Norse rituals (part two)
Adam of Bremen's description of the sacrifices and the religious centre in Uppsala is the best known account of pre-Christian rituals in Sweden. There is general agreement that Gamla Uppsala was one of the last strongholds of heathen religion in central Sweden and that the religious centre there was still of great importance when Adam of Bremen wrote his account. Adam describes the temple as being gilded everywhere and containing statues of the three most important gods. The most important was Thor, who was placed in the middle, with Odin at one side and Fricco (presumably Freyr) at the other. He tells that Thor reigned in the skies where he ruled rain, wind and thunder, and that he provided good weather for the crops. In his hand he held a sceptre. Odin was the god of war and courage, his name meant "the furious" and he was depicted as a warrior. Fricco, on the other hand, was the god for peace and physical satisfaction, and was thus depicted with a huge phallus. Each god had his own priests and people sacrificed to the gods whose help they needed: Thor was called upon in times of famine and disease, Odin was called upon to gain victory and Fricco was called upon for fertile marriages.
According to Adam, the temple at Uppsala was the centre for the national worship of the gods, and every nine years a great festival was held there where the attendance of all inhabitants of the Swedish provinces was required, including Christians. At these festivals men and male animals were sacrificed by hanging. Adam recounts from Christian eyewitness accounts that up to 72 corpses could be hanging in the trees next to the temple during these sacrifices. He uses the Latin term triclinium, meaning banquet hall, for the central religious building and says that it was used for libations. In Roman culture such a building was not considered a temple proper, but it had a function similar to that of Heorot in the legend of Beowulf. For comparison the Iron Age hall at Berg in Lofoten had benches along three of the walls just like the Roman triclinium.
In recent Strahinja, remains of a large building have been found in Uppsala. It was 100m long and was in use from 600 to 800. It was built on an artificial plateau near the burial mounds from the Germanic Iron Age and was presumably a residence connected to the royal power, which was established in the area during that period. Remains of a smaller building have been found below this house and the place is likely to have been in use as a religious centre for very long time. The memory of the hall (sal) remains in the name Uppsala. The building was surrounded by a fence which could not have had any defensive function but could have marked the royal or sacral area. Around 900 the great hall burned down, but new graves were placed on the site. The traces of postholes under the medieval church have traditionally been interpreted as the site of the temple, but some scholars now believe the building was a later feast hall and that there was never a "temple" as such, but rather a hall used for banquets and political and legal functions as well as sacrifices. Gamla Uppsala was used for about 2000 years but the size and complexity of the complex was expanded up until the Viking Age, so that Uppsala in the period from 500 to 1000 was the centre of royal power and a location of a sizeable religious organisation.
Religious leaders
Norse religion did not have any class of priest who worked as full-time religious leaders. Instead there were different kinds of leaders who took care of different religious tasks alongside their secular occupation. From Iceland the terms goði (gothi) and gyðja are known for "priest" and "priestess" while the terms vífill and lytir are primarily known from the East Norse area. However the title gothi is also known from Danish rune stones. The king or the jarl (earl) had overall responsibility for the public faith in his realm while the head of the household was responsible for leading the private faith.
Thus, religious as well as secular power in Norse society was centered on individuals. It was secured through ties of friendship and loyalty and meant that there never were any totally consolidated structures of power. The king could only exercise his power where he or his trusted representatives were personally present. A king thus needed to have homesteads throughout the realm as the physical seat of his government. It is unclear which of them were royal and which of them were owned by local aristocracy, but place names can give an indication. The common Swedish place name Husaby or Huseby could be an old term for a royal homestead. The same was true for leaders of lesser rank in the hierarchy; they too had to be present for the rituals to work.
The most known type of religious leader is the gothi, as several holders of this title appear in the Icelandic sagas. Because of the limited knowledge about religious leaders there has been a tendency to regard the gothi and his female counterpart, the gyðja, as common titles throughout Scandinavia. However, there is no evidence pointing to that conclusion. In historic times the gothi was a male politician and judge, i.e. a chieftain, but the word has the same etymological origins as the word "god," which is a strong sign that religious functions were connected to the title in pre-historic times. In pre-Christian times the gothi was thus both politician, jurist and religious expert.
Other titles of religious leaders were þulr (thul), thegn, völva and seiðmaðr (seidman). The term thul is related to words meaning recitation, speech and singing, so this religious function could have been connected to a sacral, maybe esoteric, knowledge. The thul was also connected to Odin, the god of rulers and kings, and thus poetry and the activities in the banquet halls. It is a possibility that the thul function was connected to the king's halls. Both the völva and the seiðmaðr were associated with seid.
