Meaning of Heilung's Nesso

The Heilung lyrics are (almost verbatim) the Old Saxon charm usually labeled Contra vermes (“Against worms”). Manuscript references commonly given are Vienna ÖNB Cod. 751, fol. 188 (Old Saxon) and a closely related Old High German version Pro Nessia in Munich (BSB clm 18524b, fol. 203v). (University of Salento)

The charm speaks to the “worm” as the agent of the illness and orders it to leave layer by layer:

• marrow → bone
• bone → flesh
• flesh → skin
• skin → this arrow (thesa strâla) (University of Salento)

Then it seals it with “Drohtin, uuerthe sô!” = basically “Lord, let it be so.” That’s not a Norse/pagan tag; it’s openly Christian language in the text. (University of Salento)

So is the worm the scapegoat? Or the evil?

The worm (nesso) is the evil/malady (or the demonized “thing” causing it), not the container. The arrow is the container.

The “scapegoat” analogue is: take the sickness out of the patient and lodge it in something portable, then remove that thing from the community. Storms describes exactly that kind of move for this charm: the disease is transferred into an arrow which is then thrown or shot away, ideally somewhere uninhabited. (Ubn Repository)

So if you want to map Biblical scapegoat logic onto it:

• Patient = Israel/community
• Arrow = scapegoat vehicle
• Worm = the sin/affliction being expelled

Not “maladies are cast into the worm.” The worm is what’s being commanded out (with its “nine wormlets”), and the arrow is where it’s directed to end up. (Wikipedia)

“Nine wormlets” isn’t random

“with nine little worms” (mid nigun nessiklînon) is classic charm-number stuff: either intensifier (“really get all of it”) or a folk-medical model where the illness is a cluster/offspring. Same logic shows up all over medieval European charm traditions. (Wikipedia)

What nesso / nessia actually means (and how confident we can be)

Semantically in the charm it’s “worm”, but etymologically it’s messy enough that scholars argue about what the word originally was (worm? snake? “disease” via Greek nósos? etc.). (Leiden Medievalists Blog)

This is a Christian-era Germanic healing charm that personifies illness as a “worm,” orders it out of the body, pins it into an “arrow,” and (per later explanation) removes it by casting/shooting the arrow away — scapegoat-like in ritual logic, but the arrow is the scapegoat vehicle; the worm is the affliction. (University of Salento)

Nesso Lyrics

Gang ût, nesso, mid nigun nessiklînon
(Go out, worm, with nine little worms.)

Gang ût, nesso, mid nigun nessiklînon
(Go out, worm, with nine little worms.)

Ût fana themo margę an that bên
(Out from the marrow into the bone.)

Fan themo bêne an that flêsg
(From the bone into the flesh.)

Ût fan themo flêsgke an thia hûd
(Out from the flesh into the skin.)

Ût fan thera hud an thesa strâla
(Out from the skin into this arrow.)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Gang ût, nesso, mid nigun nessiklînon
(Go out, worm, with nine little worms.)

Gang ût, nesso, mid nigun nessiklînon
(Go out, worm, with nine little worms.)

Ût fana themo margę an that bên
(Out from the marrow into the bone.)

Fan themo bêne an that flêsg
(From the bone into the flesh.)

Ût fan themo flêsgke an thia hûd
(Out from the flesh into the skin.)

Ût fan thera hud an thesa strâla
(Out from the skin into this arrow.)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

Drohtin, uuerthe sô!
(Lord, let it be so!)

How Nesso Compares to the Merseburg Charms

They’re the same kind of thing (early medieval Germanic spoken charm-poetry), but they’re doing different magical “moves”. The cleanest way to see it is: expel vs unbind vs mend.

1) Genre + structure

Nesso / Contra vermes (Old Saxon) is basically all formula: a direct command to the affliction (“worm”) to move outward, layer by layer, and end up in the “arrow,” sealed with “Drohtin, uuerthe sô!” (“Lord, let it be so”). (Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi)

Merseburg I & II (Old High German) are classic “historiola + punchline” charms: a short mythic scene that establishes precedent, then an imperative or analogical formula that tries to make the same thing happen now. John Lindow describes this historiola pattern directly, and the Merseburg page summarizes the two-part structure. (H Y L D Y R)

So structurally:

• Contra vermes: command-only (no myth-story)
• MZ I & II: myth-story → operative lines

2) What each charm targets

Contra vermes: a disease agent imagined as a worm (and “nine little worms”), expelled from inside the body into an implement (arrow) that can be removed. (Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi)

MZ I: not “healing” per se—more like a release / loosening charm: Idisi (female supernatural beings) do battle-magic (bind, hinder, loosen), then the operative line is basically “jump out of the bonds; escape the enemies.” (University of Pittsburgh)

MZ II: a mending charm: a foal/horse’s foot is injured, deities “sing/enchanted” it, then Wodan performs a re-binding formula: bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb. (Mimisbrunnr)

3) The core “mechanism”: expel vs unbind vs knit back together

This is the biggest contrast:

• Contra vermes = expulsion + transference

  • It moves the bad thing outward (marrow → bone → flesh → skin → arrow). (Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi)
  • In the later explanation you quoted (Storms), the arrow then gets shot/thrown away so the sickness leaves the social space. (Lyrics Translate)

• MZ I = unbinding / release

  • The imagery is literally “bonds/fetters” and the operative line is “leap forth from the fetters.” (University of Pittsburgh)
  • It’s not pushing a pathogen out of a body; it’s pushing a person out of constraint.

• MZ II = sympathetic repair (re-attachment)

  • Instead of driving something out, it aligns what’s out of place back into place (bone↔bone, blood↔blood, limb↔limb). (Mimisbrunnr)

If you want a blunt one-liner:

• Nesso: “Get out.”
• MZ I: “Get free.”
• MZ II: “Get back together.”

4) The beings invoked: Christian “Lord” vs pagan names

Contra vermes ends with Drohtin (“Lord”), i.e., explicitly Christianized closure (even if the rest feels “pagan”). (Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi)

MZ I & II preserve overtly pagan mythic names (Idisi; Wodan; Frija; etc.) and are famous partly because of that. (Wikipedia)

5) Why people compare Contra vermes to the Merseburg material at all

Because the bodily “progression” language in Contra vermes (marrow → bone → flesh → skin) looks like the kind of staged, formulaic “anatomy talk” you see around sprain/healing charms—so Grimm (notoriously) tried to pull it toward the horse-injury genre that MZ II represents. Wikipedia summarizes that comparison and Grimm’s insistence that it’s “about lame horses,” and that the transitions resemble sprain-spells. (Wikipedia)

The resemblance is a combination of stylistic and genre (how charms work), not that they’re the same charm. Contra vermes is expulsion/transference; MZ II is repair/rebinding.