Altskandinavische Opferrituale und das Problem der
 Quellen

Authors

  • Anders Hultgård

Keywords:

Sacrifice, Ritual, Scandinavia, Norse Religion

Abstract

The article discusses Old Norse sacrifical rituals and their practice in Scandinavia. The scarcity of research material in this special field raises methodological problems: how to interpret and understand rituals that are no longer practiced, which belonged to a culture long gone?The article analyses the three main source texts that contain coherent narratives of sacrificial narratives: Snorri's Heimskringla, the Eyrbyggjasaga and the Kjalnesingasaga. While these narratives cannot be regarded as precise depictions of how such rituals were performed in ancient times they should however not be entirely dismissed as literary fiction. In these narratives, traditional elements are intervowen with early Chrisitan influences and coloured by the cultural context in which they were created. 
Section
Articles

Published

1993-01-01

How to Cite

Hultgård, A. (1993). Altskandinavische Opferrituale und das Problem der
 Quellen. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 15, 221–260. https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67214