ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Merseburg Incantations

The Merseburg Incantations are some really old, really special poems that people in Germany used to say a long, long time ago. They were written down on paper for the first time about 1,000 years ago, but people had been passing them on by speaking them out loud for generations before that!

These poems were very important to the people who used them because they were believed to have special magical powers. People thought that saying the words out loud could make things happen, like healing someone who was sick or helping crops grow. The poems also had stories about gods and heroes from a religion that was practiced by people in Germany a long time ago.

The Merseburg Incantations were found in a book that was discovered many years later in a big library in Germany. It was called the Codex Laureshamensis, and it had a lot of very old and important writings in it! People were very excited to find the Merseburg Incantations because they were so rare and special.

Even though we don't believe in magic in the same way that people did a long time ago, the Merseburg Incantations are still studied and appreciated today because they give us a look into what people believed a very long time ago.