Resources Holidays Yule

Yule

Summary

Ask anyone about Norse Paganism, Heathenry or Asatru and they might not know what you’re talking about, but chances are many people have heard of Yule. Yule is the pre-Christian name for a Holiday celebrated either at the Winter Solstice or at Midwinter (the first full moon after the New Year) and for many days after (3 or 12, depending).

Yule | The Pagan Holiday of Light

In the depths of winter, the world is dark and frigid, and the fields are covered with frost and snow. Trolls and the dead wander the wild places. People ride or walk from house to house in masked processions, sometimes comical, sometimes more sinister. But inside homes, there is warmth and light and good cheer and time to rest from the year’s labors. Yule is a holy time, a time for the soul to reach out to the gods and to the departed ancestors, a time when evergreens and flames remind us of the rebirth of light and warmth to come.

Heðinn fór einn saman heim ór skógi jólaaptan ok fann trǫllkonu; sú reið vargi ok hafði orma at taumum ok bauð fylgð sína Heðni.

“Nei,” sagði hann.

Hon sagði: “Þess skaltu gjalda at bragarfulli.”

Um kveldit óru heitstrengingar. Var fram leiddr sónargǫltr; lǫgðu menn þar á hendr sínar, ok strengðu menn þá heit at bragarfulli.

Hedin traveled home alone from the forest on Yule evening, and he met a troll-woman; she was riding a wolf and had snakes for reins, and she asked to go with Hedin.

“No,” he said.

She said, “You’ll pay for that at the bragarfull.”

In the evening was the oath-swearing. The sacrificial boar was led forth; men laid their hands on it and swore oaths at the bragarfull.

Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, prose after verse 31

The Merry Month

The word “Yule” is common to all the Germanic languages. In fact, it is the only holiday name that can be documented in the Gothic language; a fragmentary Gothic calendar calls November fruma jiuleis, “Before Yule” (Ebbinghaus, “Gotica XI,” p. 37). The Proto-Germanic root would have been something like *jehwlo-, but tracing it farther is a mystery. It may be related to words in other languages meaning “blind” (referring to the long dark nights), “offering,” “joy,” or “petition.” However, the best-known proposal is that it is related to “wheel,” or possibly “wheel and axle,” referring to the turning of the seasons (Vries, Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 292).

Whatever its origin, Yule is the pivot point of the year. Old English lists of month names call December Ærra Geola, “Before Yule,” and January Æftera Geola, “After Yule”—similar to the Gothic name fruma jiuleis for November. Yule itself is not a single day, but a season—the Weihnachten, “holy nights,” as the season is called in Germany. These are nights when the wyrd of the year may be shaped by the holiest and mightiest oaths, and a time for people to rest body and soul, enjoy good food and drink and fellowship, and turn their thoughts to the gods and ancestors.

This article contains large sections from Our Troth Vol. 3, 3rd Edition. It’s been edited for the internet to give you a good overview of Yule but it’s not as comprehensive as the book itself. If you’d like to support the work we do to provide these resources, one way to do that is to just buy the book that these articles are based on!

Winter Solstice Yule

In modern times, Yule was thought to be celebrated near the Winter Solstice (December 21st) for both symbolic and practical reasons. Symbolically, the Winter Solstice represents the longest night of the year, and thus the beginning of the return of the sun and the restoration of the Earth.

For us, this is the essence of our faith in the Gods: the long night comes, but it passes and the sun returns. The cold winds howl, but they will abate and the warm easy days of spring and summer will return. They return because the Gods keep their faith with us, and do not fail to return a gift for a gift.

Practically speaking, the Winter Solstice is host to a whole cluster of holidays. Christmas (and all the mini-holidays surrounding it) are all clustered around the Winter Solstice.

Midwinter Yule

Midwinter Yule is likely the more accurate date for Yule given the information we have from the literature of the early conversion period. An Icelandic statesman, historian and poet from the Middle Ages named Snorri Sturlusson wrote in one of his chronicles called the Hiemskringla that the pre-christian Norwegians used to celebrate Yule around the time of Midwinter.

Now what the heck is Midwinter? Midwinter is, according to the calendar of the time, the first full moon after the New Year. Which makes sense because it falls right in the middle of winter–between the end of Fall in November and the beginning of Spring in March. This was beginning of what was called the month of “Thorri” in pre-Christian Scandinavia.

Does it matter if you celebrate Yule at the Solstice versus at Midwinter?

Depends on who you ask. Some Norse Pagans take the calendar very seriously and believe in strictly reconstructing the practices of the pre-Christian Heathens. The theory is that if our predecessors had a connection with the Gods and we want a connection with the Gods then we should do what they did in order to get that connection with the Gods. We might not know why it worked the way it did, but we know that it worked. That’s the thinking.

Other Heathens feel like rigid adherence to past practices without room for improvisation or adaptation ends up more in reenacting a dead faith rather than reconstructing a living faith. We ought not to ignore the centuries of cultural and religious changes that happened in the intervening period, but ought to seek a way to negotiate between the past and the present.

Still others cite things like spiritual energies, moon cycles and all other kinds of Pagan-y stuff. We can’t speak authoritatively as to the validity of all that. We’ll just stick to the books for now.

Did Christians steal Christmas from Pagans?

This is one of the most common myths that we hear around the Yuletide. That Christmas is somehow a Pagan or Heathen holiday that Christians just stole or appropriated. While some of the traditions we practice for Christmas might be things that Pagans also did, the date of Christmas itself has an even weirder story.

A lot of Pagans say it came from either Yule or a Roman holiday called “Saturnalia” but neither of those things are true. One, because the only data we have for Yule indicate that it was celebrated in January, not at the Winter Solstice. Saturnalia is around the Winter Solstice, but there are no data to support that this was why the Church chose December 25th as the Christ-Mass.

No, this was because of a bizarre theory popular in the early 2nd century that famous people (Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, etc.) all were conceived on the same day that they died, like their destinies were so special that their death date was already set from the moment they were conceived. An early Church Father (and later Pope) Julius Sextus Africanus applied this theory to the life of Jesus and from this deduced that Jesus was born on March 25th and exactly 9 months later he was born–December 25th.

More importantly, all the reasons Pagans did what we did was lost to time. All the traditions that may have come from Paganism were given new Christian interpretations in order to cohere with the Christian religious narrative. Most of what modern Heathens do today is theorizing what pre-Christian Heathens might have thought about a particular tradition but the truth is we just don’t know. It’s lost to time and we’ve got to make it up all over again.

The Yule Tree

The custom of bringing an entire Christmas tree into the house and decorating it seems to date from the Protestant Reformation in Germany. The custom of hanging offerings on a living tree outdoors might arguably be older—we have mentioned the Sámi custom of hanging food offerings on tree branches for the “Juhlafolker.” There is also the Scandinavian custom of the guardian tree (Swedish vårdträd, “warding-tree,” Norwegian tuntre, “farm-tree.” Usually a deciduous tree such as an oak, ash, birch, or linden, the tree grew in the farmyard and was home to the farm’s guardian wights. The tree would receive offerings of porridge, milk, ale, and schnapps at Yule, so that the guardian spirits would protect the farm and its people and livestock (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, p. 18). Whether this custom has any historical connection with the modern Christmas tree is at best unclear.

Whatever the origin of the Yule tree custom, we’re not going to tell anyone that they can’t have one, whether a live tree outdoors or a cut tree brought indoors. If you decorate a tree outdoors, consider hanging up edible decorations that the birds can enjoy. You can purchase solid blocks of suet and seed, or for something even simpler, toast slices of bread and spread them with a stiff mixture of peanut butter, nuts, and seeds, or take opened pinecones and pack the spaces between the scales with the same mixture. If you keep these in the refrigerator until you hang them up, the peanut butter will set. Other food offerings could also be hung outdoors, but human food may not be good for wildlife, and animals who get accustomed to getting food from humans can become a problem.

If you decorate a tree indoors, some Heathens in modern times have suggested that an eagle should go on the top and a serpent should coil around the bottom. Perhaps a squirrel ornament could be found to go on the trunk, reflecting the animals on the World Tree. Aside from that, many kinds of secular ornaments would also be perfectly appropriate for a Heathen tree, although you may be able to find or make ornaments in the shape of Heathen symbols. Gifts can be placed under the tree and distributed on whatever day of the season seems fitting.