Human sacrifice
Sacrificed men hanging from the branches of a tree in Uppsala, from the Oseberg tapestry fragments
It has been a topic for discussion whether human sacrifice was practised in Scandinavia. There has been great disagreement about why, for instance, two bodies were found in the Oseberg tomb or how to interpret Ibn Fadlan's description of the killing of a female thrall at a funeral among the Scandinavian Rus on the Volga. The many discoveries of bog bodies and the evidence of sacrifices of prisoners of war dating back to the Pre-Roman Iron Age show that ritual killings in one form or another were not uncommon in Northern Europe in the period before the Viking Age. Furthermore, some findings from the Viking Age can be interpreted as evidence of human sacrifice, including children as young as four years old. Sagas occasionally mention human sacrifice at temples, as does Adam of Bremen. Also, the written sources tell that a commander could consecrate the enemy warriors to Odin using his spear. Thus war was ritualised and made sacral and the slain enemies became sacrifices. Violence was a part of daily life in the Viking Age and took on a religious meaning like other activities. It is likely that human sacrifice occurred during the Viking Age but nothing suggests that it was part of common public religious practise. Instead it was only practised in connection with war and in times of crisis.
Developments
Excavations of the religious centres have shown that public religious practise changed over time. In Southern Scandinavia, the great public sacrificial feasts that had been common during the Roman Iron Age were abandoned. In the 6th century the great sacrifices of weapons were discontinued. Instead there are traces of a faith that was tied more to the abode of a ruler. This change is among other things shown by golden plates and bracteates becoming common. Gold was a precious material and was thus connected to the ruler and his family. The changes are very remarkable and might be a sign that the change of religion in Scandinavia started in an earlier time than was previously believed, and was closely connected to the establishment of kingdoms.
Private religion
The rituals of the private religion mostly paralleled the public. In many cases the line between public and private religion is hard to draw, for instance in the cases of the yearly blót feasts and crisis and life passage rituals. In the private sphere the rituals were led by the head of the household and his wife. It is not known whether thralls took part in the worship and in that case to what extent. The rituals were not limited to seasonal festivals as there were rituals connected to all tasks of daily life. Most rituals only involved one or a few persons, but some involved the entire household or the extended family.
Rites of passage
These rituals were connected to the change of status and transitions in life a person experiences, such as birth, marriage and death, and followed the same pattern as is known from other rites of passage. Unusually, no Scandinavian sources tell about rituals for the passage from child to adult.
Birth and naming
Birth was seen as extremely dangerous for mother and newborn. Thus, rites of birth were common in many pre-modern societies.[citation needed] In the Viking Age, people would pray to the goddesses Frigg and Freyja, and sing ritual galdr-songs to protect the mother and the child. Fate played a huge role in Norse culture and was determined at the moment of birth by the Norns. Nine nights after birth, the child had to be recognised by the father of the household. He placed the child on his knee while sitting in the high seat. Water was sprinkled on the child, it was named and thus admitted into the family. There are accounts of guests being invited to bring gifts and wish the child well. Children were often named after deceased ancestors and the names of deities could be a part of the name. People thought certain traits were connected to certain names and that these traits were carried on when the names were re-used by new generations. This was part of ancestor worship. Putting the child on the knee of the father confirmed his or her status as a member of the clan and bestowed the rights connected to this status. The child could no longer be killed, or exposed by the parents, without its being considered murder. Exposing children was a socially accepted way of limiting the population. The belief that deities were present during childbirth suggests that people did not regard the mother and the child as excluded from normal society as was the case in later, Christian, times and apparently there were no ideas about female biological functions being unclean.
Marriage
As it was the core the family, marriage was one of the most important social institution in pagan Scandinavia. A wedding was thus an important transition not only for the couple but also for the families involved. A marriage was a legal contract with implications for, among other things, inheritance and property relations, while the wedding itself was the solemnization of a pact in which the families promised to help each other. Because of this the male head of the family had the final say in these matters. However it is clear from the sagas that the young couple also had a say since a good relationship between the spouses was crucial to the running of a farm. A wedding was a long and collective process subject to many ritual rules and culminating in the wedding feast itself. The procedures had to be followed for the divine powers to sanction the marriage and to avoid a bad marriage afterwards. However accounts in the sagas about the complicated individual emotions connected to a marriage tell us that things did not always work out between the spouses.
