The Three-Headed God of the Baltic Slavs

Triglav, the Three-Headed One, is a god worshipped by the Baltic Slavs of Pomerania, and unusually he is known not from the eastern chronicles but from the Latin biographies of the missionary bishop Otto of Bamberg, who destroyed his cult in the 1120s. At Szczecin (Stettin) his gilded three-headed idol stood on the chief of the city's hills, its eyes and lips covered with a golden veil, and the priests explained that the three heads signified the god's rule over the three realms, heaven, earth and the underworld.

A black horse sacred to him was kept for divination: it was led over spears or lances laid on the ground, and the way it stepped was read as an omen before war. When Otto's mission converted the Wends, Triglav's images were broken and his temples destroyed, and the biographies of the bishop are, ironically, our main record of the god they set out to abolish. Multi-headed idols are attested for several West Slavic gods, and Triglav is among the best-described.