“They consider, however, that the majesty of the celestial gods makes it impossible either to confine them within walls or to give them any resemblance to the human form. They dedicate oak woods and groves to them and name them after the gods; these sanctuaries are marked only by their reverence.”
P. C. Tacitus
📍 A Place of Power
The earliest places of religious worship were primarily outdoors, in sacred groves and meadows, before rocks and hills, or on the shores of marshy lakes into which offerings were cast.
- Lund (lundr) — a sacred grove. This is the simplest form of sanctuary: a grove considered sacred or dedicated to the gods.
📜 Accounts from the Sagas:
“Thorolf named the headland between the Outer Fjord and the Temple Bay Thor’s Headland. There is a mountain on that headland; Thorolf held it in such reverence that no one dared look upon it without first washing. Nothing could be killed there, neither livestock nor people; they could only die a natural death. He called it the Holy Mountain and believed that he would go there when he died, as would all his kinsfolk.” (The Saga of the People of the Sandy Shore)
“Thorir claimed the whole Valley of Deadwood as far as the Undivided and settled in the Grove. He worshipped this grove.” (The Book of Settlements)
The most dramatic contemporary account of a pagan temple was written by Adam of Bremen and appears in his “History of the Archbishops of Hamburg”, composed around 1070. Although Denmark, Norway, and Iceland were already Christian by then, paganism in Sweden still flourished alongside the new religion.
“Its centre was a temple covered in gold at Old Uppsala, where, according to Adam, three idols stood: in the middle, Thor sat enthroned with his hammer; beside him was an armed Odin, and on the other side stood Freyr, who, as the ‘god of peace and sensual pleasures’, was depicted with an enormous phallus. Sacrifices were offered to Thor when famine or plague threatened, to Odin in times of war, and to Freyr during wedding celebrations. Adam also states that every 9 years a great festival was held, lasting 9 days, and people from all over Sweden gathered there with gifts. At this festival, 9 people and 9 males of many animal species, including dogs and horses, were sacrificed; their blood was offered to the gods, while their bodies were hung from the branches of trees in a nearby grove, where every tree was considered sacred because of the blood of the sacrifices. Adam says that a Christian who told him about this had seen 72 bodies hanging there at the same time.”
- Vé (vé) — a sanctuary with a marked boundary: a ditch, fence, palisade, or similar enclosure.
📜 Archaeological Evidence (Trondheim)
In 2011, a pagan sanctuary was discovered by chance 10 km north of Trondheim, on a site intended for residential development. It had been exceptionally well preserved thanks to people who concealed it beneath a layer of earth approximately 1,000 years ago, deep enough that no plough could damage it during that time. The pagan temple was most likely built around or after AD 400 and used over the following centuries, until people abandoned the site under the pressure of Christianity being imposed by force (approximately until AD 990). The altar where sacrifices were offered consisted of a circular stone structure approximately 15 m in diameter and almost 1 m high. A nearby prayer house was rectangular, measuring 5.3 × 4.5 metres, and built with 12 wooden posts, each set deep into the ground. The building was tall, but apparently not used as a dwelling: unlike other houses, it had no hearth. Four raised platforms were found inside, most likely supporting statues of the gods. A ceremonial approach on the western side of the site led directly to the building and was lined with parallel rows of stones extending up to 7.6 metres. Several human teeth, skull fragments, glass beads, and fire-scorched stones from an outdoor hearth were found on the site. Excavations beneath the hearth revealed charcoal dated to 500–400 BC. This means that the place had a special status long before the stone altar was erected there.
- Hof, blóthús (hof, blóthús) — a temple. This is a complete building used for rituals and sacrificial feasts.
In addition to the types of sanctuaries listed above, various natural features may also be revered: stones, springs, rivers, marshes, individual trees, hills, and so on.
📜 Organising Rituals and Feasts
Pagan sacrificial rites were apparently performed outdoors, but the communal feast that followed was, of course, more conveniently held under a roof, especially in bad weather. Such feasts are known to have taken place on the farms of local chieftains and wealthy people, and it is very likely that no special premises were built for them; instead, the main room of an ordinary house was used. In “The Saga of the People of the Sandy Shore”, the “temple” of Thor erected by an Icelandic settler is described as follows:
“It was a large house. Doors had been made in the side walls, near the corners. Inside stood the high-seat pillars; they were secured with nails, and these nails were called ‘divine’. Within the temple was a large sanctuary. There was a section resembling the choir in churches today, and in the middle of its floor stood a sacrificial table like a church altar. On it lay an open ring weighing twenty eyrir. All oaths were to be sworn upon it. The temple priest was to wear this ring on his arm at every assembly. On the sacrificial table there was also to be a sacrificial bowl with a twig resembling an aspergillum. It was used to sprinkle from the bowl the blood called ‘the portion’ — the blood of slaughtered animals offered to the gods. Around the sacrificial table, at the back of the temple, stood the gods.”
“We must begin by saying that a great temple stands in Bjarmaland. Dedicated to Thor and Odin, Frigg and Freyja, it is skilfully made from costly timber. [One set of] the temple’s doors faces north-west, and the other south-west. Thor and Odin are inside, and before them on a table lies the Urarhorn, gleaming like gold.”