It’s also traditional to “deck the halls with boughs of holly” at Yule. Some medieval clerics condemned the practice of decorating churches with greenery, but Pope Gregory I (“the Great”) specifically allowed the English to decorate the pagan temples that had been converted into churches with bowers made of tree branches on holy days, as (it is implied) the temples had formerly been decorated (Bede, Ecclesiastical History I.30, transl. King, vol. 1, pp. 162-163). Records are sparse after that, but certainly by the late Middle Ages, English churches and homes were often decorated with holly and ivy. Mistletoe, also an evergreen, became popular for decorations in the 1600s. You’ll hear it said that the custom of kissing under the mistletoe is an old Viking custom; supposedly, if two Viking armies happened to meet under mistletoe, they had to declare a truce for the day. This is probably not true; the custom of hanging up a “kissing bush,” which originally might include all sorts of evergreens, not just mistletoe, seems to have begun in England in the 1700s (Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 37). Whistler (The English Festivals, pp. 44-47) describes the “Yule-Bough,” a sphere or hemisphere of evergreens hung from the roof with apples dangling from it. Wreaths are another traditional way of displaying Yule greenery, and we might see these today as symbols of the ever-turning cycle of the seasons. In modern Heathen custom, it is common to make Yule wreaths and weave strips of paper into them, with wishes for the coming year. The wreaths are then burned on the last night of Yule. Even if we can’t be sure that pre-Christian people made a point of decorating their homes with evergreen branches, it seems suitable for the season. Evergreens retain their foliage even in the darkest depths of winter, reminding us that light and warmth will return.

The Yule Log

The best-known ritual fire custom of the season is the Yule log, which had to burn all night long. This custom was observed in households only; unlike other traditional holidays, there was no real tradition of public bonfires for Yule. While fires would be needed to stay warm at any feast or gathering in wintertime, the oldest documentation of a large log for a festive fire comes from Germany, where in 1184 the priest at Ahlen in Westphalia had the right to receive and burn an entire tree for his Christmas festivities (Tille, Yule and Christmas, pp. 91-92). The custom is first recorded in England by the poet Robert Herrick in the early 1600s (“Ceremonies for Christmasse,” Hesperides, pp. 309-310):

Come, bring with a noise,

My merrie merrie boyes,

The Christmas Log to the firing;

While my good Dame, she

Bids ye all be free;

And drink to your hearts desiring.

With the last yeeres brand

Light the new block, And

For good successe in his spending,

On your Psaltries91 play,

That sweet luck may

91. A psaltery is a stringed instrument somewhat like a zither, but played with a bow.498

Come while the log is a-teending.

Drink now the strong Beere,

Cut the white loafe here,

The while the meat is a-shredding;

For the rare Mince-Pie

And the Plums stand by

To fill the Paste that’s a-kneading.

Notice that Herrick also mentions the custom of keeping a piece of the Yule log throughout the year and using it to light the next Yule log.

Today, we can see the Yule fire as symbolizing the life of the family and the people and the land, burning through the darkness of the long night until the return of the sun. Modern Heathens who do not have fireplaces may use a large candle as a Yule flame. A modern custom developed by Swedish Heathens, which has also been adopted by a growing number of American Heathens, is Väntljusstaken, “Light Anticipation Candles,” also called Sunwait Candles. Six candles, one for each of the first six runes of the futhark, are placed in a fitting holder, and one is lit on each of the six Thursdays before the winter solstice, although some might prefer to light one on each of the six days before the solstice. You could then meditate on the rune on the candle that you’ve just lit, or carry out any other appropriate activity: a blót, singing songs, telling stories, and so on (Tjeerd, “Crafting Yule Traditions”).

There are a few kinds of ways to decorate for Yule.

First is that we decorate our houses with greenery, holly, ivy, coniferous trees, wreaths, and all kinds of gnomes, nisse, tomte or little goats. Some Heathens have crates and crates full of plushy gnomes that only get brought out for Yule and they put them all over the house like an adorable invasion of tiny beardy fellows.

The greenery is important for a couple reasons, and different Heathens have different stories for why it’s important.

  • Heathens who believe more in a persistent divine presence would say that just as winter turns to spring, as green fades and returns, the Gods are faithful in their friendship to us–they do not abandon us or fade away. As the spring never fails to follow the winter, so the Gods will never fail to return a gift for a gift.
  • More nature-oriented Heathens might say that the spirits of the Gods are further away from us in the winter, and closer to us in the spring. The greenery is a reminder that they will return when the earth returns. When spring follows the winter, the Gods have returned to the Earth, and they will not fail to return.

Candles and light also feature heavily this season. Expect to see more than a few cozy candles around as symbols of the persistent brightness of the Gods. Heathens also like snowflake symbols as well.

Some Heathens really go all our for Yule, others prefer a more subdued holiday. That’s perfectly normal. Heathenry does not require that you purchase or make an army of gnomes for the Holiday season.

A fun modern Heathen tradition is the Sunwait (Väntljusstaken) which comes to us from Sweden. Beginning 6 weeks before Yule, you start lighting a candle every Thursday night until you have a full set of six candles. You may carve a rune into each candle or scratch a word that is a wish for the coming year. For example, if you’re hoping to make some money next year you could carve a “FEHU” rune, you could write “FEHU” or “WEALTH.”

At the beginning of the Mother’s Night (Winter Solstice) you light the whole set and you let them burn until they are all gone. The idea is that those wishes dissolve into the air and become bound to you for your next year. Well, that’s the idea at least. Your results may vary.

Yule Food

The quote from Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar that opened this chapter mentions the sónargǫltr, the sacrificial boar on whom the people at the feast swear solemn oaths. Boars appeared on the Yule feasting menu in later folk practices, and it is tempting to see these as survivals of ancient custom. In Renaissance England, it was the custom to serve a boar’s head. The earliest known version of “The Boar’s Head Carol,” sung in a mixture of English and Latin as the head is brought in, was printed in 1521 (Flügel, “Liedersammlungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts,” p. 587):

Caput apri differo [I bring the boar’s head]

Reddens laudens domino [Giving praise to the Lord!]

The bores heed in hande bring I

With garlans gay and rosemary

I pray yow all synge merely [merrily]

Qui estis in convivio. [who are at the feast]

If an actual pig wasn’t on the menu, artificial pigs might do. In Nottinghamshire around 1850, families might enjoy pig-shaped mince pies (Baker, Folklore and Customs of Rural England, p. 95). Scandinavian tables might be graced by a boar-shaped loaf of bread, the julegalten, which might be up to a foot and a half long, and carefully shaped with eyes, nostrils, and bristles. On Christmas Day, the house-mother brought the Yule-boar in, drew a sun-wheel on it with chalk, and set it before the head of the household. It was brought out again on New Year’s Day and on Epiphany, but half was cut up and distributed to the household on Candlemas (February 2) and the other half on Shrove Tuesday. Pieces might also be given to the cattle or the plough-oxen, and a piece was often saved for next Yule (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 1, pp. 192). Since at least the 17th century, Yule bread might alternately be shaped like spirals, sun-wheels, or serpents in knotted pretzel shapes (Troelsen, Norsk Bondereligion, p. 40). Another possible descendant of the sónargǫltr wasn’t eaten: in Västergotland in Sweden, the man of the household would place a pig skin on a block of wood, lay his hand on the skin, and swear to be a good father and husband. The wife and servants would follow with their own oaths (Feilberg, pp. 192-193).

It was once the custom in Sweden to heap the table with “Yule-howes” (julhögar). A julhög was a conical stack of breads, sometimes with a large cheese forming the base, and sometimes with an apple, a bread dove figure with an egg under its tail, or other delicacy on top, while sticks surrounding the julhög might bear apples or pretzels. From Christmas Eve until the third day of Christmas, on New Year’s Day, and on Twelfth Night, the julhögar were supposed to lie on the table, which gave them the power to heal cattle diseases (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 1, pp. 182-183). Olaus Magnus wrote in 1555 that in Östergötland in Sweden, it was customary to bake huge loaves of bread at Christmas and give them away freely (Historia de gentibus septentrionlibus XIII.17; transl. Fisher and Higgens, History of the Northern Peoples, vol. 2, p. 633) Baking bread was important in northeastern Scotland as well; the “Yeel Brehd” had to be baked before sunrise on Christmas Eve and had to last the entirety of the season. One bannock (flat bread) might be baked for each person; if a person’s bannock broke, it foretold bad luck (Gregor, Kilns, Mills, Millers, Meal, and Bread, pp. 33-35).

