Talk:Blót

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Inconsistency in seasons

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

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

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

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

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?

"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?

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?

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

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]

External Links Need an Update

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?

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

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]

External links modified

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Woden

"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"

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

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

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

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]