As a prelude to marriage the family of the groom sent the groom and several delegates to the family of the bride to propose. Here the date of the betrothal was set. This was the first legally binding step between the families, and the occasion was used to negotiate the inheritance and property relations of the couple as well as the dowry (heimanfylgja) and wedding present (mundr) from the groom's family. Those were the personal property of the bride. Usually the bride's family were less wealthy than the groom's, but in most cases the difference was not great. Thus the dowry was an investment by the bride's family that made it possible for her to marry into a more powerful family. When an agreement on these matters had been reached, the deal was sealed at a feast. These conditions were reserved for the dominating class of freeholders (bóndi/bœndr), as the remaining parts of the population, servants, thralls and freedmen were not free to act in these matters but were totally dependent on their master.
The wedding (brudlaup) was the most important single ritual in the process. It was the first public gathering of the two families and consisted of a feast that lasted for several days. Anything less than three days was considered paltry. The guests witnessed that the process had been followed correctly. The sources tell very little about how a wedding was related to the gods. It is known that the goddess Vár witnessed the couple's vows, that a depiction of Mjolnir could be placed in the lap of the bride asking Thor to bless her, and that Freyr and Freyja were often called upon in matters of love and marriage, but there is no suggestion of a worship ritual. From legal sources we know that leading the couple to the bridal couch was one of the central rituals. On the first night the couple was led to bed by witnesses carrying torches, which marked the difference between legal marital relations and a secret extra-marital relationship.
Ancestor worship
Ancestor worship was an element in pre-Christian Scandinavian culture. The ancestors were of great importance for the self-image of the family and people believed that they were still able to influence the life of their descendants from the land of the dead. Contact with them was seen as crucial to the well-being of the family. If they were treated in the ritually correct way, they could give their blessings to the living and secure their happiness and prosperity. Conversely, the dead could haunt the living and bring bad fortune if the rituals were not followed. It is not clear whether the ancestors were seen as divine forces themselves or as connected to other death-related forces like elves.
The status of the dead determined the shape of the tomb and the burial mounds were seen as the abode of the dead. They were places of special power which also influenced the objects inside them. The evidence of prehistoric openings in mounds may thus not indicate looting but the local community's efforts to retrieve holy objects from the grave, or to insert offerings. Since the excavation of a mound was a time- and labour-consuming task which could not have happened unnoticed, religious historian Gro Steinsland and others find it unlikely that lootings of graves were common in prehistoric times. There are also several mythological tales and legends about retrieval of objects from burial mounds[63] and an account in Ynglingasaga of offerings to Freyr continuing through openings in his burial mound at Uppsala.
The connection between the living and the dead was maintained through rituals connected to the burial place like sacrifice of objects, food and drink. Usually the graves were placed close to the dwelling of the family and the ancestors were regarded as protecting the house and its inhabitants against bad luck and bestowing fertility. Thus ancestor worship was of crucial importance to survival and there are signs that it continued up until modern times in isolated areas. Ancestor worship was also an element in the blót feasts, where memorial toasts to the deceased were part of the ritual. Also elf blót was closely connected to the family.
According to Adam, the temple at Uppsala was the centre for the national worship of the gods, and every nine years a great festival was held there where the attendance of all inhabitants of the Swedish provinces was required, including Christians. At these festivals men and male animals were sacrificed by hanging. Adam recounts from Christian eyewitness accounts that up to 72 corpses could be hanging in the trees next to the temple during these sacrifices. He uses the Latin term triclinium, meaning banquet hall, for the central religious building and says that it was used for libations. In Roman culture such a building was not considered a temple proper, but it had a function similar to that of Heorot in the legend of Beowulf. For comparison the Iron Age hall at Berg in Lofoten had benches along three of the walls just like the Roman triclinium.
In recent Strahinja, remains of a large building have been found in Uppsala. It was 100m long and was in use from 600 to 800. It was built on an artificial plateau near the burial mounds from the Germanic Iron Age and was presumably a residence connected to the royal power, which was established in the area during that period. Remains of a smaller building have been found below this house and the place is likely to have been in use as a religious centre for very long time. The memory of the hall (sal) remains in the name Uppsala. The building was surrounded by a fence which could not have had any defensive function but could have marked the royal or sacral area. Around 900 the great hall burned down, but new graves were placed on the site. The traces of postholes under the medieval church have traditionally been interpreted as the site of the temple, but some scholars now believe the building was a later feast hall and that there was never a "temple" as such, but rather a hall used for banquets and political and legal functions as well as sacrifices. Gamla Uppsala was used for about 2000 years but the size and complexity of the complex was expanded up until the Viking Age, so that Uppsala in the period from 500 to 1000 was the centre of royal power and a location of a sizeable religious organisation.