Today, butchering a live boar may be beyond the capabilities of most Heathens, although those who live on farms and know how to slaughter animals humanely and hygienically may wish to revive the custom. On the other hand, the custom of baking Christmas cookies, bread, cakes, and fruitcake is certainly very much alive today, and a bread boar is probably far more manageable for most Heathens. Breads may be left out overnight for the dead or the wights to enjoy, and pieces may be buried in the garden if you have one, saved for next Yule, or offered to the gods in any way that seems fitting. But it’s also important to feast as well as possible and share the bounty, with plenty of the best food and drink for both family and guests. In England at Yule, it was said that “every mince pie eaten away from home means a happy year to come” (Baker, Folklore and Customs, p. 95). It is important to receive hospitality—as well as give it—gladly.

Wassail, Wassail

Hákon’s mandate to brew at least a minimum amount of ale shows up in later Norwegian laws. The Gulaþingslǫg (I.6-7) includes a provision, established by both Olaf Kyrri and Magnus Erlingson, for one “neighborhood ale” (samburðarǫl) feast to be held before November 1, and another to be held at Christmas. Each freedman had to contribute one measure (sáld) of malt for himself and one for his wife,92 and at least three households had to join to brew and drink the ale. Except for remote households or poor families, any household that refused to hold the Christmas ale-feast would have its goods confiscated (Larson, The Earliest Norwegian Laws, pp. 39-40).

The historian Geoffrey of Monmouth records that it was proper etiquette among the Saxons to say “Wassail!” when you offer someone a drink—or, in Old English, wes hál!, “be hale!” or “be in good health!” The response is drinc hál!, “drink hale!” (History of the Kings of Britain VI.12, transl. Thorpe, p. 159) In 1190, Nigellus Wireker noted that English students at the University of Paris were exceptionally fond of “wassail and dringail” (quoted in Crosby, “A History of the Wassail Bowl,” p. 77). By the end of the Middle Ages, the name “wassail” had become attached specifically to a bowl of hot spiced ale. In the 1600s, English women would carry a bowl of wassail from house to house, singing carols. By this time, the wassail bowl often held a drink called lambswool: sweetened, spiced ale or cider, with roasted apples and pieces of toasted bread floating in it. A number of traditional wassailing carols are still sung, many of which are variants on “Wassail, wassail, all over the town.” They express wishes that the folk of the house will enjoy prosperity, as long as they give some food, drink, or money to the wassailers (Karpeles, Cecil Sharp’s Collection of English Folk Songs, no. 373-G, vol. 2, p. 523):

I hope that your apple trees will prosper and bear,

That we may have cider when we call next year. . .

I hope that your barley will prosper and grow,

So that you may have some and enough to bestow. . .

Now we poor wassail boys growing weary and old,

Drop a small bit of silver into our bowl. . .

In areas where apples were grown, the apple trees were wassailed during this season (Crosby, pp. 78-80). Robert Herrick advised that all fruit trees should be wassailed (Hesperides, p. 311):

Wassaile the Trees, that they may beare

You many a Plum, and many a Peare:

For more or lesse fruits they will bring,

As you doe give them Wassailing.

In the West Country of England, the custom went like this (Christian, Country Life Book, p. 133):

The villagers form a circle round the largest apple tree in a selected orchard. Pieces of toast soaked in cider are hung in the branches for the robins, who represent the ‘good spirits’ of the tree. The leading wassailer utters an incantation and shot-gun volleys are fired through the branches to frighten away the evil spirits. Then the tree is toasted in cider and urged in song to bring forth much fruit.

Several traditional apple wassail songs have been recorded; here is one of them (Karpeles, Cecil Sharp’s Collection of English Folk Songs, no. 373-L, vol. 2, p. 528):

Old apple tree, we’ll wassail thee and hoping thou wilt bear.

The Lord does know where we shall be to be merry another year.

To blow94 well and to bear well, and so merry let us be.

94. Here, to blow is an archaic word for “to bloom; to blossom.”501

Let every man drink up his cup, and health to the old apple tree.

(Shouted:) Apples now, hat-fulls, cap-fulls, three bushel bag-fulls, tallets ole-fulls,95 barn’s floor fulls, little heap under the stairs. Hip Hip Hooroo! Hip Hip Hooroo! Hip Hip Hooroo!

Fruit trees were also honored in Denmark and Sweden at Yule. In Denmark, people used to ensure a good fruit harvest by going out at Yule, shaking every fruit tree, and tying a loop of straw or a wreath around every tree trunk (Troelsen, Nordisk Bondereligion, p. 39). Just as the English sometimes poured cider over the trunks and roots of apple trees, the Swedes scattered the Yule feast leftovers around their fruit trees (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 1, p. 201). Just as the English left toast soaked in cider in the branches of their trees for the birds, in Norway and parts of Germany, grain sheaves were set out for the birds at Yule, sometimes placed in fruit trees (Feilberg, vol. 1, p. 143).

Yule was also a time to brew strong ale, as some European breweries still do. In pre-modern Europe, barley was harvested in the autumn and needed time to be malted; thus brewing traditionally began in late autumn, and the first ale that had had time to ferment to a nice strong alcohol content would have been ready around this time. Some traditional Yule ales are flavored with cardamom, coriander, vanilla, and/or other spices (although, since many of those spices are imported from the tropics, the custom of brewing with them probably does not go back to Heathen times).

How does Yule end?

At the end of the Yule season, it was customary in Scandinavia to “chase out Yule,” ringing bells, pounding on drums or kettles, or beating the house with birch-sticks (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, p. 303). In many regions, a costumed “St. Knut” went from house to house on January 6 or January 13, driving out Yule. His appearance, sporting a long beard, has little to do with the historical St. Knut Lavard, and some scholars have suggested that he may owe his appearance to the figure of Thorri, discussed in the next chapter. In the town of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, the last night of Yule was once celebrated with bonfires and masked processions carrying blazing barrels of tar through the streets; at midnight, people came out and drove the trows (trolls) back to their homes. This has been replaced, beginning in the late 19th century, with Up-Helly-Aa, a spectacular festival involving troops of costumed and masked “guizers,” the leading troop of which is always dressed as Vikings and led by a Viking Jarl. In a huge torchlit procession, the guizers drag a wooden Viking ship to the harbor and fling torches at it to set it on fire (Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, pp. 105-106).

According to Ælfric, the first day of January was called geares dæg, “year’s day.” Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar 16 mentions ða gemearr þe man drihð on geares niht on mislicum wigelungum, “the errors that men commit on the first of January with various divinations.” Burchard of Worms attacked “what some do on the first of January—who on that holy night wind magic skeins, spin, sew; all at the prompting of the devil beginning whatever task they can begin on account of the new year” (Corrector 104; McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 335)

In early modern England, Yule greenery was burned at the end of the season. Robert Herrick’s poem “Ceremonies for Candlemasse Eve” (Hesperides, p. 337) called for getting rid of the old Yule greenery on Candlemas (February 2; see next chapter) replacing it with fresh greenery from another evergreen, European boxwood (Buxus sempervirens):

Down with the Rosemary and Bayes,

Down with the Misleto;

Instead of Holly, now up-raise

The greener Box (for show.)

In Worcestershire, the Yule greenery was fed to the first cow to calve; elsewhere it was usually burned (Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 37). In the West Midlands as late as 1913, housewives made globes of hawthorn foliage and hung them in the kitchen on New Year’s Day, while the men set the old globes on fire and carried them over the first wheat to be sown, letting burning twigs fall into the furrows (Baker, Folklore and Customs of Rural England, p. 16). Keeping greenery in the house after the end of the season was said to attract goblins (Baker, pp. 93-94).

Yule and Midwinter

According to Bede, the first night of Yule was “Mother Night,” the night before the winter solstice (i.e. either the 19th or 20th of December, depending on the year). It’s fairly common among modern Heathens to begin celebrating Yule on Mother Night (sunset on December 19) and end twelve nights later on New Year’s Eve (December 31). This has the advantage of fitting the secular holiday season well, which may make it easier to get some free time to celebrate the holiday.

We don’t know much more about “Mother Night” than the name that Bede gives, but modern Heathens often feel that this is the night to honor the family dísir, the women ancestors who still ward their living kin. It’s possible that the name is also a reminiscence of the Matronae, the goddesses or wights worshipped in Roman times along the Rhine. Since Roman soldiers from the Rhineland are known to have brought the cult of the Matronae to Britain, and since at least some Rhineland Franks seem to have settled in England along with the Angles and Saxons, it’s not impossible that a memory of the Matronae could have passed to the early English.

Scandinavia may have celebrated Yule somewhat later. Hákonar saga góða 13 describes how Hákon tried to uphold Christianity in his country, although in the end he did not succeed:

Hann setti þat í lǫgum at hefja jólahald þann tíma sem kristnir menn, ok skyldi þá hverr maðr eiga mælis ǫl, en gjalda fé ella, en halda heilagt, meðan ǫl ynnisk. En áðr var jólahald hafit hǫkunótt, þat var miðsvetrar nótt, ok haldin þriggja nátta jól.

