"Although Nehalennia (or Nehelennia) became known for her worship by the tribes in the Netherlands she was mainly worshipped by the Suebians in Germany, for this reason it can also be said with certainty that she was Germanic in origin and not Roman or Celtic like some scholars believe.
During the 17th and 19th century AD many altar stones dedicated to her were found by fishermen on the bottom of the sea near the peninsula of Walcheren in the Dutch province of Zeeland, on some of the stones she is asked to protect the ship of the creator of the stone, there are also depictions of her on some of the stones but mostly in a Romanized form which was probably copied from depictions of Isis, a fertility goddess who was worshipped by the Romans.
A remarkable detail is that on some of the stones the name of the creator is Roman or Celtic in origin, which implicates that the local Roman and Celtic occupiers took over some of the native deities and equaled them with their Roman counterparts.
There also seems to have been a temple dedicated to Nehalennia near Walcheren, which was destroyed in 694AD by Christian missionaries, near the coast to the west of the city of Domburg was a temple of Nehalennia too.
During the early Middle Ages there was a local custom in some parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany in which the people rode a ship on wheels through the country while dancing around it and celebrating, this custom was later forbidden under Christian pressure.
This procession sounds very similar to the Nerthus ritual that was described by Tacitus, also; in Germany the people worshipped a goddess who protected ships and sea trade, her symbol was a ship; the symbol of Nerthus was also a ship so it may be very well possible that Nehalennia and Nerthus were one and the same goddess
Before the merchants at Walcheren sailed out they visited Nehallenia's temple where they asked her to grant them a safe trip and a profitable trade, they also promised to erect an altar stone for her when they would return safely, some of this stones have been found and are displayed in museums, most of them bear the Latin inscription; "Votum solvit libens merito", which means something like; the promise fulfilled, with pleasure and reason".
The name "Nehalennia" is thought to have meant "Goddess of the new light" and she was almost certainly the protector of ships and sea trade."
from http://www.northvegr.org/leidstjarna/ostara2003/forgotten.php
"Nehalennia is known from more than 160 votive altars, which were almost all discovered in the Dutch province of Zeeland. (Two altars were discovered in Cologne, the capital of Germania Inferior.) All of them can be dated to the second and early third centuries CE. Most pieces show a young female figure, sitting on a throne in an apse between two columns, holding a basket of apples on her lap. Nearly always, there is a wolf dog at her side. In some cases, the fruit basket is replaced by something that looks like loaves of bread; in other cases, we can see the woman standing next to a ship or a prow.
Several inscriptions inform us that the votive altar was placed to show gratitude for a safe passage across the North Sea, and we may assume that other altars were dedicated for the same reason. (Of course, this does not mean that all pieces were erected after a safe passage.) An example of a typical inscription:
To the goddess Nehalennia,http://www.livius.org/ne-nn/nehalennia/nehalennia.html
on account of goods duly kept safe,
Marcus Secundinius Silvanus,
trader in pottery with Britain,
fulfilled his vow willingly and deservedly.
from wiki
Nehalennia is attested on 28 inscriptions discovered in the Dutch town of Domburg on the Zeeland coast, when a storm eroded dunes in 1645, disclosing remains of a temple devoted to the previously unattested goddess Nehalennia.[1] A similar number were discovered in 1971-72 in the town of Colijnsplaat, and two others have been found in the Cologne-Deutz area of what is now Cologne, Germany.[2]
Nehalennia is almost always depicted with marine symbols and a large, benign-looking dog at her feet.[3][4] 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 him as a kind of greyhound.[5]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 and notes that Nehalennia features some of the same attributes as the Matres.[6]
The loaves that Nehalennia is depicted with on her altars have been identified as duivekatar, "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, and that in Värmland, Sweden "within living memory" grain from the last sheaf was customarily used to bake a loaf into the shape of a little girl that is subsequently shared by the whole household. Davidson provides further examples of elaborate loaves—Harvest Loaves—at times in the shape of sheaves and displayed in churches, bread employed for the fertility of fields in Anglo-Saxon England with parallels in Scandinavia, and examples from Ireland.[7]
The Domburg inscriptions to Nehalennia inspired Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn to produce a hasty etymology linking the name Nehalennia to an ancient Scythian,[8] with which he attempted, with the linguistic tools then available, to bridge the already-known connections between the European languages and modern Persian"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalennia
There are also comparisons to be made with Diana/Artemis, and holy women such as Walburga http://www.friggasweb.org/walburga.html
Walburga's Dog
Walburga's symbols, as shown in the oldest stonecarvings in her chapels, are a dog and a bundle of grain. There is nothing in the abbess Walburga's biographies to account for portraying her with a dog, but there is much to show that German goddesses were associated with the dog as their "Hilfstier" (helping animal). "Grey hounds accompany the three Norns. The fertility goddesses Frau Harke, Frau Gode, and Frau Frick (Frigga) have always a hound beside them, and...Frau Berchte in Steiermark is called the "poodle-mother" because of her dog" (Rochholz p. 20). The goddess Nehalennia is usually pictured with a dog on her altars and votive sites. Speaking Walburga's name is a charm to tame fierce or even mad dogs. In folklore, the dog has much to do with fertility, health and good luck. For example, Rochholz mentions superstitions about the need to feed a mysterious "Windhound," sometimes said to be left behind from the Wild Hunt, during springtide, to ensure good weather for the crops. The Windhound is connected to fertility, good luck and plenty in the house and the farm fields, and in some places is called the "Nourishment-Hound" (Nahrungshund) (p. 22). Rochholz details many other superstitions relating dogs with goddesses of fertility. The christian Mary and female saints are also frequently portrayed with dogs in German chapels, and there is a "Hundskapelle" (dog-chapel) in Innsbruck said to have originally been a Heathen temple. One must suppose that this attribute of a dog accompanying Heathen goddesses was carried over into the christian iconography of holy women, including particularly Walburga.
