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Norse rituals. Norse religious worship is the traditional religious rituals practiced by Norse pagans in Scandinavia in pre-Christian times. Norse religion was a folk religion (as opposed to an organized religion), and its main purpose was the survival and regeneration of society. Therefore, the faith was decentralized and tied to the village ...
Killing of humans and other animals. The written sources and the archaeological record indicate that in Old Norse religious practice, the sacrifice of animals, particularly pigs and horses, played a significant part in the blót. Closer in conception to a gift, it usually involved killing animals, and sometimes humans, in ritual fashion.
The funeral ritual could be drawn out for days, in order to accommodate the time needed to complete the grave. These practices could include prolonged episodes of feasting and drinking, music, songs and chants, visionary experiences, human and animal sacrifice. [13]
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, public or jurisdictional demands for justice by capital punishment, an authoritative/priestly figure, spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in ...
The blood eagle was a method of ritual execution as detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Christian sagas, the victims (in both cases members of royal families) were placed in a prone position, their ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool, and their lungs pulled through the opening to create a ...
Temple at Uppsala. A woodcut depicting the Temple at Uppsala as described by Adam of Bremen, including the golden chain around the temple, the well and the tree, from Olaus Magnus ' Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555). The Temple at Uppsala was long held to be a religious center in the Norse religion once located at what is now Gamla ...
Death in Norse paganism. This image is usually interpreted as a Valkyrie who welcomes a dead man, or Odin himself, on the Tjängvide image stone from Gotland, in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. Death in Norse paganism was associated with diverse customs and beliefs that varied with time, location and social group, and ...
e. Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germany, the Netherlands, and at times other parts of Europe, the beliefs and practices of Germanic ...