He established in law that Yule would be held at the same time as the Christians, and then everyone had to have a measure of ale [i.e. brew ale from a certain measure of malt] or else pay a fine, and keep the holiday as long as the ale lasted. But previously, Yule was held at hǫkunótt, which was Midwinter Night, and three nights of Yule were celebrated.

This would be more helpful if we knew what hǫkunótt actually meant.

Jan de Vries reviews doubtful suggestions that hǫku- might be connected with words for “witch” or “slaughter,” and also suggests a link with haki, “hook,” since this is the time when winter “hooks” or “rounds the turn” from its first half to its second half. Whatever its origin, de Vries identifies it as January 12, which would be near the exact midpoint of the winter half of the year in the Icelandic calendar, at least before the Gregorian reforms (Altnordisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, p. 280). The name survives in Danish høgenat and Swedish hökenatt, but Swedish hökenatt is defined as the longest night of the year, or in other words the winter solstice (Dalin, Ordbok, vol. 1, p. 751).

In Shetland and in parts of Norway, work had to stop on December 20, St. Thomas’s Day. In Shetland, knitting and sewing could continue until December 24, but after that, no household work could be done for the next twelve or sometimes 24 days (Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, pp. 118-119). 474

Here is an off ramp to some of our resources on celebrating Yule today.

We realize you’re not going to want to sift through all of this research to piece together your own Yule tradition. Chances are, you could be sitting here frantically trying to search for what you’re supposed to do this holiday season and don’t have time to go through extensive reviews of literature for clues as to what may or may not have happened in the late Iron Age.

Here’s Winifred Hodge Rose’s “Ideas for Celebrating a Heathen Yule”

Yule Traditions in History and Folklore

Now that we’ve got the argument over when Yule was celebrated percolating in your head, we also hope you’re not too disappointed when we tell you that nobody really knows how or why Yule was celebrated. That’s the far more important question, and it’s the question we don’t have any answer to.

People stopped celebrating Yule and started celebrating Christmas in the late Iron Age to the early Middle Ages. Some still kept the name “Yule” but everything about the Holiday had changed, and no one wrote down why they celebrated the original Yule in the first place.

That doesn’t mean Yule wasn’t important or wasn’t special. It was, but it was within the context of Paganism, not within the new context of Christianity. So even if we were to be able to trace some of these reported folk-traditions back through to pre-Christian times, we wouldn’t know exactly why these were a part of the Yule celebration because that story of why we celebrate Yule is gone.

So don’t think to yourself that what you’re going to discover here is the “truth behind Yule” because there isn’t a truth behind Yule that exists somewhere in this page or in the back of a book.But maybe, just maybe, you can read through these traditions and piece together a story of your own. You can discover your own “reason for the season” and pass it on to others.

Processions, masquerades, and folk plays at Yuletide are reported from all over Europe.

The fifth-century Caesarius of Arles attacked “people who practice that most sordid and disgraceful act of masquerading as old hags and stags” (Sermon 13.5, transl. Mueller, Sermons, vol. 1, p. 78). Caesarius explained that this was a New Year’s Day custom (Sermon 192.2, transl. Mueller, vol. 3, p. 27):

For in these days miserable men and, what is worse, even some who are baptized, assume false forms and unnatural appearances, and certain features in them are especially worthy of laughter or rather of sorrow. For what wise man can believe that men are to be found of sound mind, if they are willing to mak themselves a small stag or to be changed into the condition of wild beasts? Some are clothed in the skins of sheep, and other stake the heads of wild beasts, rejoicing and exulting if they have transformed themselves into the appearance of animals in such a way that they do not seem to be men.

This was copied by later authorities, who linked masking with New Year’s Day.

The Burgundian Penitential from the early 8th century condemns “what many do on the Kalends of January as was done hitherto among the pagans, seats himself on a stag, as it is called, or goes about in [the guise of] a calf” (transl. McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, pp. 276-277). Burchard of Worms demanded, “Hast thou done anything like what the pagans did, and still do, on the first of January in [the guise of] a stag or a calf?” (Corrector 99; McNeill and Gamer, p. 334) In 1515, a Danish moralist denounced Rædegrimer eller anden Djavleham, “terrifying masks and other devilish guises,” worn at Christmas (Gunnell, Origins of Drama, p. 114). In 1555, Olaus Magnus mentioned “werewolves” in Latvia and Poland who ran wild at Christmas, breaking into cellars and drinking ale and mead by the barrel (Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus XVIII.45, transl. Foote and Higgens, Description of the Northern Peoples, vol. 3, pp. 928-929); it is possible that these were animal maskers. A possible survival of this custom lives on at Abbots Bromley, in Staffordshire, England, where six men perform a dance while holding reindeer antlers mounted on wooden heads, accompanied by musicians and other costumed characters.

Today, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is performed in September, but it was once done on or near Christmas. The oldest mention of the Horn Dance dates from 1686 (Cawte, Ritual Animal Disguise, pp. 65-79), but the reindeer antlers have been carbon-dated and found to date from the 11th century. Since reindeer have been extinct in Britain since the end of the last Ice Age, presumably these were imported from Scandinavia, but how and when they got there is unknown (Buckland, “The Reindeer Antlers of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance,” p. 5).

We have depictions of animal-masked warriors on artifacts such as the famous Torslunda dies, and Viking-era animal masks made of felt have been unearthed at Hedeby.

A Scandinavian version of Yule masking is documented from the court of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos of the Eastern Roman Empire (reigned 913-959). A book that he either wrote or commissioned on court customs, The Book of Ceremonies (De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae), includes a description of a “Gothic game” or “Gothic dance” performed on the ninth day of Christmas. Two processions enter the palace Hall of Nineteen Couches, each including a pair of “Goths” who wear masks and furs and hold shields and sticks. Running into the hall, they form two circles, one along the outside of the hall and one inside it. They clash their sticks against their shields and shout “Toul,toul!”

Once this is done, they form two lines and recite “Gothic chants” to the tune of stringed instruments (called pandouri in the Greek, meaning lute-like instruments). The chants contain words in Latin, Greek, and Gothic, as well as words that may be in other languages, or possibly garbled beyond understanding. After reciting a Greek acrostic poem and prayers for the court, they run out, again shouting “Toul, toul!” (transl. Moffatt and Tall, I.84, pp. 381-386). It’s thought that the dancers would have been Scandinavians serving in the Varangian Guard. The shout writen as “Toul, toul!” may have been a scribal error for “Yule, Yule!” (Greek ioúl; Gunnell, Origins of Drama, pp. 74-76)

In modern Sweden and Norway, one of the most beloved Christmas customs is observed on St. Lucia’s Day (December 13), or on the previous evening.

The “standard” version of the celebration involves one of the girls in a household dressing up in a white robe with a red sash, placing a wreath lit with candles on her head (electric ones, in this day and age), and waking the household by bringing them coffee or glögg (mulled wine) and pastries, especially saffron-flavored “Lucia buns” (Lussebullar). Outwardly this is a fully Christian observance: St. Lucia was a virgin and martyr (which is what the white robe and red sash mean) who was allegedly executed in Sicily in 304 CE. Yet the name Lusse långnatt, “Lucia Long Night,” suggests that the ritual goes back at least to the 14th century, when the winter solstice actually did fall on December 13 (see Chapter 18 for an explanation of why the solstice dates drifted). Some of the less well-known traditions of St. Lucia’s night are not nearly as Christian; in parts of Sweden, for example, men dressed as old women (Lussegummar) and women dressed as old men (Lussegubbar). In other areas, the girl portraying Lucia was accompanied by a bridegroom and attendants, which can hardly be a Christian tradition, since St. Lucia is said to have refused marriage and died a virgin. In western Norway, “Lusse” or “Lussi” was not a virginal girl with a candle crown at all; she was a dangerous female troll who led a troop of trolls from house to house, the Lussiferd. Often she wore horns and skins and resembled the julebukk (Gunnell, The Origins of Drama, 97-100). The veneration of the Christian saint in Scandinavia seems to have absorbed some decidedly non-Christian elements.

Scandinavia also knows the Staffansritt, the “Ride of St. Stephen,” on the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s feast day.

