Goi-blot
The Goi-blot ( Old Norse Gói-blót ) was a regularly practiced spring sacrifice of the North Germanic people and a cultic component of the North Germanic religion, at least in Iceland during the pagan , pre-Christian settlement period.
Written mention of this festival of sacrifice and the name of the month or the eponymous period can be found in the prehistoric sagas . Snorri Sturlusson wrote in his Heimskringla about the Goi-blot in Sweden with the Svear in Uppsala .
„Í Svíþjóðu var það forn landsiður meðan heiðni var þar að Höfuðblót skyldi vera að Uppsölum að gói. Skyldi þá blóta til friðar and sigurs konungi sínum and skyldu menn þangað sækja um allt Svíaveldi. Skyldi þar þá og vera þing allra Svía. "
“It was an old custom in Svitjod that the main sacrifice was held in Uppsala during the Goi month. There should be offered sacrifices for the peace and victories of the king. People from all over the Svear Empire should come there, and at the same time the Swedes' thing should take place there. "
On the one hand, the name of the festival of sacrifice is related to the time it was set and refers to the Old Norse month name gói and the Old Norse term for "sacrifice" - blót . On the other hand, the name, along with other variants, is associated with traditionally traditional vegetation spirits; ultimately, the final derivation is an open question in research. Furthermore, the festival of sacrifice is related to the other sacrifices in connection with the other calendar transition times, the change of seasons, such as jul-blót , or the midsummer sacrifice . Like almost all Germanic acts of sacrifice, it is a pleading sacrifice that was performed when the spring vegetation forces returned.
"Hátiðadrykkjur jól ok páskar, Ióansmessu mungát ok haustol at Míkjálsmessu"
"Festive drinking at Christmas and Easter, light beer at Midsummer and autumn drinking feast at Michaelmas."
In common Germanic, the setting up and practicing of sacrificial or festivities in the springtime can be linked to the pre-Christian Easter celebrations , which were described or indicated in an interpretable way in the early church missionary literature ( Beda Venerabilis for the time of Easter).
See also
literature
- Åke Ström, Haralds Biezais : Germanic and Baltic religion. Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-17-001157-X (The religions of mankind; 19).
- Jan de Vries : Old Germanic history of religion . 3. Edition. Verlag DeGruyter, Berlin 1970 (outline of Germanic philology; 12).
- Walter Baetke : The religion of the Teutons in their source certificates . 3. Edition. Diesterweg Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1945.
Individual evidence
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↑ Walter Baetke: Dictionary of Old Norse prose literature. 7th edition. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-05-004137-4 , p. 59, 206.
Jan de Vries: Old Germanic religious history. Sections 305, 447, 519. - ↑ Åke Ström, Harald Biezais: Germanic and Baltic religions. Pp. 107, 235, 238.