The Troth’s Guide for Creating Rituals in Ásatrú, Heathenry, and Norse Paganism

The rituals that we offer to the holy powers don’t necessarily have to be “production numbers.” But even a simple offering can be made more meaningful and powerful to all that hear it, human and otherwise, by paying attention to the language of the ritual and its delivery.

We have a sizable amount of lore on who our forebears were worshipping and why, and we can corroborate and extend some of this lore with archaeological findings. There are also lore descriptions of holy feasts and ritual actions, and in some cases these may also be confirmed by archaeology. We know much less about how rituals were actually carried out.

The saga descriptions of holy days usually just mention that there was feasting and drinking (and sometimes quarrelling, brawling, or other dramatic turns of events), but no saga contains anything like a liturgy—a ritual script with stage directions for what the leader and the assembled people were supposed to say and do. We know, for example, that livestock animals were ritually slaughtered on holy days, and their meat was eaten by the people—but we have no idea if the slaughterer had any specific prayers, incantations, or other ritual words that he was supposed to speak. There are some traditional speeches, rhymes, and so on used in folk customs documented from early modern times, but in most cases we cannot be sure how far back these go, and we have to reckon with the probability of considerable Christian influence. If we want to worship the gods ourselves, then, we have to figure out how to do it by ourselves.

Nonetheless, for the past forty years or so, various modern authors and groups have done exactly that, publishing and teaching their own ideas of how Heathen rituals should be done. While there is still much variation, these have more or less coalesced into a general consensus model for worship. We can’t often demonstrate that this is exactly how the ancients worshipped—but they work for us now, and they have become a living tradition.

The Place of Poetry

Oral cultures around the world use poetry to record information that needs to be retained through the generations. Myths and deeds of the gods, tales of legendary heroes, rituals and prayers, magical spells. . . all of these are memorized as poems. Regardless of the language, the regular features of poetry—the rhyme, rhythm, special vocabulary, and figures of speech—makes it far easier to remember than ordinary prose. Oral poets with a memorized stock of poetic words and phrases could, and in some cultures still can, improvise poems on any subject. And the features of poetry give the words extra power, helping the listeners to feel what is being said on a deeper level than the plain meaning of the words.

Heathens can and often do use poetry, whether composed by themselves or written by someone else, in private prayer and meditation but especially in community ritual. This doesn’t mean that you can’t honor the gods in ordinary speech. Our Gods will not refuse to hear your prayers and praises just because they’re not written in an obscure 11th-century skaldic verse form! But poetic skill is a gift from the Gods. Just as we give back to the Gods portions of their other gifts to us, those of us who have some skill with words may give them the gift of good word-craft.

Finding the Words

English is said to have the largest vocabulary of any major language, with over one million words (Crystal, Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 119). No one can possibly know them all, but you can make your rites more meaningful and more intense, even if you don’t write poetry at all, by drawing on English’s rich vocabulary. Someone once noted that very few words are truly exact synonyms; two words might mean almost the same thing, but carry slightly different shades of meaning.

One word might be more “lofty” than the alternative; a fray seems more refined somehow than a fight, which in turn sounds more refined than a brawl or a scrap. Words derived from Old English often have a more “homelike” feel to them than words derived from Norman French or Latin; you would probably prefer brotherly love to fraternal affection, or a warm welcome to a tepid reception, even though the paired expressions are virtually equivalent according to the dictionary. Selecting words from a wide vocabulary, and paying attention to the shades of meaning that they have, gives you the most options for setting the mood and building the images that you want to build.

Several Heathen writers in the 1990s felt that words of Germanic origin were better for Heathen ritual use than words derived from Latin, Norman French, or other languages. The resulting style was sometimes called Saxon English, or Vinnish. Proponents of Saxon English drew on some obscure vocabulary indeed: sig instead of victory, are instead of honor, and so on. Some archaic words have been widely adopted for Heathen concepts that don’t have a simple equivalent in everyday English: wyrd, spae, shild, and thew, for example. Other “Saxon English” words have never caught on; I haven’t seen many Heathens using dree (to endure), greet (to weep), or hight (to be called) in recent years.

There are precedents: Lee Hollander’s translation of the Poetic Edda deliberately used a lot of old words, creating such an archaic effect that it is sometimes affectionately known as the “King James Edda.” The author and translator William Morris, in the late 19th century, also relied so heavily on Germanic vocabulary that some of his saga translations are almost unreadable unless you are an excellent comparative linguist; for example, in his translation of Eyrbyggja saga, his sentence “Then Harald the king took such rede that he caused dight an army” (The Story of the Ere-Dwellers, p. 4) actually means “Then King Harald took action to have an army organized.” Whether to use such words or not is entirely up to you. If you like the effect that “Saxon English” gives, feel free to use it. On the other hand, some might find it confusing and obscure. The Gods, in my experience, are not going to be offended if you raise your voice to ask them eagerly, instead of heaving up your reord to bid them yarely.