In some areas, “St. Stephen” leads a parade of costumed riders from farm to farm. “St. Stephen,” or his attendants (staffansgossar, “Stephen’s boys”) may be dressed in a costume made entirely out of straw, completely covering their bodies. In other regions, “Staffan” is personified by a human-sized figure made entirely out of straw, who might be set in the farmhouse and given beer and schnapps to drink. In Nyland, in Swedish-speaking Finland, Halm-Staffan, “Straw Stephen,” was brought into houses by two attendants, who had to be given a “tax” in the form of alcohol and food before they would leave. Gunnell has compared this to the winter procession of Freyr in Sweden described in Gunnars þáttr helmings, in which an idol of Freyr is carried on a wagon by a priestess who is said to be his wife; the hero upsets the idol, who eventually comes to life and fights with him. A human personifying the god, completely covered in straw, is perhaps a more convincing “idol who comes to life.” In northern Scandinavia, a figure called Stallo makes similar rounds at Yuletide; he bears a phallus, which sounds even more like Freyr. The Staffansritt cannot be called a “pagan survival,” as many Christian elements have been added—but some aspects of it very plausibly have pre-Christian roots (Gunnell, The Origins of Drama, pp. 100-105).

The most “pagan” Christmas procession, however, is the Yule buck or julebukk.

Straw goats are popular Yule decorations in Scandinavia today, and the town of Gävle in Sweden has built a giant Yule buck in the main square every December since 1966.88 However, the julebukk might also make appearances around Yuletide as a living man, wearing a wooden goat The Gävle julebukk, or Gävlebocken, is famous for the annual attempts of practical jokers to set it on fire, sometimes in remarkably ingenious ways.

In some areas, the julebukk was not only a masked human, it was a boneless, bloodless, shaggy being with eight horns that rode with the Furious Host (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, p. 46). The julebukk lived in the forest for most of the year, but as Yule approached it drew nearer to the farm every day, until on Christmas Eve it was under the cookhouse. When it came, it had to be given offerings of porridge, ale, and schnapps, or else it might wreck the living room (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, pp. This julebukk could be dangerous: in Sweden, if someone suddenly fell ill, it was said that the julebukk had stabbed them for being too greedy. The julebukk might also carry off children who had not received new clothes, which parallels the Icelandic belief that the fearsome Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn) would eat people without new clothes (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, pp. 58-59). In one account from Denmark, a girl tried to dance with the julebukk in the barn at midnight, but the julebukk came to life and battered her to death (Simpson, Scandinavian Folktales, pp. 80-81).

The masked julebukk and his attendants (which sometimes included a female julegeit or “Yule nanny-goat”) would visit farms and demand food, drink, and sometimes dancing. Some accounts state that the julebukk could be rather free with the ladies, kissing them and butting anyone who got in the way. In some areas, the julebukk and his attendants would act out a play as they performed a song, the Julebukkvise. Details of the song vary, but the basic form is that the julebukk is “killed” and covered with severalbcloaks of different colors, before coming back to life. In a variant from Bergen, for example, a father and son shoot the julebukk, and then the goat’s owner appears and demands compensation:

Aa ka ve du gje meg for bokken sit skinn?

Aa eg ska gje deg en tynne vinn, en tynne vinn.

Aa ka ve du gje meg for bokken sin ull?

Aa eg ska gje deg en tynne gull, en tynne gull.

Aa ka ve du gje meg for bokken sit haann?

Aa eg ska gje deg ei tynne kaann, ei tynne kaann.

Oh, what will you give me for the goat’s skin?

Oh, I shall give you a barrel of wine, a barrel of wine.

Oh, what will you give me for the goat’s wool?

Oh, I shall give you a bushel of gold, a bushel of gold.

Oh, what will you give me for the goat’s horn?

Oh, I shall give you a bushel of grain, a bushel of grain.

Once the negotiations are done, the players spread a series of cloaks of different colors over the dead goat—typically red, white, and black, although blue and yellow are sometimes seen.

De bredte paa bukken den kappe saa rød

og det gjorde de for bukken var død

De bredte paa bukken den kappe saa hvid

og det gjorde de for bukken laa lik

They spread over the goat a cloak so red;

and they did this because the goat was dead.

They spread over the goat a cloak so white;

and they did this because the goat lay as a corpse.480

The goat promptly leaps up and shakes his beard, brought back to life (Kvideland, “The Killing of the Christmas Goat,” pp. 678-681). With the usual caveats about how we cannot assume that pre-Christian myths have survived in folk culture, this does resemble the myth of Thor’s visit to the peasant family, when his goats were slaughtered, eaten, and then brought back to life by the might of his Hammer. Kvideland is skeptical about whether the play really has pre-Christian roots (pp. 682-684). Still, a kindred that likes to put on ritual dramas could adapt the Julebukkvise as a re-enactment of this myth at the Yule season.

The julebukk has parallels in English folk dance, where a dancer might dress as a horse or sheep. Sometimes the head of the costume was an actual skull, rigged so that the jaws would clash and snap. The best-known such custom is the Welsh Mari Lhwyd, the “Gray Mare,” but some parallels are even closer to the julebukk and might have been brought in Viking times. For example, in the region around Sheffield, “Old Tup” is a man masked as a ram. Like the julebukk, he may visit homes with his attendants at Christmas, generally wreak havoc, and then be killed. In some versions of the play he is revived (Cawte, Ritual Animal Disguise, pp. 110-117).

In England, it was once common for troupes of Yuletide maskers to perform a type of play known as the “Hero-Combat,” although this type of play might alternately be performed at Easter or other holidays.

In the version of this play from Netley Abbey, the action begins with the entrance of Father Christmas, who introduces the hero King George and his adversary the Turkey Snipe (originally the Turkish Knight). The two fight, and one of them is killed, but a learned Doctor enters and cures the slain hero with a miraculous medicine (not without some humorous haggling over the Doctor’s exorbitant fee). Then follows a procession of costumed characters introducing themselves in rhyme, including Beelzebub, Little Devil Doubt, Jack John, Twing Twang, Bessie (a man dressed in women’s clothing), and so on (Brody, The English Mummers, pp. 46-67). In northern England, the entertainment may be a sword dance, which is often embedded in a play in which a king condemns a Fool to be executed. Six dancers with swords surround the Fool, dance around him, and execute a “lock” in which they bring all six swords down so that they surround the Fool’s neck in an interlocking hexagonal pattern. The Fool promptly falls dead, and is revived by a Doctor again (Brody, pp. 72-93). Brody was eager to interpret these plays and dances as very ancient pagan survivals. As we’ve pointed out several times, today’s folklorists are much more skeptical now; while we can document masking and folk drama far back in the Middle Ages, the specific plays themselves cannot be dated before about 1700, and some details seem to have been borrowed from stage plays of the time (Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 72-80). Nonetheless, whatever their origins, they could inspire Heathen practice now. The theme of death and rebirth, whether of King George or the Fool or Old Tup or the Julebukk, seems to fit the Yule season, when daylight is at its shortest and begins to return.

Icelanders held vikivaki, winter gatherings with songs, games, and dances.

Instead of the julebukk, the finngálkn or fingálpn was known to show up at the vikivaki; this was a human carrying an animal-like wooden head on a pole and draped with rags or other cloth. The finngálkn appears in a few legendary sagas, in which it is a half-human, half-beast (in medieval translations of Latin texts, the word is used to translate centaurus). At thevvikivaki, the finngálkn would appear with two skjaldmeyjar (“shield-maidens”) or valkyrjur (valkyries), often portrayed by cross-dressed men. It would try to get up the women’s skirts and generally behave outrageously until it was finally driven away. There might be other games played by people costumed as animals, and Háu-Þóru leikur, “Tall Thora’s game,” was played by a man costumed as a giantess, holding up a grotesque head on a pole concealed by drapery. Like the finngálkn, “she” might behave outrageously, and “her” performance might be accompanied by mocking, insulting songs (Gunnell, pp. 144-153).

In modern Iceland, the thirteen jólasveinar or “Yule Lads” are mischievous characters, sometimes costumed rather like small Santa Clauses, who visit homes at the Yule season.

While their names imply that they steal food or play pranks, Askasleikir (“Bowl-Licker”), Skyrgámur (“Curds-Gobbler”), Bjúgnakrækir (“Sausage-Swiper”), Gluggagæir (“Window-Peeper”), and the rest of their band leave presents in the empty shoes that good children set on their window sills.89 However, in older times they were known as the sons of a monstrous troll named Grýla (“Growler”), who was said to catch and eat naughty children with her husband Leppalúði (“Ragged Lout”). She is mentioned in Snorri’s Edda (Skáldskaparmál 75) and is referenced in Íslendinga sǫgur in a description of an event in 1221. Grýla was sometimes impersonated in vikivaki games by a masked Grýlu andlit (“Gryla face”) or Grýlu maður (“Gryla man”).

