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Inconsistency in seasons

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Under "Rites and beliefs" the article mentions spring, autumn and summer blót. (not sure how to pluralise the word). However, in "Dates for the blóts", the article mentions autumn, midwinter and summer. Are the 'spring' and 'midwinter' ones the same thing, since they're the odd ones in each? —Morven 01:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


New research has found out, that original blot times differ a lot from todays new pagan blot times. There is NO proof of celebrating solstices or equinoxes in germanic heathenry. Yul was from mid january zo february. Midsummer around mid july. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Odinsson (talk • contribs) 13:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree with above comment as to "original blot times". Author of above comment obviously did not live back then, and even if he did he would be a first-hand source, and hence not trustworthy. What has happened since pre-christian times is something else: A shift in calendar system, from the previous Julian calendar system to the current Gregorian one. Dates in the previous system do not equal dates in the new system, so eg. any date for "Yul" (a calendar event) would be a different number of days from eg "winter solstice" (a real world phenomena) in the historic sources (Julian calendar) and now (Gregorian calendar) clsc (talk) 22:29, 11 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adam of Bremen

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The inset passage appears to be a quotation, but ends with a sentence that appears to comment on the quotation rather than be part of it. It also shifts rather oddly betwen the present tense and the past tense. Also contributors have added material to the inset text, even though it presumably a quotation. Here's the first version and the most recent version:

first version

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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 sceptre (Mjolnir) 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 erected phallos. All the pagan gods have their priests who offer them the people's sacrifices. If there is desease 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 hanged from the branches of a grove near the temple. No one is excempt 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, something that Adam of Bremen considered to be a very harsh.

most recent version

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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 sceptre (Mjolnir) 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 erected phallus. All the pagan gods had their priests who offered them the people's sacrifices. If there was disease or famine, they sacrificed to Thor, if war to Odin and if weddings to Frey.
Every ninth year, there was a nine-day blót, a common feast for everyone in Sweden. Then, they sacrificed nine males of each species, even men (totalling 72 corpses), and the bodies were hanged from the branches of a sacred grove near the temple. No one was excempt from this blót and everyone sent gifts to the shrine, even the kings. Those who were Christian had to pay a fee not to take part in the blót, something that Adam of Bremen considered to be a very harsh punishment.

I have removed the additional text from within the quotation and have separated out the last sentence, but I'm still not sure whether the past-tense opening section up to 'phallus' is part of a quotatiob from Adam or not. Paul B 18:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling

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What language is blót - Icelandic? The "ó" is alien to all other Scandianvian languages - it looks very strange to me. Maybe we could move the page to blot (Norse religion) or something similar? / Habj 04:47, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect Old Norse, but the article should really say. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 05:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this is an Old Norse word. I would prefer to keep the page where it is. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 08:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
How was Old Norse written? Did they have "ó"? This kind of characters looks very modern to me. / Habj 08:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they did have 'ó' - though it was not consistently used. It denotes a phoneme that is a long version of the one denoted by 'o'. In IPA terms 'o' denoted [o] and 'ó' denoted [o:] (roughly). There were long and short versions of every vowel. Thus there was both 'a' and 'á' - and the latter developed into Swedish/Danish/Norwegian 'å'. Here's a good introduction to Old Norse written by a Swede: [1]- Haukur Þorgeirsson 09:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Elven blót all just made up stuff?

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"We don't know much about the rites...we can assume that it had to do with"

This stuff is just made up, pure fiction on the part of the wikipedian contributor? or is this derived from sources? References please folks.

Völse blót?

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The strange word Mornir probably means female Jotuns, because in Haustlöng faðir mörna is used as a kenning for Jotun.

I don't know about this. I've found an article which claims that Skadi was also called Mornir at times: http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM02/wheel.htm I first heard the name Mornir (not a strange word, as the name of a god of death. Oops, that came from me the other day. Evening Scribe 09:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Past Tense?

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Many contemporary Heathens perform the blót - at least, those who do something they call "blót" believe it to be a continuation of the ancient Heathen practice of blót. I don't want to start a pissing contest here, but I think it's both unfair and inaccurate to use language which relegates the blót to the distant past - as this article does consistently. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.75.166.187 (talk) 00:35, 30 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

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I would like to remove the text "The word is related to the English word bless and they are derived from blood, an important component in the rites." from the article. I have looked it up and the word seems to derive from "worship", but it may also derive from the latin flamen. It may be related to bless, but I have found nothing to indicate it's related to blood. // Liftarn

