Reply from Horst Pirchl-Hussl

The Frau Hitt Legend and Tyr

At www.sagen.at one finds many detailed forms of the legends about the stone Nordkette figure near Innsbruck. One form of the legend says that a queen, Frau Hütt, is said to have conceived the son Ol by Tyr, a mountain giant, and that this refers to the Germanic war god Tyr. Furthermore, in North Tyrol the legend of the giant Tyrsus is also told, who was overcome by the legendary founder of Wilten Abbey, the giant Haymon. Martial spirits, according to the website, often lived on after the fall of paganism in folk legends as wild giants. The origin of the Frau Hitt legend certainly reaches back into grey prehistoric times.

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The Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great

in the Innsbruck Ambras Collection. The tomb of Emperor Maximilian I (* 1459 +1519) in Innsbruck's Hofkirche is adorned with 28 over-life-size bronze statues (the „Schwarzen Mander”), which depict Emperor Maximilian's kinship as well as his role models. Among them also that of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. The busts of the Roman emperors belonging to the original concept (twenty are preserved) are today in the Ambras Collection. They were meant to attest the continuity and legitimacy of the imperial dignity since antiquity.