The pioneering Icelandic folklorist Jón Árnason had this to say about her (Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, vol. 1, p. 218; transl. Waggoner, “Grýla,” pp. 10-11):

Although no stories of any significance circulate about Grýla any longer, all the same it’s necessary to mention her, for she is mentioned in old writings and tales, along with her husband Leppa-Lúði. In older times, many stories of them were passed around, especially about her, so that poems have been long recited about them, many about Grýla. Both of the couple were said to be trolls, as Grýla is listed in the names of troll-women in Snorri’s Edda. They were also man-eaters, like other trolls, and they especially sought out children, although they also took full-grown persons. But now that the custom of scaring children in various ways during their upbringing has died out, the belief in Grýlavhas largely been abandoned, because Grýla was mostly used to scare children out of fighting and roughhousing. . . .

The “Grýla-Ballads” have not made her out to be beautiful either, since they say that she has countless (three hundred) heads, and three eyes in each head that she catches children with, and that she and Leppalúði stuff them in a large sack or “a grey bag”. It also says there that she has twisted nails on every finger, hell-black eyes in the backs of her necks, and horns like a goat, ears dangling to her armpits, and a beak fitted in front. She was also bearded on her chin, and the beard’s texture was no better than knotted yarn, hanging there in patches and tangles. Her teeth were like stones blackened in an oven.

Grýla is also known in the Faroes, although here she is not connected with Yule; she comes around at the beginning of Lent to carve out the stomachs of naughty children who beg for meat during the fasting season. In Shetland, young men in plaited straw costumes, known as grøleks (derived from Grýla’s name) or skeklers, used to go from house to house on the winter holidays between “Winter Sunday” (October 14) and Shrovetide (the day before Lent began) (Gunnell, Origins of Drama, pp. 161-179).

Other European countries have traditions of monstrous wights that terrify or carry off naughty children.

In modern times, the monsters usually play “bad cop” to St. Nicholas, the “good cop” who gives treats to good children: Le Pére Fouettard (“Father Whipper”) in northern France, Knecht Ruprecht (“Rupert the Servant”) in Germany, Zwart Piet (“Black Peter”) in the Netherlands, and Krampus in Austria are well-known examples. In the Pennsylvania German country, Belznickel gives treats to good children and swats bad children. In parts of Germany, Perchta comes around at Yule, rewarding diligent workers and punishing those who have been lazy or who work at times when they are supposed to rest (Smith, “Perhta the Belly-Slitter,” pp. 169-174). Sometimes a troop of Perchten, some beautifully dressed and some hideously masked, parades through the streets.

Wandering Wights

The masked humans who went out and about at Yule in some cases personified trolls and other wights, who were also out and about. In Shetland, “the Yules” began on “Tul-ya’s e’en,” seven days before Christmas, when the trows (trolls) had permission to leave their underworld homes and roam the earth. Wise Shetlanders protected their homes with “saining” (blessing): setting crossed straws on the steps to the yard where the hay was kept, hanging up plaits of hairs taken from every animal on the farm, and carrying a flaming peat through the outbuildings (Edmonston and Saxby, The Home of a Naturalist, pp. 136-137). Hrólfs saga kraka tells how an alf-woman comes to King Helgi at Yule, and he fathers the daughter on her who, in time, brings about Hrólfr’s death.

Scandinavian folklore is full of stories of strange visitors at Yule. In the earliest tales, such as Eyrbyggja saga 54-55, the visitors are the dead (see below), but in Norwegian and Icelandic folktales, the visitors are álfs, trolls, or huldufolk, who sometimes invade a human household for their Yule gathering. There are several versions of these tales; in one from Iceland, a girl who is forced to stay home when her family goes to midnight Mass invites the huldufolk into her home with the words Komi þeir sem koma vilja, veri þeir sem vera vilja, fari þeir sem fara vilja, mér og mínum að meinlausu! “Let them come who wish to come, let them stay who wish to stay, let them go who wish to go, harmless to me and to mine!” She resists their invitations to dance, and when the sun rises, they flee, leaving their treasure behind. When her foolish sister tries this the next year, she accepts the huldufolk’s invitation to dance, breaks her leg, and loses her mind. In another type of story, a man stays home at Yule and witnesses the noisy invasion of a host of hostile huldufolk; he is able to frighten them away, and they leave behind their food and treasure. In yet another type of story, if a person sits out at a crossroads at Yule, the alfs or huldufolk will invite the person to dance and feast, and bring out delicious food and all sorts of treasures. If the person can ignore all of these temptations until the sun rises, the alfs will flee and leave the food and treasure behind, but a person who accepts will go insane (Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, vol. 1, pp. 124-126; transl. Waggoner, “Icelandic Tales of the Álfar,” pp. 26-27; see Gunnell, “The Christmas Visitors,” for further discussion).

According to the German curate Christopher Arnold, writing in 1674, the Sámi believed that spirits called “Juhlafolker,” who were neither good nor evil, were particularly active around Christmas. He added that the Sámi made offerings to them by making miniature birchbark ships with sails, filling them with bits of their holiday meals, adding a little gravy, and hanging them on trees, so that the Juhlafolker would have something to eat. (Lecouteaux, Phantom Armies of the Night, p. 190)

Hálfdanar þáttr svarta, preserved in Flateyjarbók, tells of a strange incident at King Halfdan’s Yule feast: all the food mysteriously disappears. Halfdan tortures an old “Finnish” (Sámi) sorceror to make him confess, but Halfdan’s son Harald has compassion for the sorceror and helps him escape. They reach a hall where a chieftain is feasting, and they discover that this is where their food has gone. The chieftain then foretells that Harald will become king over Norway (transl. Waggoner, Sagas of Giants, pp. 4-5). We can compare this with the later legends of uncanny beings that help themselves to people’s Yule feasts.

The gods themselves might be out and about (which is why it’s important to be hospitable).

Eyvindr skáldaspillr’s poem Háleygjatál calls the gods themselves jóln (Yule-Beings), and one of Odin’s names is Jólnir. According to Hálfdanar þáttr svarta (transl. Waggoner, Sagas of Giants, p. 5), Yule is especially sacred to Odin:

Nu skal segia af huerium rỏkum heidnir helldu iol sin þuiat þat er miog sundrleitt ok kristnir menn gera. þui at þeir hallda sin iol af hingatburd uars herra Jesu Cristi en heidnir menn gerdu ser samkundu j hæidr ok tignn vit hinn illi Odin.

Now it must be told for what reasons the Heathens held their Yule, because that is very different from what Christians do. The Christians hold their own Yule for the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, but Heathen men hold their feast for the honor and majesty of the evil Odin.

The Dead Return

As discussed in Our Troth volume 2, the dividing line is blurry between wights such as alfs or trolls and the spirits of the dead. In the Icelandic sagas, the dangerous and hostile dead might return at Yule. In Grettis saga 32-33, Glámr is killed on the first night of Yule and walks after death; at next year’s Yule, Glámr kills a shepherd, and he becomes increasingly powerful and dangerous. Eyrbyggja saga 54-55 is noted for its description of a series of uncanny events that culminate at Yule, when a whole troop of dead men return to a farm, bringing plague with them. In Flóamanna saga 22, as a ship’s crew is spending the winter in Greenland, eight men die under uncanny circumstances, and they all come back as undead (aptrgǫngur). In all three cases, extraordinary measures have to be taken to stop the dead from overpowering the living: Grettir has to wrestle Glámr, the Eyr-dwellers have to hold a special court to impose sentences of banishment on the dead, and the undead in Greenland have to be burned. In a tale recorded by Icelandic folklorist Jón Árnason, an elderly man named Bödvar once built a great burial mound over his ship, and while still alive he took himself, his daughters, and all his treasure into the mound. He returned to the Christmas feast at his farm for three years, and while for the first two years there seems to have been some doubt about the matter, by the third year everyone realized that he was dead (Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, vol. 2, pp. 83-84).

In later folk custom, the dead might not always be friendly. There is a report from Telemark, Norway of a man who was murdered by his brother and returned home on Christmas Eve, speaking eerie verses declaring that he’d much rather be in his old home than buried under a cairn outside (Christiansen, “The Dead and the Living,” pp. 10-11). Most of the dead seem to be more well-disposed, but they still must be given hospitality. The family might quietly clean the house, leave food on the table (making a point of serving a dead family member’s favorite dish), set out ale, and heat the bath, before leaving for Mass. The dead could enjoy the food, drink, and warmth while the family was away; if earth was found on the seats the next morning, it was a sign that the dead had been there (Christiansen, pp. 65-67). The ale set out on Christmas Eve might be called ängla-øl, “angels’ ale,” or dröv-öl, draugr-ale.” The dead could drink it while the family was away at church; the first living person of the household to arrive home was allowed a sip, but the rest was left out overnight and then smeared on the cattle and sprinkled on the fields (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, pp. 7-8). The dead might also be offered beds; in Norway, the living might sleep on straw on the floor on Christmas Eve, leaving the beds for the dead (Feilberg, vol. 2, p. 9).

