Blót

Summary

Blót is worship and sacrifice among the peoples of the North: they kill an animal, sprinkle its blood on the altar, the walls and themselves, boil its meat, eat it together and drink toasts to the gods. Cleasby–Vigfusson says it is worship including sacrifice, especially a sacrificial feast, and that the greatest were three a year: when winter set in, at midwinter, and at the beginning of summer. Snorri traces these three to the law of Odin: "a sacrifice at the coming of winter for a good year, at midwinter for growth, and the third in summer, the sacrifice for victory".

The clearest description is in the Saga of Hákon the Good. Snorri says it was an old custom that when there was to be a sacrifice all the farmers came to the temple, bringing what provisions they needed while the feast lasted, and every man had to bring ale. All kinds of livestock were killed there, and horses too, and all the blood was called hlaut, the bowls it stood in hlaut-bowls, and there were hlaut-twigs like sprinklers, with which the altars were reddened all over, and the walls of the temple outside and in, and the people sprinkled. The meat was boiled for the feast in cauldrons over fires in the middle of the temple floor. Cups were carried round the fire, and the one who held the feast blessed the cup and all the sacrificial food. The first cup was Odin's, drunk for victory and power for the king; then the cups of Njörðr and Freyr for a good year and peace; then many drank the cup of Bragi; and they drank cups to kinsmen who had been great, which were called minni, memorials.

Hákon the Good had been brought up a Christian in England, and when he ruled Norway he wanted to bring its people to his faith. The farmers met at the Frosta assembly and refused, saying: we want the king to sacrifice for a good year and peace as his father did. At the autumn sacrificial feast at Hlaðir the king sat on his high seat, and the first cup was poured; Earl Sigurðr blessed it to Odin and drank to the king, and the king took it and made the sign of the cross over it. Kárr of Grýtingr said: why does the king do that? Will he not sacrifice? Sigurðr answered: the king does as all do who trust in their own might, and blesses his cup to Thor; he made the sign of the hammer over it before he drank. Next day the farmers pressed the king to eat horse-meat; he refused; they asked him to drink the broth; he refused; to eat the fat; he refused, and they were about to attack him. Sigurðr made peace by having the king open his mouth over the handle of the cauldron where the steam of the horse-meat had risen, after wrapping a linen cloth round it, and neither side was pleased. At the Yule feast at Mærin eight leaders of the sacrifices swore together, four to destroy the new faith, who killed three priests and burned three churches, and four to force the king to sacrifice. When they met, Sigurðr made peace again, "and King Hákon ate some bites of horse liver, and drank all the toasts the farmers poured him without crossing them".

Among the Swedes at Uppsala, Adam of Bremen in the eleventh century describes a temple "made entirely of gold" holding statues of three gods: Thor in the middle, whom they hold lord of the air, thunder and lightning, winds and rain, fair weather and crops, and on either side Wodan, that is Odin, the lord of war, and Fricco, that is Freyr, giver of peace and pleasure. "If plague and famine threaten, they sacrifice to Thor; if war, to Wodan; if a marriage is to be celebrated, to Fricco." Every nine years there is a common festival of all the Swedish provinces at Uppsala from which no one is exempt: "of every living thing that is male, nine heads are offered, with whose blood it is the custom to appease the gods, and their bodies are hung in the grove next to the temple"; each tree there is held sacred through the death of the victims; dogs and horses hang there with men, and a Christian told him he had seen seventy-two bodies hanging.

Among the oldest accounts of Northern offerings is what Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān wrote in Arabic in 921–922 about the Rūs traders on the Volga. Each man goes out "with bread, meat, onions, milk and nabīdh, until he comes to a tall post set up, which has a face like a human face, with small figures around it and tall posts set in the ground behind them; he goes to the great figure, prostrates himself to it and says: Lord, I have come from a far country, and I have with me so many slave girls and so many sable skins"; then he says "I have brought you this gift", and asks the god to send him a merchant with many dinars and dirhams who will buy everything he wants. If his sales go badly he comes back with a second gift and a third, and gives gifts to the small figures to intercede for him, saying "these are the wives of our lord and his daughters and sons". When he has sold, he says "my lord has done what I needed, and I must repay him", slaughters a number of sheep or cattle, gives some of the meat as alms, throws the rest before the great post and the small ones, and hangs the heads of the cattle or sheep on the posts. At night the dogs come and eat it all, and he says: "my lord is pleased with me and has eaten my gift".