Religious leaders
Norse religion did not have any class of priest who worked as full-time religious leaders. Instead there were different kinds of leaders who took care of different religious tasks alongside their secular occupation. From Iceland the terms goði (gothi) and gyðja are known for "priest" and "priestess" while the terms vífill and lytir are primarily known from the East Norse area. However the title gothi is also known from Danish rune stones. The king or the jarl (earl) had overall responsibility for the public faith in his realm while the head of the household was responsible for leading the private faith.
Thus, religious as well as secular power in Norse society was centered on individuals. It was secured through ties of friendship and loyalty and meant that there never were any totally consolidated structures of power. The king could only exercise his power where he or his trusted representatives were personally present. A king thus needed to have homesteads throughout the realm as the physical seat of his government. It is unclear which of them were royal and which of them were owned by local aristocracy, but place names can give an indication. The common Swedish place name Husaby or Huseby could be an old term for a royal homestead. The same was true for leaders of lesser rank in the hierarchy; they too had to be present for the rituals to work.
The most known type of religious leader is the gothi, as several holders of this title appear in the Icelandic sagas. Because of the limited knowledge about religious leaders there has been a tendency to regard the gothi and his female counterpart, the gyðja, as common titles throughout Scandinavia. However, there is no evidence pointing to that conclusion. In historic times the gothi was a male politician and judge, i.e. a chieftain, but the word has the same etymological origins as the word "god," which is a strong sign that religious functions were connected to the title in pre-historic times. In pre-Christian times the gothi was thus both politician, jurist and religious expert.
Other titles of religious leaders were þulr (thul), thegn, völva and seiðmaðr (seidman). The term thul is related to words meaning recitation, speech and singing, so this religious function could have been connected to a sacral, maybe esoteric, knowledge. The thul was also connected to Odin, the god of rulers and kings, and thus poetry and the activities in the banquet halls. It is a possibility that the thul function was connected to the king's halls. Both the völva and the seiðmaðr were associated with seid.
Human sacrifice
Sacrificed men hanging from the branches of a tree in Uppsala, from the Oseberg tapestry fragments
It has been a topic for discussion whether human sacrifice was practised in Scandinavia. There has been great disagreement about why, for instance, two bodies were found in the Oseberg tomb or how to interpret Ibn Fadlan's description of the killing of a female thrall at a funeral among the Scandinavian Rus on the Volga. The many discoveries of bog bodies and the evidence of sacrifices of prisoners of war dating back to the Pre-Roman Iron Age show that ritual killings in one form or another were not uncommon in Northern Europe in the period before the Viking Age. Furthermore, some findings from the Viking Age can be interpreted as evidence of human sacrifice, including children as young as four years old. Sagas occasionally mention human sacrifice at temples, as does Adam of Bremen. Also, the written sources tell that a commander could consecrate the enemy warriors to Odin using his spear. Thus war was ritualised and made sacral and the slain enemies became sacrifices. Violence was a part of daily life in the Viking Age and took on a religious meaning like other activities. It is likely that human sacrifice occurred during the Viking Age but nothing suggests that it was part of common public religious practise. Instead it was only practised in connection with war and in times of crisis.
Developments
Excavations of the religious centres have shown that public religious practise changed over time. In Southern Scandinavia, the great public sacrificial feasts that had been common during the Roman Iron Age were abandoned. In the 6th century the great sacrifices of weapons were discontinued. Instead there are traces of a faith that was tied more to the abode of a ruler. This change is among other things shown by golden plates and bracteates becoming common. Gold was a precious material and was thus connected to the ruler and his family. The changes are very remarkable and might be a sign that the change of religion in Scandinavia started in an earlier time than was previously believed, and was closely connected to the establishment of kingdoms.
Private religion
The rituals of the private religion mostly paralleled the public. In many cases the line between public and private religion is hard to draw, for instance in the cases of the yearly blót feasts and crisis and life passage rituals. In the private sphere the rituals were led by the head of the household and his wife. It is not known whether thralls took part in the worship and in that case to what extent. The rituals were not limited to seasonal festivals as there were rituals connected to all tasks of daily life. Most rituals only involved one or a few persons, but some involved the entire household or the extended family.
Rites of passage
These rituals were connected to the change of status and transitions in life a person experiences, such as birth, marriage and death, and followed the same pattern as is known from other rites of passage. Unusually, no Scandinavian sources tell about rituals for the passage from child to adult.