It was taken from the book referenced on the bottom of the page. Since you may not have the book, I will help you out with a book that is easier to access. You can consult the American Heritage Dictionary, one of the standard works of reference in these cases: [2]. Regards, --Wiglaf 14:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ok, my sources was Svenska akademiens ordbok [3] and Svensk etymologisk ordbok [4]. None of them mentions "blood". // Liftarn
Thanks for the links! Interesting. I think the Swedish sources don't go that far back in tracing the word, whereas the AHD usually tries to go as far back as possible.--Wiglaf 17:41, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The Old English version of this word was blōd, which does indeed mean "blood." Just thought I'd add that... since I'm a Heathen who speaks Old English :D Ƿōdenhelm (talk) 10:34, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I made some changes to the Etymology section; hopefully no one minds. If I've gone overboard, I apologize, but I do find the new section superior. I'm not entirely sure the old blurb on húsl is appropriate here, though. If no one objects, I would rather remove it, though if information can be found which would justify it, I would support a new article under that name. --Aryaman (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scratch that last bit: I just found Housel. --Aryaman (talk) 14:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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The external links section could use an update, all three of the links listed are no longer valid. Anyone have an updated resource for these?

Ruhne (talk) 14:56, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Caps throughout?

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If the Blót indeed was the name of an official ceremony, it seems to me that the word should begin with a capital letter in English, throughout the article. ??? 81.233.186.229 (talk) 15:59, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology again

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From the Latin perspective. The proto-Indo-European bhlād is the Latin (and then Italian) blaterare. In Italian there is also "bla" used just in "bla bla bla" as sounds of blathering. The Latin flamen has an unknown origin.--93.147.21.3 (talk) 01:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Woden

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"Odin" probably is a post-christian era writing, than the original "Woden". Woden can still be seen in our culture, that revolves around "mead" and hash. So mostly such a god. People probably did not do Blot, as such people still do not do blot. It could however be a myth based on hatred towards christianity, and that crucifixion was madness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:FE0:C700:2:FCAD:3FAD:A8B1:E9F9 (talk) 21:40, 5 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Source missing for the "spinkling of blood"

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All is in the title, Im not a big wikipedia editor so I dont know how it works, but there's clearly a missing source for the blood sprinkling on god statues and participants and all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.44.12.55 (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Citations are needed throughout

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A lot of the claims in this article do not have sources backing them up. I'm not making a judgement on whether or not the claims are true, but unsourced claims do not belong on Wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Margretarson (talk • contribs)

Thank you for pointing that out. Please, read the article before you add "citation needed" tags. The lead is a summary of the article and does not include references when the information is sourced in the body.--Berig (talk) 14:56, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inconsistency with treatment of the Blót in England

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In the introduction, the page is specified to be about the practice of the blot in cultures speaking Old Norse, differentiating it from Old English practices based on the word's cognate. Anglo-Saxon sources are later used to specify when some blots were performed. This is inconsistent as here it is suggested it is a practice common historically to both England and Nordic regions. My opinion is that the page should be extended to include all Germanic practices which are described by a cognate of blot given their seemingly consistent overall concept and elaborate on regional variations where permitted by sources.--Ingwina (talk) 12:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Etemology: in compounds

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the reference for translations like "heathen god" is most likely not correct due to christianization, "heathen" is not a translation of blot and guð seems to just mean god

