Jenny and Erin

Salem Sue, the world’s largest Holstein cow, sits atop a hill. This is not just any hill, for hills in North Dakota are rare. To be atop a hill means you can see and be seen for miles and miles in any direction. And if you are a 26 ft high and 46 ft long anatomically correct Holstein cow sitting atop a very steep hill you are not just seen - you are noticed.

In the 1970’s North Dakota’s agricultural economy was booming. Crops and cows were a huge part of the daily lives of these European transplants. Cows especially were a major source of year-round income, as well as food and teachers of life’s rhythms - birth, mating, and death. I vividly remember as a child the first time I saw people eat “rocky mountain oysters” (deep fried calf testicles) …whoops! I’m getting off track, let’s save that story for another day. Many farm families, or maybe it was their children, named their milking cows, knew their temperament, family history and cow-family members.

It was in the height of this boom that Salem Sue was erected in New Salem, North Dakota. Okay, let me out myself here, I love Salem Sue. No seriously, I am actually quite fond of her. I grew up in North Dakota and Salem Sue was on the route we traveled to visit my grandparents and I remember being told over and over as small children, “watch for the cow, when you see it, we’re halfway there”, oh, nothing was ever so eagerly anticipated as that first glimpse. As I’ve grown up – coming to visit from college and later just coming to visit I always feel a sense of place when I first spot Salem Sue far off in the distance – I know where I am and how far I have to go. It’s my fondness for Sue that first got me wondering, is it possible that the locals have in some way deified the cow? This is not as far fetched as it may seem. In fact, cow mythology is woven throughout history.

The majority of North Dakota’s early settlers hail from Germany and Norway both of which have creation myths featuring the cow. In Norse mythology Audhulma is a primordial cow who licked the ice off the first god Buri, grandfather of Odin, bringing him to life. The story continues that Audhulma’s milk is also responsible for warming and nourishing not only the first gods but the earth itself. WHAT?? I understand North Dakota’s current inhabitants are mostly practicing Christians, but are collective memories of Audhulma calling to them? Is she still powerful, still awe-inspiring and still being worshiped?

Even more intriguing could Audhulma be a not-so-distant relative of the gold calf of biblical times - the very same golden calf that threw the early Christians WAY off track? Remember when Moses went to the Mount for 40 days and 40 nights and came back with the Ten Commandments only to find that in his absence a statue of a golden calf had been created and was being worshiped? Check out Exodus 32:4. Biblical scholars point to several different possible cattle gods, as the one being worshipped in Moses’ absence but the most likely suspect is Apis, a bull deity, worshipped by the Egyptians of this region.

Hmmm, maybe there is more to these statues than we’re aware of. As I look, I find more matches between “tourist” statues and the beliefs of the pre-Christian European pagans such as the Celts and Druids. Although it would be easy to expand the search to look for cows in world mythologies, I want to go deeper, not broader, to find answers to the looming questions first posed in Exploring Pagan America. Click here to read the post.

Who knows, maybe I was raised a pagan and my parents didn’t even know it!

This entry was posted in Pagan America on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 by Jenny. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.