Wherever your vocabulary comes from, it’s worth expanding it. Old Norse poetry used heiti: words and names that were only used in poetry, having fallen out of use in everyday speech. Gods have heiti—Odin has about two hundred known heiti!—and these can be used in poetry, especially when you want to call on a particular aspect of a god. A prayer to Odin to secure something precious you’re shipping or transporting might be addressed to Farmatýr, “Cargo God.” Prayers to Odin as Yggr, “Terrible One,” or Bǫlverkr, “Worker of Evil,” might have a very different effect. Old Norse had heiti for persons, places, and things as well.

There are long lists of them at the end of the Skáldskaparmál section of the Prose Edda, some of them turned into verses (þulur). Modern English speakers can dig into the language’s vocabulary for equivalents to heiti: the sea might be “the ocean,” “the deep,” “the brine,” “the main,” “the drink,” or “the big blue,” depending on what sort of word picture you’re trying to paint. One figure of speech you can use to find heiti is synecdoche, or “a part for the whole,” in which the name of a portion of something can stand for the whole thing. Instead of “the ships sailed the sea,” try “the keels sailed the waves” or “the sails rode o’er the foam.”

Kennings are also typical of Germanic poetry. These are metaphoric names for people or objects. A typical kenning will consist of a noun—which often is completely unlike what the kenning means to describe—plus a modifier that makes an unexpected link between the noun and what it refers to. The ocean isn’t really very much like a road, but calling the ocean “the whales’ road” creates a metaphor that links the two in a creative way: both are paths by which living beings travel. A king is not supposed to be a hater, but calling a king “hater of gold” evokes the image of a king who is so eager to get rid of his gold that he gives it away to anyone who’ll take it—in other words, an exceptionally generous king. Most Germanic poetry uses only single kennings, but in skaldic poetry it’s quite permissible to run kennings together: given that a warrior is a “tree of swords,” a sword is a “flame of battle” or a “beacon of battle,” and a battle is a “hailstorm of shields,” you could call a sword a “flame of the hailstorm of shields,” or a warrior a “tree of the flame of battle.” Or put all three together and call a warrior a “tree of the flame of the hailstorm of shields.” Or, since a shield is a “road of swords”, the warrior could be called a “tree of the beacon of the hailstorm of the road of swords”—or even a “tree of the flame of the hailstorm of the road of the beacon of battle.”

One final note: Heathen groups that are strongly focused on a single culture can and often do draw vocabulary from that culture’s language.

Heathens inspired by old English traditions often use Old English words, like gielp (a boast), beot (an oath), weofod (an altar), and so on. Urglaawe uses Pennsylvania German words like Zusaagpflicht (humanity’s sacred duty) and Lewesraad (cycle of life) for key concepts in Urglaawe thought that may not have a simple equivalent, even in other Heathen traditions. Going farther than that, some Heathens have not only learned Old Norse, Old English, or other ancient languages for reading, they have tried to use them in ritual, addressing the Gods in languages in which they were last addressed centuries ago. Various groups, mostly but not exclusively Theodish, have published prayers and liturgies in Old English, Old Frisian, Gothic, and other tongues.

The Gods are perfectly capable of understanding modern English. Phrases in Old Norse or other ancient languages can certainly add power to rituals, creating a sense of resonance with the oldest traditions that we know (as long as the speaker has rehearsed well in advance and speaks confidently, without bungling the pronunciation). On the other hand, I once attended a rite that was done entirely in Old Frisian, a language I do not speak or understand—and the experience was not especially uplifting. My reaction was “well, I think we worshipped somebody. . .” Using languages that most attendees do not understand can cut them off from the sacredness of the experience. Learn them if they give you joy, but you should not feel forced to learn them.

A monolingual English speaker is not automatically a less worthy Heathen than someone who can spout impressive-sounding prayers in Old Low Franconian.

Composing Poetry

Poetry takes a wide range of forms, and poems in different forms may have different uses. There’s nothing wrong with composing Heathen poetry in any verse form. This author has read, and occasionally attempted to write, heartfelt Heathen poems in forms ranging from sonnets to villanelles to haiku to free verse. However, some Heathens like to use the old Germanic poetic forms. Even if you don’t write poetry at all, or if you don’t write any in the old forms, the following discussion may help you get more out of reading the Poetic Edda, Beowulf, or other masterworks of the lore.