People also left offerings of bread, butter, ale, and other foods at burial mounds, the homes of the farm guardian spirits variously called nisse, tusse, gardvord, and so on. These spirits were often thought of as the ancestors who founded the farm; one name for them was rudkall, “clearing man,” or in other words the man who first cleared the forest to create the farm fields (Gunnell, “Nordic Folk Legends,” pp. 30-35). If there were no mounds on or near a farm, Yuletide offerings could be left at large stones, or the hearth-fire (Feilberg, vol. 2, p. 19). Christiansen tells how, “at a certain place in Sweden, a man returned from America, on Christmas day visited the grave of his father to offer him some spirits” (p. 67, n. 3). Modern Heathens may make offerings to their deceased ancestors at their home altars, or might choose to visit the graves of their dead. They might also clean house, leave out food and drink, and then leave for a few hours to allow the dead to return. This might be especially important if they are living in a home that’s been in the family for generations, which the family dead would remember. It is also important to leave an offering for your housewight. The traditional offering is a bowl of porridge with plenty of clearly visible butter and cream; housewights who don’t get their due can retaliate in unpleasant ways (see volume 2, chapter 17).

The Furious Host

One of the most widespread folklore motifs associated with Yuletide, found all over Germanic-speaking Europe, is the Furious Host: a wild horde of beings, often identified as the dead, rushing through the land, bringing danger and terror, but also restoring fertility to the land. A related folk motif, found primarily in regions where hunting on horseback was practiced, is the Wild Hunt: a supernatural hunter leads a troop of huntsmen over land and across the sky. Like the Furious Host, the Wild Hunt is dangerous to humans, and living people who meet it may be carried off, ending up dead, ill, or lost miles away from home (E501 in Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, vol. 2, pp. 463-472). If food and drink are not left out for the Host, they are likely to break in and take what they want.

Jacob Grimm proposed that the Wild Hunt (Wilde Jagd, a term that he coined) was a survival of ancient pre-Christian belief, with the leader of the Hunt or Host identified as Woden (Teutonic Mythology, vol. 3, p. 918):

The Christians had not so quickly nor so completely renounced their faith in the gods of their fathers, that those imposing figures could all at once drop out of their memory. Obstinately clung to by some, they were merely assigned a new position more in the background. The former god lost his sociable character, his near familiar features, and assumed the aspect of a dark and dreadful power, that still had a certain amount of influence left. His hold lost upon men and their ministry, he wandered and hovered in the air, a spectre and a devil.

But it was the Austrian academic Otto Höfler (1901-1987) who connected all the dots in his 1934 book Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen (Cultic Societies of the Germans). The custom of human mummers going from house to house; the belief in trolls or other spirits being out and about; the return of the dead; and the legends of the Wild Hunt or the Furious Host were all descended from a society of real people: an Iron Age secret cultic fraternity, whose patron deity was Wodan. The men of what Höfler called the Männerbund raided neighboring tribes and acted as scouts and shock troops in battle. They also personified the ancestors in ecstatic rituals. They did not fear death, because through ritual they identified with their own immortal ancestors, and so would live forever as part of the collective identity of the Männerbund (Burrell, “Otto Höfler’s Männerbund,” pp. 99-109).

Höfler’s ideas proved to be quite persistent, being taken up after the war by such well-known scholars as Georges Dumézil, Stig Wikander, and Mircea Eliade. Kris Kershaw’s monograph The One-Eyed God is essentially an update of Höfler’s work, with motifs added from other Indo-European cultures to support the claim that the Männerbunde is a very ancient tradition. Kveldúlfr Gundarsson, The Troth’s Warder of the Lore and primary author of the first edition of this book, drew heavily on Höfler’s interpretation of the Furious Host legend as a reflection of actual ancient men’s cults, both in Our Troth and in his doctoral dissertation, The Cult of Odinn: God of Death? Some modern scholars continue to find his work important; Neil Price calls it “in many ways a work of brilliance” (The Viking Way, pp. 46).

On the other hand, Höfler believed not just that the Männerbunde were an authentic pre-Christian institution, but that they were the core of Germanic culture and the Germanic state. As he wrote (quoted in Burrell, “Otto Höfler’s Männerbunde Theory,” p. 234):

The particular ability of the Nordic race, its state-forming power, found its place in the men’s cult bands and drove them to the most productive development. They grew into powers that carried force and impact and entered into world history fighting, forming and ruling.

Given that Höfler joined the Nazi party in 1936, the fact that Höfler saw the Männerbunde as political and military organizations that underlay the Germanic state should send up a very large red flag. It should come as no surprise that Höfler’s work was of great interest to the Ahnenerbe, the Nazi “think tank” for research into Germanic prehistory and culture (Burrell, pp. 240-246).

In fact, Höfler joined the Ahnenerbe in the early 1940s, and used his experience with Scandinavian academics to write a position paper on how to win them over to the Nazi cause. Archaeology and prehistory were sponsored and used by the Nazi regime as propaganda tools (Price, The Viking Way, pp. 46-47; see Our Troth, vol. 1, chapter 8). The idea that dead fighters return to march alongside their living comrades appeared in Nazi propaganda, notably the “Horst-Wessel-Lied” (Bernstein, “The Ghostly Troop,” p. 127). While Höfler synthesized an immense amount of material in a way that many scholars have found compelling, the political leanings which may have colored his work should make us cautious about adopting his conclusions whole-heartedly.

Furthermore, as we point out on several occasions in this book, scholars today are much more skeptical about all claims of “pagan survivals.” Just because the inhabitants of one rural district do something that strikes a visiting scholar as weirdly picturesque is no reason to assume that it must go back to prehistoric pagan rites. Ronald Hutton has looked at the legends of the Hunt and the Host in medieval literature. He finds that while belief in night-roaming ghosts and spirits is very old, the tradition of whole companies of the restless dead roaming the earth is not recorded before the work of the 12th century Anglo-Norman monk Ordericus Vitalis, who recorded an encounter between a monk named Walchelin and a troop of dead sinners being punished (Bernstein, “The Ghostly Troop,” pp. 131-134). Here, the context is entirely Christian: the restless dead have been condemned to roam the earth for their sins. The story seems to have spread from northern France, growing darker and more demonic along the way. In later accounts, the Host shifts from merely penitent sinners to those who had died violently, or died without baptism (Hutton, The Witch, pp. 128-130; for many examples see Lecouteux, Phantom Armies, pp. 33-43).

This belief in the restless dead seems to have cross-fertilized with a folk belief in a troop of women who traveled about at night. Some people could join the troop in their dreams as their bodies lay asleep in their homes. Burchard of Worms is informative about practices that he thought his parishioners might be getting up to (Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 332):

Hast thou believed or participated in this infidelity, that some wicked women, turned back after Satan, seduced by illusions and phantoms of demons, believe and affirm: that with Diana, a goddess of the pagans, and an unnumbered multitude of women, they ride on certain beasts and traverse many areas of the earth in the stillness of the quiet night, obey her commands as if she were their mistress, and are called on special nights to her service?

The medieval French Roman de la Rose claims that a third of the population has the ability to ride at night with Habonde, Lady Abundance, so that “such people push into all houses; that they fear neither keys nor bars, but enter by cracks, cat-hatches, and crevices; that their souls leave their bodies and go with good ladies into strange places and through houses” (Lorris and Meung, transl. Dahlberg, pp. 305-306). Whatever its origins, the belief picked up Christian themes; the lady who leads the troop of night-riding women is often said to be Herodias, who in Christian legend lusted after John the Baptist and unwittingly caused his execution. In some areas, it was customary to leave food out at night for the “Good Ladies” in exchange for their blessing (Lecouteux, Phantom Armies, pp. 11-17). In his book De universo, the 13th-century Paris theologian William of Auvergne interpreted the procession of the dead (which he called the Army of the Night) as a punishment, which might be temporary, purging the dead of sin, or might be permanent. On the other hand, the women who rode by night with Lady Abundance were demonic illusions and remnants of pagan idolatry (Bernstein, “The Ghostly Troop,” pp. 141-146). William of Auvergne may have been influenced by Irish myths of the riding of the sídhe as much as by Germanic traditions (Bernstein, pp 146-159).

