Blót


Blót is the term for "Blood sacrifice" in Norse paganism. A blót could be dedicated to any of the Norse gods, the spirits of the land, and to ancestors.
The sacrifice involved aspects of a sacramental meal or feast.
The cognate term blōt or geblōt in Old English would have referred to comparable traditions in Anglo-Saxon paganism, and comparanda can also be reconstructed for the wider Germanic Indo-European.

Etymology

The word blót is an Old Norse strong neuter noun. The corresponding Old English neuter blōt may be influenced by Old Norse; the Old English gospels have prefixed ge-blōt "sacrifice".
The reconstructed Proto-Germanic form of the noun is blōtą "sacrifice, worship". Connected to this is the Proto-Germanic strong verb blōtaną with descendants in Gothic ??????, Old Norse blóta, Old English blōtan and Old High German bluozan, all of which mean "to sacrifice, offer, worship".
The word also appears in a compound attested in Old Norse as blót-hús "house of worship" and in Old High German as bluoz-hūz "temple". With a different nominative affix, the same stem is found in the Proto-Germanic noun blōstrą "sacrifice" — attested in Gothic *?????? in ???-?????????. This stem is thought to be connected to the Proto-Germanic verb blōaną "to blow; to bloom, blossom", as are the words for "blood" and "bloom". Sophus Bugge was the first to suggest a connection between blót and the Latin flamen, and both words can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European stem * "to bubble forth; to mumble, murmur, blather".

Rites and beliefs

The verb blóta meant "to worship with blood sacrifice", or "to strengthen".
The sacrifice usually consisted of animals or war prisoners, in particular pigs and horses. The meat was boiled in large cooking pits with heated stones, either indoors or outdoors. The blood was considered to contain special powers and it was sprinkled on the statues of the gods, on the walls and on the participants themselves.
The drink that was passed around was beer or mead.
A special toast was reserved for the celebration of Jól: til árs ok friðar, "for a good year and frith ".

Dates

The autumn blót was performed in the middle of October, the Winter Nights, indicating the beginning of winter. The great midwinter blót, or Jól, took place in the middle of January. Freyr was the most important god at the Midwinter and autumn blót, and Christmas ham is still a main Christmas course in parts of Scandinavia. The Summer blót was undertaken in the middle of April and it was given to Odin. Then, they drank for victory in war and this blót was the starting date for Viking expeditions and wars.
For the early Anglo-Saxons, November was known as Blōtmōnaþ, as this later Old English passage points out:

Locations

A building where the blót took place was called a hov and there are many place names derived from this in e.g. Scania, West Götaland and East Götaland. Excavations at the medieval churches of Mære in Trøndelag and at Old Uppsala provide the few exceptions where church sites are associated with earlier churches.
There were also other sacred places called Hörgr, Vé, Lund and Tumulus. Hörgr means altar possibly consisting of a heap of stones, Lund means "grove" and Ve simply "sacred place". The Christian laws forbade worshipping at the haug or haugr meaning "mound" or "barrow".

Denmark

Lejre

The German Thietmar wrote before 932 that the Daner had their main cult centre on Zealand at Lejre, where they gathered every nine years and sacrificed 99 people but also horses, dogs and hens. There are however no historical records from Scandinavian sources nor any archeological findings supporting this. Archaeological excavations have indeed revealed Lejre to be of great importance and in fact the seat of the royal family dating to at least the Iron Age. There is not conclusive evidence that Lejre was the site of a main cult centre though, but excavations around lake Tissø not far to the West, have revealed an ancient hof of great importance.

Norway

Mære

relates of a meeting between the peasants of Trøndelag and king Haakon I of Norway, a meeting which ended in a religious feud centered around the blót. Haakon was raised at the Christian English court and had returned to claim the throne of his father Harald Fairhair and intended to Christianize the country. In spite of the fact that the peasants had elected Haakon king at the Thing they opposed his religious ideas.
During this ceremony, the king also had to participate, although he was a Christian, and he had to drink of the mead that was offered and consecrated for Odin, Njord and Freyja. The peasants also wanted him to eat of the meat, but he only gaped over the handle of the cauldron and held a linen cloth between his mouth and the meat. The peasants were not at all satisfied with a king who would not participate fully in the blót. The King had however, been seriously humiliated and later he converted to the old faith. The tradition says that he was buried in the old ways.

Sweden

Gotland

The Gutasaga relates of the blót on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea:

Uppsala

The German chronicler Adam of Bremen has described how it was done at the Temple at Uppsala at Old Uppsala in Sweden, ca 1070:
Thor was the most powerful god and ruled over thunder and lightning, wind and rain, sunshine and crops. He sat in the centre with a hammer in his hand, and on each side were Odin, the god of war, in full armour and Frey, the god of peace and love, attributed with an enormous erect phallus. All the pagan gods have their priests who offer them the people's sacrifices. If there is disease or famine, they sacrifice to Thor, if war to Odin and if weddings to Frey.

Every ninth year there is a blót of nine days, a common feast for everyone in Sweden. Then they sacrifice nine males of each species, even men, and the bodies are hung from the branches of a grove near the temple. No one is exempt from this blót and everyone sends gifts to the shrine, even the kings. Those who are Christian have to pay a fee not to take part in the blót.

Adam of Bremen considered this financial penalty to be very harsh.
leading the people in sacrificing to an idol of Thor in this painting by J. L. Lund.
It is possible that the last nine-day blót was performed in 1078. The Temple at Uppsala was probably destroyed by king Ingold I in 1087. For quite some time there had been civil war between Christians and pagans every nine years, and this was the year of the last battle.
According to Snorri, there was a main blót at the Temple at Uppsala in February, the Dísablót, during which they sacrificed for peace and for the victories of the king. The blót was also performed to see how large the next harvest would be. Then the Thing of all Swedes was held and there was a grand fair, the Disting. The Disting survived Christianity, and the tradition has never been interrupted. The fair is still held every first Tuesday in February in Uppsala, even though the date has sometimes been moved within the month. In 1968, the tradition of discussing official matters was resumed.

Specific blóts

The old Norse calendar consisted of a summer half year and a winter half year, not the four seasons modern Europeans are accustomed to. The winter half of the year began in mid-to-late October, the summer half of the year began in mid-to-late April. Some blót were associated with these turning points.
;Beginning of Winter half year
;During winter
;At the midpoint of the Winter half of the year
;Beginning of Summer half year
This point in time is known as First Day of Summer in modern Iceland
Pre-Christian Scandinavian traditions have left traces in Scandinavian folklore.
A conscious revival of Norse paganism has also taken place, in the 19th century in Romantic nationalism, and since the later 20th century under the name Asatru or Germanic Neopaganism.
In Scandinavian Yule or Christmas traditions in particular, such as the Christmas porridge, of which an extra bowl often is served and carried outdoors, because this is a meal shared with the guardian of the homestead, the tomte, a land wight.
The Þorrablót is an Icelandic tradition introduced in the 19th century, deliberately harking back to the term blót associated with pre-Christian times.
Modern adherents of the reconstructionist
Germanic neopaganism
have developed traditions of blót rituals celebrated in a contemporary context since the 1970s.