The oldest Germanic poetry didn’t use rhymes at the ends of lines. What held it together was alliteration: stressed words or syllables beginning with the same sound, rather than ending with the same sound. For poetic purposes, all vowels alliterate with each other, but consonant clusters such as st, sp and sk are treated as separate sounds, and do not alliterate with s. A few lines from Beowulf show how this works:

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah. . .

In the first line, three of the stressed syllables begin with the sound sc, which in Old English was pronounced like “sh” in modern English (or /ʃ/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet). In the second line, the sound of m links the stressed syllables. One final point is that it’s better form if the alliterating syllables do not also share the same vowel, since this can produce a sort of monotonous, “sing-song” effect. A line like “the sable sailing ship” would not be considered proper style, since two of the stresses have the same vowel sound. A self-respecting skald would compose something like “the swart surging sea-stallion.”

You can use alliteration in any poetic form as a device to catch the listener’s ear and to create effects. In these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (103-104; Poetical Works I, p. 381), alliteration on f creates a light, breezy effect:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free. . . .

On the other hand, Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” (Selected Poems, p. 4) uses alliteration on s and c to create a very different effect, mimicking the sound of a spade digging into damp earth:

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge. . .

In old Germanic poetry, the placement of alliterating syllables is determined by a poem’s rhythmic pattern, or meter. Most meters in modern English poetry involve regular, rhythmical alternations of stressed and un-stressed syllables, with stressed syllables separated from each other by one or two unstressed syllables—think of a limerick’s “de-DUM de-de-DUM de-de-DUM” rhythm. In Germanic alliterative poetry, there are a few typical arrangements of stressed and unstressed syllables that most lines follow, but the stress patterns don’t stay constant throughout a poem—and unlike most English meters, a line can place two stressed syllables next to each other. If you’re not used to it, Germanic poetry can feel “choppy,” but its ever-shifting stresses keep the listener interested and make it good for declaiming aloud. (For more details, Robinson, Old English and its Closest Relatives, pp. 125-135, is a good place to start.)

The most basic meter of Germanic poetry is called fornyrðislag in Old Norse: “Old Lore Meter.” Most of the narrative poems in the Poetic Edda, such as Vǫluspá, Rígsþula, and Þrymskviða, use Old Lore Meter. Almost all poetry in Old English also uses this form. The basic unit of Old Lore Metre is the long line. Each long line is made up of two half-lines, separated by a pause, or caesura. (Some scholars think that a performing skald would have paused at the start of each line and at each caesura to strum a chord on his harp). Each half-line contains exactly two stressed syllables, plus a variable number of unstressed syllables (commonly two or three).

The two half-lines in a long line are linked by words that alliterate. The first stressed syllable of the second half-line (ON hǫfuðstafr, “chief stave”) must alliterate with at least one of the stresses in the first half-line (ON stuðlar, “props”). It often alliterates with both, but this is not a strict requirement. The second stressed syllable of the last half-line may not alliterate with any other stressed syllable in the long line.

Sound complicated? Let’s look again at the lines from Beowulf. This time we’ll mark the accented syllables with boldface, mark the alliteration by underlining, and indicate the caesura with a vertical stroke:

Oft Scyld Scefing | sceaþena þreatum,

monegum mægþum, | meodosetla ofteah. . .

Notice that the fourth stressed syllables in each line, þreatum and ofteah, do not begin with the same sound as the preceding three stresses. The literal meaning, translated word for word, is:256

Oft Scyld Scefing [from] harmers’ troops,

[From] many peoples, mead-benches took-away.

But we can certainly use alliteration in modern English to convey more of the original poem’s effect. Something like:

Often Scyld Scefing shattered the mead-halls

of far-flung foemen, of fighters in ranks.

Old Norse Eddic poetry works the same way, except for one major difference: lines were usually grouped into stanzas (vísur), typically of four long lines each.

This is sometimes seen in Old English and continental German poetry—for example, in the Old English Rune Poem—but it is less common. Beowulf, for instance, is essentially a continuous series of long lines. The first visa of Vǫluspá shows the same structure as Beowulf (again with stressed syllables in boldface and alliteration shown by underlining):

Hljóðs bið ek allar | helgar kindir,

meiri ok minni | mögu Heimdallar;

viltu at ek, Valföðr, | vel fyr telja

forn spjöll fira, | þau er fremst of man.

This can be rendered in alliterative modern English as

I ask for a hearing from all holy kindreds,

The high and humble of Heimdall’s sons;

Woden, you wish me well to set forth,

As I might remember, men’s ancient tales.

