You are looking at a prehistoric goddess figure called the Galgenberg “Venus.” This figure was found in 1988 near Krems, an Ice Age site in Austria. Archaeologists nicknamed her “Fanny,” because her posture looks like a dancing girl with a hand on her hip.

Though she may look crudely made, this Galgenberg Dancer is a remarkable piece of art, and a wonderful reminder of ancient goddess mysteries of Spring.

This humble figure, no bigger than your finger, was carved out of serpentine, a brittle greenish stone. The carver used tools made of bone to flake and chip away slowly at this bit of green rock. It very likely took hundreds of hours to patiently carve around her arm and leg without breaking the stone. And this work was probably done through long winters.

She was clearly very important to someone, a very long time ago. But what makes her important to modern goddess women?

Compare her to other Ice Age goddesses we know—like the wonderful Willendorf figure, which was carved about 3,000 years AFTER our Galgenberg dancer. Most Ice Age goddesses are round, full figures, often pregnant. The green dancer is not. She is slender, not pregnant, and—she’s dancing! Her posture, with one arm bent inward and the other hand on her raised leg, is very much like African dance movements still in use after thousands of years.

I believe that this figure was very likely created to celebrate the coming of spring, the “greening” time of year. She is dancing in a pose used in women’s folk dances to enact the seasonal return of water birds, and the abundant food sources of fish and frogs that soon follow them. She is, herself, an invitation to the Dance of Life.

This is the quickening time of year. Persephone returns from the Underworld. The waters of life flow abundantly to stir the seeds unfolding underground. And this little green dancer asks us to join her in moving, leaping, imitating the birds that bring color and life back to the world this time of year.

If we take her “foot-note” to heart, we’ll move our feet too, to celebrate the eternal renewal promised in the spring.

Shawnee Song for the Bread Dance
(from The Goddess Companion by Pat Monaghan)

She created us, and so we dance.
She smiles down upon our dance,
She grows happy because we dance.

We are her grandchildren, and so we dance.
Our dance is our best prayer to her.

She laughs in happiness because we dance…

She is the goddess who dances though us.
We are her children, and we must dance.

She created us, and so we dance.