Wilmington church here in #Sussex. It’s over 1,500 years old and pretty amazing! 1/x
5/x So many #UK churches were built next to already existing Yew trees. There are various hypotheses around this, but all stem from the fact that #Yews were long (long before Christianity) sacred trees, due to their longevity and also perhaps because they are so poisonous. You can read a lot online but I particularly enjoyed this #BBCSounds #NaturalHistories #podcast with Brett Westwood (a really wonderful series all round by the way)
6/x But it's not just in the #UK, throughout Europe there is a long history of #Yew #Mythology - both as #TreeOf Death and #TreeOfLife. In Greek Mythology the way to #Hades is lined with Yews, and some suggest #Yggdrasil, the amazing #Norse tree of life, may have been a Yew
7/x Yew trees were also a favoured (very hard) wood for #LongBows and #Spears, from #prehistoric times right to the middle ages and beyond. Even now, the German bowmaker Ulli Stehli travels to the #Uetli forest in #Switzerland to get #Yew wood for his bows
8/8 Last for today! Yew trees were once one of the most common trees across Europe, but now much less common due to changes in land use; deer eating them (aristocatic hunting so much impact everywhere) ; and also people cutting them along paths to prevent horses nibbling them (poisonous for all animals, just not deer for some reason). There is so much more in the links and podcasts above - just want to end here with this nice (German) Youtube clip about the #Eibe!
thank you for the beautiful thread!
#Yggdrasil caught my eye - bc i had just a couple of nights ago wondered about it, and ashes - i'm on holiday and there are ashes unlike where i live - and even made this toot with pics of ashes, the island is tiny and wonderful Iniö.
they are big #ash on farmyard, smaller ones (one of the trees is actually a #rowan, as it happens, sacred to Finns) one next to the church (!) and one that i could see from my window.
Attached: 4 images aina ku näen saarnia niin ajattelen yggdrasilia, maailman puuta, ylistä ja alista, joita se yhdistää ja oravaa joka kulkee ylös ja alas, ja midgårdiin (mietin suuren osan lauttamatkaa tänne ett mikä sen nimi oli, ja sitt myöhemmin muistin - Ratatosk - ? viikingit ei enää ollu shamanisteja, mutt Yggdrasil kai se on osa vanhempaa kerrostumaa? tavallaan hassu nähdä sellanen kirkonkin vieressä... ja itse asiassa mun ikkunasta näkyvä puu ei olekaan leppä vaan saarni.. 💚🪲🌱☘️🌞🌳
yea, i had no idea that yews were associated to Yggdrasil / tree of life!
it's all very interesting...
i just got this thought - people in envt movement maybe started becoming interested in animals of other species, but maybe now we (?) are making it deeper, and starting to think of trees as beings?
the next step should be rivers and stones and other inanimate (sic!) things, and then we may become indigenous again, so to speak? deconstructing the western culture... dunno?
@pvonhellermannn 'Tree of life' may not be the worst name for them as yew trees are also the original source of an essential chemotherapy drug, Taxol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paclitaxel).
I'm definitely keeping an eye out for yew trees near Dutch churches, curious if the practice occurred here too. Thanks for the interesting posts!
Pauline von Hellermann
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