Birth and naming
Birth was seen as extremely dangerous for mother and newborn. Thus, rites of birth were common in many pre-modern societies.[citation needed] In the Viking Age, people would pray to the goddesses Frigg and Freyja, and sing ritual galdr-songs to protect the mother and the child. Fate played a huge role in Norse culture and was determined at the moment of birth by the Norns. Nine nights after birth, the child had to be recognised by the father of the household. He placed the child on his knee while sitting in the high seat. Water was sprinkled on the child, it was named and thus admitted into the family. There are accounts of guests being invited to bring gifts and wish the child well. Children were often named after deceased ancestors and the names of deities could be a part of the name. People thought certain traits were connected to certain names and that these traits were carried on when the names were re-used by new generations. This was part of ancestor worship. Putting the child on the knee of the father confirmed his or her status as a member of the clan and bestowed the rights connected to this status. The child could no longer be killed, or exposed by the parents, without its being considered murder. Exposing children was a socially accepted way of limiting the population. The belief that deities were present during childbirth suggests that people did not regard the mother and the child as excluded from normal society as was the case in later, Christian, times and apparently there were no ideas about female biological functions being unclean.
Marriage
As it was the core the family, marriage was one of the most important social institution in pagan Scandinavia. A wedding was thus an important transition not only for the couple but also for the families involved. A marriage was a legal contract with implications for, among other things, inheritance and property relations, while the wedding itself was the solemnization of a pact in which the families promised to help each other. Because of this the male head of the family had the final say in these matters. However it is clear from the sagas that the young couple also had a say since a good relationship between the spouses was crucial to the running of a farm. A wedding was a long and collective process subject to many ritual rules and culminating in the wedding feast itself. The procedures had to be followed for the divine powers to sanction the marriage and to avoid a bad marriage afterwards. However accounts in the sagas about the complicated individual emotions connected to a marriage tell us that things did not always work out between the spouses.
As a prelude to marriage the family of the groom sent the groom and several delegates to the family of the bride to propose. Here the date of the betrothal was set. This was the first legally binding step between the families, and the occasion was used to negotiate the inheritance and property relations of the couple as well as the dowry (heimanfylgja) and wedding present (mundr) from the groom's family. Those were the personal property of the bride. Usually the bride's family were less wealthy than the groom's, but in most cases the difference was not great. Thus the dowry was an investment by the bride's family that made it possible for her to marry into a more powerful family. When an agreement on these matters had been reached, the deal was sealed at a feast. These conditions were reserved for the dominating class of freeholders (bóndi/bœndr), as the remaining parts of the population, servants, thralls and freedmen were not free to act in these matters but were totally dependent on their master.
The wedding (brudlaup) was the most important single ritual in the process. It was the first public gathering of the two families and consisted of a feast that lasted for several days. Anything less than three days was considered paltry. The guests witnessed that the process had been followed correctly. The sources tell very little about how a wedding was related to the gods. It is known that the goddess Vár witnessed the couple's vows, that a depiction of Mjolnir could be placed in the lap of the bride asking Thor to bless her, and that Freyr and Freyja were often called upon in matters of love and marriage, but there is no suggestion of a worship ritual. From legal sources we know that leading the couple to the bridal couch was one of the central rituals. On the first night the couple was led to bed by witnesses carrying torches, which marked the difference between legal marital relations and a secret extra-marital relationship.
Ancestor worship
Ancestor worship was an element in pre-Christian Scandinavian culture. The ancestors were of great importance for the self-image of the family and people believed that they were still able to influence the life of their descendants from the land of the dead. Contact with them was seen as crucial to the well-being of the family. If they were treated in the ritually correct way, they could give their blessings to the living and secure their happiness and prosperity. Conversely, the dead could haunt the living and bring bad fortune if the rituals were not followed. It is not clear whether the ancestors were seen as divine forces themselves or as connected to other death-related forces like elves.
The status of the dead determined the shape of the tomb and the burial mounds were seen as the abode of the dead. They were places of special power which also influenced the objects inside them. The evidence of prehistoric openings in mounds may thus not indicate looting but the local community's efforts to retrieve holy objects from the grave, or to insert offerings. Since the excavation of a mound was a time- and labour-consuming task which could not have happened unnoticed, religious historian Gro Steinsland and others find it unlikely that lootings of graves were common in prehistoric times. There are also several mythological tales and legends about retrieval of objects from burial mounds[63] and an account in Ynglingasaga of offerings to Freyr continuing through openings in his burial mound at Uppsala.
The connection between the living and the dead was maintained through rituals connected to the burial place like sacrifice of objects, food and drink. Usually the graves were placed close to the dwelling of the family and the ancestors were regarded as protecting the house and its inhabitants against bad luck and bestowing fertility. Thus ancestor worship was of crucial importance to survival and there are signs that it continued up until modern times in isolated areas. Ancestor worship was also an element in the blót feasts, where memorial toasts to the deceased were part of the ritual. Also elf blót was closely connected to the family.
22-25, F