The idea the blót turns on is that gods and people eat from one cauldron. The blood is for the gods, the altar and the walls, and it is sprinkled on the people so that they share in it; the meat is eaten by the gathering; and the toasts bind the king to the gods and the ancestors in one assembly. So refusing to eat was refusing the whole community: the farmers did not ask Hákon to believe in Odin, only to eat with them. In Ibn Faḍlān the offering is an open bargain: a gift before the sale, a slaughter after it, and the dogs' eating is the sign that it was accepted.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read this word. Blót is b, l and t. We read it as fildh and fildha: Lane says faladha lahu min mālihi is to cut off for someone a portion of one's property, or give it to him at once; fildh is the liver of a camel; and fildha is a piece of liver cut lengthwise, or of meat, of property, of gold and silver. So the word gathers what is in the blót: a portion cut from the household's wealth for the gods, meat shared out, and liver eaten, as Hákon ate bites of horse liver. L is l, and dh becomes t outside Arabic, as in the Juthoor table. Arabic f is answered in Germanic by b, as Germanic b answers Latin f in the priest's title flāmen, which lexicographers set beside the blót.

Linguistic Root

Kroonen sets up the verb *blōtan-, "to sacrifice", whence Gothic blotan, "to serve, worship", Norse blóta, "to worship, to sacrifice", and Old English blōtan, "to sacrifice". He says the traditional connection with Latin flāmen, "priest", is possible but uncertain, since one cannot tell whether the root of the Latin word was fla-, flad- or flag-, and offers instead a link with a root meaning invocation, supported by Lithuanian blėdėti, "to babble", and the Finnish loanword luote, "enchantment". Cleasby–Vigfusson notes that Ulfilas rendered the two Greek words for worship with a word from this root.

So the reading covers the whole word: f in the place of b, l as l, dh in the place of t, and the long ó a vowel. Dh becomes t or d outside Arabic, as in the Juthoor table. The table does not make f into b; the link comes through flāmen, since Germanic b and Latin f go back, for the lexicographers, to one old sound, so that if blót and flāmen are one word the Arabic f stands nearer the Latin form. The limit of the reading is that this link is itself uncertain in Kroonen, and that his other connection, with invocation, would make the blót a thing said, not a portion cut off.

Key Mythic Narratives

Aun who sacrificed his sons

In Ynglinga saga Snorri tells that Aun, king of the Swedes, was a wise man "and a great sacrificer". When he was sixty he made a great sacrifice for long life and gave his son to Odin, and Odin answered that he would live sixty years more. Then he sacrificed a second son, and Odin told him he would live as long as he gave him a son every tenth year. When he had sacrificed seven of his sons he lived ten years unable to walk and was carried in a chair; after the eighth he lived ten years lying in bed; after the ninth he lived ten years drinking from a horn like a baby. Then he wanted to sacrifice his last son and give Odin Uppsala and the lands round it, but the Swedes stopped him, and he died; and death from old age without sickness was called "Aun's sickness".

Dómaldi who was sacrificed

In the days of King Dómaldi a great famine came on Sweden. In the first autumn the Swedes sacrificed oxen at Uppsala, and the season did not improve; in the second autumn they sacrificed men, and the season stayed the same or grew worse. In the third autumn the chiefs agreed that the famine came from the king himself, killed him and sacrificed him for a good year, "and reddened the altars with his blood".

Symbolic Reading

The Norse essays do not read the word blót. The Saga of Hákon gives a clear picture of the sacrifice in society: it is the farmers who gather and bring their food and ale, the earl bears the cost on the king's behalf, and the king is required to eat in order to remain king. In famine the sacrifice rises step by step, from oxen to men to the king himself, because for them the king answers for the year.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Herodotus says that when a Persian wants to sacrifice to a god he leads the victim to a clean place and prays not for himself alone but for the king and all the Persians, then cuts it up, boils the meat and lays it on soft grass, "and a Magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods; for no sacrifice can be offered without a Magus", after which the sacrificer carries off the meat to use as he pleases. In both places the meat is boiled and eaten by its owners, and the prayer is for the king and the community.

Among the Greeks, Hesiod tells of the first division of a sacrifice at Mecone: Prometheus cut up an ox, put the meat and entrails in the hide for mankind and the white bones covered with fat for Zeus, and Zeus chose the fat. So in Greece and the North alike the meat is for people; the gods' share in Greece is the smoke of the bones, in the North the blood on the altar and walls.

At Rome the priests of the Lupercalia sacrifice goats and a dog, then touch the foreheads of two youths with the bloody knife and wipe it off with wool soaked in milk, as the hlaut is sprinkled on the people at the blót: in both the blood becomes a mark on the bodies of those present.

In India the sacrificer at the yajña pours butter, food and Soma juice into the fire, the fire, Agni, carries it to the gods, and the gods come and sit on the grass spread round the fire, as Odin, Thor and Freyr come to the feast in the North in its cups. They differ in that the gods' share in India is what the fire carries, and in the North the blood and the toasts.

The sacrifices at the start of winter, at midwinter and at the start of summer are feasts of the farming year, among them the sacrifice to the dísir and to the elves, and the cups of Freyr and Njörðr "for a good year and peace" belong with the sacred marriage at Uppsala, where Snorri says Freyr built the temple.