(The Saga of Sturlaug the Industrious Ingolfsson)
From the above, we can conclude that an open place in nature is the best setting for performing various rituals and making contact with the gods. Modern life limits these possibilities, but the situation is not hopeless. An altar or a place for invoking the gods can be arranged in different ways, depending on where the ritual is held.
“During excavations at the farm of Rällinge in the province of Södermanland, a small building was discovered on the northern side of the ‘longhouse’, running parallel to it. Inside this building, three cast figurines were found (gold and gilded bronze), most likely depicting the fertility god Freyr with an erect phallus. It is thought to have been something like a ‘household shrine’. Furthermore, a nearby hill appears to have been a sacred grove: numerous structures made from broken stone and fire sites were found throughout it. Inside and around them, the ground was strewn with fragments of burnt and crushed bones, pieces of clay, and drops of resin; many beads, knives, and arrowheads were also found. The bone fragments were very poorly preserved, suggesting that they had simply been left lying on the ground. The few remains that could be identified belonged to pigs, sheep, and goats.” (Gunnar Andersson, L. Beronius Jörperland, J. Dunés. “Gudarnas gård: Tre fallosfiguriner från Lunda i Strängnäs socken, Södermanland”)
- Places of power or woodland. If you have a quiet, familiar place in the woods where you can work, this is an ideal option. Working in nature is deeply replenishing and helps you attune to working with the powers.
If you have a favourite place of power that you often visit for rituals, it will be an excellent choice for invoking the gods. Such a place has a special atmosphere suited to these rituals. Naturally, you may not take statuettes or symbolic signs of the gods there. However, if doing so is convenient and possible for you, it is welcome. It is easier to build a fire in nature. Fire and its smoke have always been the main link between a person and the powers being invoked, and fire is the central element when addressing the gods. However, a fire must be built according to the rules, so as not to harm nature or cause a wildfire. Before leaving, make sure the fire has burned out, or extinguish it. Gifts, if included in the ritual, may be left in the woods. If they are household objects or jewellery, bury them beneath a tree, closer to its roots. If they are edible and will benefit woodland creatures, leave them beside a tree or on its branches. Ideally, have a sacrificial altar at the site and remove everything from it after one day, leaving the place clean. In general, making offerings through animals and nature as a whole is a good thing — feeding cats, dogs, and birds, clearing litter from parks, public gardens, and woods, planting flowers and trees, and so on.
2. A garden at home. In this respect, those who have a private house are fortunate. There are always trees or a corner “dear to the heart” where an altar for working with the gods can be placed. You have nature, peace and quiet, and a fence shielding you from the neighbours’ curious eyes. And you do not have far to go.
If you have a private house and can arrange a place for invocation within your own space, this is another wonderful option. Invoking the gods on your own property is no different from invoking them in nature. It simply offers more possibilities: you can build a permanent stone altar beneath a tree and leave gifts and candles there, or light a fire.
“From his study of the Teutonic words for a temple, Jacob Grimm reached the plausible conclusion that the earliest sanctuaries of the Germanic peoples were natural forests. There is abundant evidence for tree worship among the major European peoples of Aryan origin. Everyone knows that the Celtic Druids worshipped oaks, and that the word they used for a sanctuary is identical in origin and meaning to the Latin nemus (a grove or woodland clearing), an echo of which can be heard in the name Nemi. Among the Germanic peoples, sacred groves were common; tree worship did not entirely disappear among their descendants either. The importance attached to this worship in earlier times can be judged by the severity of the punishment that, under Germanic laws, awaited anyone who dared strip the bark from a standing tree. The offender’s navel was cut out and nailed to the part of the tree that he had stripped; he was then driven around the tree until his intestines were completely wound around the trunk. The punishment was clearly intended to replace the tree’s dead bark with the offender’s living tissue. The principle was tooth for tooth: a human life for the life of a tree.” (James George Frazer, “The Golden Bough”)
I included this example to make the importance and value of such places clear. A place in nature is usually a permanent one, and thus also becomes sacred; respecting it and preserving its cleanliness and integrity are therefore important. This should be a particular lesson (or hint) to those who drag plastic packaging and glass bottles into the woods, scatter “gifts” (in quotation marks, because it is difficult to call such disrespect a gift) directly on the ground, and so on. I see quite a few photographs of “practitioners” doing this, and it turns my stomach. Perhaps I am overly uncompromising on this issue, but we are taught to respect nature from childhood, and all the more so when nature is part of the gods’ world and serves as their temple. In fact, the issue is fairly simple to resolve. Just use a sacrificial stone (Hörgr), or mark off a small area with stones (not the entire site, just a space no larger than a coffee table — a symbolic Vé), and leave the gifts there for one day. The following day, take away and dispose of everything inorganic (since after one day the gifts have already served their purpose), and clean the site. It is not difficult; it is normal, and everyone benefits.
3. A flat. In modern life, when living in a large city or far from nature, you can arrange a place for invocation at home.
These can be either permanent or temporary altars. Preparing a place for your work is not as difficult as it may seem.
I do not recommend parks, however. They can be quite busy at any time of day. You are likely to feel tense about someone seeing you, starting to ask questions, and distracting you. Such nervousness will only impair your concentration and prevent you from fully immersing yourself in the work.
You can discuss this topic and ask questions HERE.
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🌠 © Helga_V
Master of runic practice, researcher of the Northern tradition