The problem from a scholarly perspective is that the evidence cannot be pushed much farther back in time than this. While it might be nice to assert that the belief in women flying by night goes back to authentic pagan cults, the evidence just isn’t there (Hutton, The Witch, pp. 130-146).

The host of the restless dead also cannot be documented before the Middle Ages, and in its earliest sources it has a decidedly Christian spin. Myths about the valkyries and einherjar might reflect pre-Christian belief in the restless dead returning to earth; for example, Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 40 depicts a vision of Helgi and a large troop of his retainers riding back to his own burial mound to see his beloved Sigrún one last time. Lecouteux has argued that this could go back to Indo-European tradition, drawing comparisons between European legends and Indian legends of the Maruts, spirits associated with storms and led by Rudra, god of hunting (Phantom Armies of the Night, pp. 211-214).

Yet exactly how pre-Christian Heathens thought is something we may never know.

What do we make of all this today?

We seem to have the general belief that the spirits of the dead were about at Yule, sometimes friendly and sometimes not; a strong case can be made that this belief is very old (Gunnell, “Nordic Folk Legends,” p. 35). This cross-fertilized with the belief in women who could travel about in spirit at night, which may also be pre-Christian but is hard to date. By the Middle Ages these beliefs had combined with Christian speculation on the fates of the souls of the deceased. In some cases, the souls of the wicked might be hunted by demons. Alternately, legends grew up about a mighty human hunter who was forced to hunt eternally. Different legends from different sources are tangled together so tightly that it is probably impossible to reconstruct anything like an “authentic pre-Christian belief” from the tangle (Lecouteux, pp. 236-240). Like many of our customs, Yule traditions have accreted new aspects throughout history. As Heathenry grows and develops, they will continue to do so.

Odin Leads the Host

At some point, the motif of the Furious Host merged with the still-remembered figure of Odin or Woden, who in many places was said to lead the Host. The earliest mention seems to be Draumkvæde, a Norwegian ballad about a man’s journey through the afterlife in a dream that lasts from Christmas to Epiphany. The dreamer encounters Grutte Gråskjegge, “Grutte Greybeard,” wearing a black hat and riding a black horse as he leads a host of the dead from Hell in the north (verses V.30-31), countered by the Archangel Michael on a white horse who blows a trumpet to summon the dead to judgment. Grutte Gråskjegge’s attributes line up with Odin’s names Hárbarðr (Hoary Beard) and Hǫttr (Hatted or Hooded), while “Grutte” itself seems to mean “to glare; to have an angry expression” (Liestøl, “Draumkvæde,” pp. 70-71). Elsewhere in Norway, the host was led not by Odin, but by Guro Rysserova (Gudrun Horse-Tail) and her consort Sigurd Svein (Young Man Sigurd) or Sigurd Snaresvend (Sigurd the Strong Lad), riding black horses with blazing eyes and harness. Despite being called “Young,” Sigurd Svein is aged and hideous, with his eyelids so wrinkled and drooping that he must lift them with a hook to see (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, pp. 45-46). The remembered figure of Odin may have influenced, or become, the leader of the Host; Odin’s own names include Bileygr (Weak-Eyed), Helblindi (Death-Blind), and Tvíblindi (Double Blind).

The oldest attestation to Woden by name as the leader of the Hunt comes from a polemic by Nicolaus Gryse, published in 1593, in which he attacks peasant rites to den Wodendüel, “Woden the false god,” calling him dersülue hellsche Jeger, “the very same diabolical hunter” who rode through the fields at harvest. 17th century scholars recorded the folk belief in Scandinavia that loud noises and apparitions at night were attributed to Odin’s ride, and in 1742 Johann Peter Schmitt wrote (quoted in Lecouteux, Phantom Armies, pp. 225-226):

. . . no one is unaware of the senseless belief held by countless folk, especially some hunters, that the time around Christmas and on the eve of Carnaval is when the one called Woor or the Goor or the wild huntsman passes. They say the devil organizes a hunt with a troop of rapping spirits (Polter-Geister). If we get to the bottom of this superstition, we see that it emerged from the story of this younger Odin, and that the common man thinks that Odin/Wotan passes. This is why a company of ghosts like this is called the Furious Army, Wotan’s/Odin’s Army, Gooden’s Army, orx the Army of Odin.

In Norway, the Furious Host was called the Aasgardsreid, “Asgard Ride,” or a variant form of this name, the Oskorei. People caught up in it might be found far from their homes, not always still alive. Landstad also tells how the Asgardsreid carried people off in spirit, while their bodies remained behind: “She fell backwards and lay the whole night as if she were dead. It was of no profit to shake her, for the Asgardsreid had made off with her”. The woman then awakes to tell how she had ridden with the host “so that fire spurted under horse-hooves” (Mytiske Sagn fra Telemarken, p. 15).

By the early modern period, the Furious Host included the recently dead. Hans Sachs’ poem “Das Wuetend Heer der Kleinen Dieb” (1569) gives a gruesome description of the Host, wailing and moaning as ravens devour their eyes:

Ieder het an dem hals ein strick

Sambt einer klappereten ketten.

Durch einander sie schwürmen thetten

Mit bunden henden gar verdorret,

Eins teils schwartz, grumpfen und verschmorret,

Eins theils bleich, als die todten leych.

Eins teyls den kerndter-köpffen gleich,

Daran die todtenbayn nur glunckerten.

Und als sie all für mich hin funckerten,

Kam hinten nachhiu eyner gangen,

Den man denselbing tag het ghangen;

Het noch sein augn und mich ersach.

Der trat zu mir und mich ansprach. . . .

Each one had a rope on his neck

Together with some rattling chains.

They swarmed around one another

With tied hands, even withered,

Some of them partly black, grumpy and charred,

Some of them pale, like a dead body,

Some of them just like death’s heads

From which the dead bones were now dangling,

And as all this was blazing before me,

One man came back to me.

The man had been hanged that same day;

He had his eyes and saw me,

He came up to me and spoke to me. . .

Living people who are carried off by the Host may not survive the experience, or if they are seen in the company of the Host it may be an omen that they will die within the year. A Norwegian saw his brother in the Aasgaardreiden, and returned home to find him dead (Landstad, Mytiske Sagn fra Telemarken, p. 17). In Telemark, the Aasgardsreid left a dead man hanging after they had passed: “He was dressed as a Nummedaler and had silver buttons on his vest. The Aasgardsreid had taken him in Nummedal [roughly 120 km away by modern roads] and carried him along, and they had presumably ridden him so hard that he had burst” (Landstad, p. 20).

Despite its terrors, the Host brought fertility to the fields.

In Norway, it was said that the grain would grow as high as the jolasveinar could leap. Jan de Vries thought that Odin was not the original leader of the Wild Hunt and had had nothing to do with the harvest (Contributions to the Study of Othin, pp. 25-27), but he expressed different opinions later (“Wodan und die Wilde Jagd,” pp. 51-52): 495

But his [Odin’s] relationship to the Yuletide, in which he appeared on earth with the army of Einherjar, led to the concept of the return of the dead to their old homes. Here they were offered a festive welcome. They dispensed good fortune and well-being, but especially a blessed harvest, because as underworld powers, they watched over the marvel of germination, growth and flourishing of seeds. . . . The army of the dead that romped outside in meadows and fields at this time had to join in such mystical connections; its leader Wodan also had some kind of power over the flourishing of the harvest. . . . The Proteus figure of the god Odin-Wodan fills us again and again with astonishment. It had its dark sides; their numinous character made for a respectful distance; but he is by no means a demon who must be feared, but rather a real god, from whom one asks and expects blessings.

De Vries mentions customs found all over the Germanic-speaking world of leaving offerings for the Host; for example, in Westphalia, a farmer would slaughter a year-old calf as an offering to the Host so that they would spare the good milk cow (pp. 50-52). In Scandinavia, the Host might be given offerings, but if a cross were not carved or painted with tar over the doors or on the ale barrels, the Host would break in and drink the ale. For its part, the Host was known to kidnap Christians who could tap the ale barrels for them (Feilberg, Jul, vol. 2, pp. 42-43).

How to Celebrate Yule in Norse Paganism and Asatru

Ask anyone about Asatru, Heathenry or Norse Paganism and chances are if they’ve heard about us, they know about Yule. It’s the most well-known holiday in our religion, and also, consequently, one of the most misunderstood. Yule is used today as another word for Christmas mostly, and many of us have carried some of those same traditions into Heathenry and given them new meanings.

Yule is a great way to express the very center of our faith: the giving of gifts. In giving and sharing all the good things life has to offer with family, friends and neighbors–we share the essence of that generous divine spirit.