please do dispute me but i cannot see a culture calling their own gods heathen gods IKEAsys (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @IKEAsys and thank you for raising this. It is complicated for sure but I have written it this way for several reasons.
Principally, the wording used is that of the referenced sources. When we're dealing with sensitive subjects like this, subtle wording changes make a big difference in tone and so I have kept as closely to that given in dictionaries as is possible.
I also would agree that it is unlikely that historical heathens would have referred to their gods as "heathen gods", although I would argue it could still be useful to specify in a translation that it did not refer to the Christian god. The most important bit about this though is that these compounds are being attested in a Christian context and so to the writers they use them to mean concepts such as "idolatry" which of course a heathen would not. As discussed in this article, Christian writers were not fond of blót and this shines through in their use of the terms. The translations are the meaning they conveyed rather than necessarily a literal translation (and I think readers should be able to work out the literal translations fairly easily too).
If you have solid sources that look at how these terms may have been used by heathens then do share them and we can take a look at them but until then we need to stick to faithfully representing the content of the sources we have. Ingwina (talk) 08:36, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
as this section is on the old norse words and not their christian readings i would argue that it is more destructive than constructive to use the translations from this scource being that although few there are still those who supscribe to this religion
this wiki is not just meant for the christian world as far as i am aware IKEAsys (talk) 20:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's safe to say that I am not against modern heathenry in any way and my editing history should make that clear. I have aimed to explore blót in a balanced way here, including examining how it was negatively portrayed by Christian writers and how it actually was, rather than only accepting their descriptions. I think I have done a decent job of this too.
The problem is that these Old Norse words are attested in Christian writings and so their meanings as they are recorded for us are in a Christian usage, and that often entails a negative view on them. This is not making the page for the Christian world exclusively, but analysing the texts we have.
It should be clear though that a medieval Christian seeing another religion's practice as idolatry, for example, should not be seen as an objective judgement on the worth of that religion. Further, as I said before, if you find a reliable source that gives a literal translation to these terms, or one that attempts to give a more balanced translation, do make it known and I can incorporate it in alongside the current translations. Ingwina (talk) 08:18, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This section again is titled old norse, implying that they are translations, there are few readers on wikipedia that will check the scources on a read thrugh, yes it shuld be obvious that theese are wildly incorrect and outright fraudulant translations but we shuld never make the habit of assuming understanding of this when it is presented as if it were true, as a swede i can without a shadow of a doubt say that theese translations do not portray the truth in any way, again, known incorrect information is worse than none if not stated to be incorrect
also on a side note, i do not think a blotkálfr would ever be something you worship, the word is far closer to a sacrificial calf in modern languages (blotkalv for example would be a calf used in a blot) if translated, but that is not as important as the other downright insulting translations posted there. as someone who cares about swedish and to an extent nordic history, marking our forefathers as heathens because the only translations preserved are christian feels very dishonest and quite disrespectfull IKEAsys (talk) 23:20, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Once more the key issue here is that we need reliable, scholarly sources to back up claims. The current version uses the translations given by such a source. If we are to add alternative translations, we need a similarly reputable source. If we are to explain the controversy and Christian bias in their use and translation, we need a reputable source for that too. Without reliable sources, we cannot act and that includes taking down well sourced content unless there is very good reason. You thinking that something doesn't sound right isn't enough on its own.
Again as said before, these words are translated to give a sense of how they are used in extant sources. Perhaps in Germanic religion, "blótkálfr" would refer to the animal given in a blót but the sources we have use it to mean a calf receiving blót. In this context, the latter would be the correct sense to translate. With "blótnaðr", we are given the translation both of the more loaded sense and the more neutral sense as this is what we are given in our source.
Heathen is also not necessarily a negative word and many identify as it today. I do not see how this is dishonest or disrespectful and it is a very common term used in the field. It is also the descendent or a cognate of terms used with the same meaning in the time periods we're discussing here. I further don't see the point in trying to hide the often unpleasant ways that medieval Christians talked about Germanic religion instead of being open about it and discussing ways in which these individuals sought to demonise Germanic religion. I share your lack of love for some of the words' uses but I think the most respectful way of treating it is exploring it as fully as possible with academic rigour. Ingwina (talk) 08:37, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
so you are saying it is acceptable to without implying question use a scource aslong as it is form a book? This scource definitly misstranslates, it is undebatable, so how is this a reliable scource?
and i am aware that modern followers go by heathen in the english speaking world, but that is a definite different religion form nordic mythology, would you accept orthodox christian descriptions applied to protestantism? as i have said multiple times, this section is marked as old norse, not modern interpretations or christian readings, so it is in all seriousness of a wikipedia article implying that heathen is the word to use for nordic mythology from the old norse language, and that is just not supported by your scource, that scource can only say what observers saw, not what the old norse language says about it.
do not say to use a reliable scource and then ignore the context of it, one would not call Christian II of Denmark "the tyrant" in denmark without first implying it is the swedish reading IKEAsys (talk) 22:55, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
1. "this section is marked as old norse, not modern interpretations or christian readings" - Christians wrote in Old Norse. The Old Norse usage can therefore be Christian usage. The majority of recorded Old Norse is in a Christian context. As I have said consistently, translations are not just about translating word for word but also conveying the meaning with which it is used. If a Christian uses a term to mean "idolatry", that can be a suitable translation regardless of the literal translation of parts of a word.
2. "so you are saying it is acceptable to without implying question use a scource aslong as it is form a book?" - I said "Once more the key issue here is that we need reliable, scholarly sources to back up claims.". I have not argued that every book is reliable. The book referenced is that by Geir Zoëga and is one of the go-to dictionaries for Old Norse/Old Icelandic. This is consistent with other prominent dictionaries such as Cleasby-Vigfusson and Johan Fritzer's Old Norwegian dictionary, which also give translations such as "idolatry" [5] [6]
3. As I have said before, if you feel context is missing, please do find a good quality source and use it to give nuance. Also as I have already mentioned, I do believe the context is given elsewhere in the page, with a whole section dedicated to how blót were portrayed as morally wrong by Christians. I have also said how I agree that it would be nice to have a bit more explaining how these translations can be loaded but have not seen a source that does this. We cannot just assert something is wrong without evidence.
4. You make the comparison between different Christian groups. I don't fully understand your argument but I think it would be completely fair to say "Protestants use the term to mean that. Orthodox folks use the term to mean this." We may lack the pre-Christian/heathen meaning for many of these words because we don't have it attested in this context. If we do have it, please do add it with a good source to back it up. At no point am I trying to stop this sense being added if it has a reliable source backing it up. Ingwina (talk) 09:45, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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