More Meters

In Old Norse poetry, málaháttr (“speech metre”) is virtually identical to fornyrðislag; the only difference is that whereas typical fornyrðislag lines have about four or five syllables per half-line, málaháttr lines have about six or seven. Málaháttr thus sounds more like normal speech and has a more relaxed feel, and may be a bit easier to use in modern English, which tends to have more unstressed syllables than Old Norse. Alliterative verse from continental Germania, such as the Old High German epic fragment the Hildibrandslied and the Old Saxon poem Heliand, still follows the basic rules of alliteration but tends to vary the length of the line even more, with some half-lines having ten or more syllables.

The other major meter found in Eddic poetry is ljóðaháttr (“song-metre”), which alternates between long lines (i.e., pairs of half-lines), and full lines. The long lines are like those of Old Lore metre, while the full lines must have three stresses, of which any two must alliterate. Ljóðaháttr is primarily used in those poems that recount lore or wisdom, such as Alvíssmál and Grímnismál (although there are exceptions; the narrative poem Lokasenna is in ljóðaháttr, while the lore-recitation Hyndluljóð is in fornyrðislag). Hávamál, for the most part, is written in ljóðaháttr, thus:

Eldr er beztr | með ýta sonum

ok sólar sýn,

heilyndi sitt, | ef maðr hafa náir,

án við lǫst at lifa.

Which may be rendered in English, a bit freely but with the same alliterative meter, as

Fire is best for folk of Earth,

And sight of the sun as well,

A man’s own health, if he holds on to it,

and life without shame or shortfall.

Galdralag (spell-meter) works in much the same way as ljóðaháttr, except that the last full line is repeated with a minor variation in each stanza. In the Poetic Edda, no poem is in pure galdralag, but galdralag stanzas appear in poems at points where the speaker is pronouncing an actual spell or curse. For example, Skírnismál is mostly in ljóðaháttr, but Skírnir’s threats and curses on Gerd shift into galdralag. Most of Grímnismál consists of Odin reciting lore in ljóðaháttr to the young Agnar, but at stanza 45 Odin begins to free himself from his bonds with this spell in galdralag:

Svipum hef ek nú yppt | fyr sigtíva sonum,

við þat skal vilbjörg vaka;

ǫllum ásum | þat skal inn koma

Ægis bekki á,

Ægis drekku at.

I send my glance up to the sons of the gods

and so do I summon help

from all the Æsir who enter this hall,

each to Ægir’s bench,

each to Ægir’s drink.

All these meters are commonly called “Eddic meters” because they are used in the poems of the Edda.

A second basic type of Norse poetry, quoted extensively in Snorri’s Prose Edda and in the sagas of kings, is called skaldic poetry. Far more complex than Eddic poetry, skaldic poetry used both alliteration and end-rhyme. In the most common skaldic form, drottkvætt or “Court Meter,” each half-line had to contain three stressed syllables and three unstressed syllables per half-line, and each had to end with an unstressed syllable. Two of the stressed syllables in each half-line had to rhyme with each other—and the rhymes had to alternate between assonance, or skothending (same final consonant sound with different vowels, such as “wild” and “cold” in the example below) and exact rhyme, or aðalhending (such as “wail” and “pale” below). To make matters even trickier, lines had to follow the same rules of alliteration as fornyrðislag, with two of the stressed syllables in each leading half-line alliterating with the first stressed syllable in each following half-line. Lines, in turn, were grouped into stanzas of eight half-lines each.

If all this sounds almost ridiculously complicated, that’s because it is. The strict requirements of skaldic poetry forced a skald to learn a huge number of heiti and kennings. Part of the reason why skalds never seem to simply call a sword a sword is because the alliteration, rhyme, and meter usually demanded a different word. Add to all that the fact that poetic word-order is so flexible that sentences can be shuffled like decks of cards, and you can understand why not even academic scholars can always agree on what some skaldic stanzas mean.

Skaldic poetry is quite difficult to duplicate in English, and attempts often come off as sounding strange and artificial. Nonetheless, this attempt should give at least the flavor of drottkvætt. Anyone who wants to compose in this or other skaldic metres (and there are many) should consult the Háttatal section of the Prose Edda (available in English in the translation by Anthony Faulkes). Rhymes are shown in italics, stressed syllables are in boldface, and alliterating sounds are underlined, with fairly simple kennings for “spear” and “sky” in the last long line:

Wild Hunt whips through cold skies, | wailing ghosts with pale brows;

howls are heard on fell winds, | the hounds’ bays resounding.

Their dread drighten-god is | driving dead and live men;

wand–of-war in hand’s grip, | Woden rides Nǫtt’s road now.

Ritual in Performance

Today, we usually encounter the old lore in written format: we buy books, or click on Web links, and silently read the words from a page or a screen. While there’s nothing wrong with this, we need to remember that our forebears experienced poetry in a very different way: it was performed. Skalds memorized and recited vast amounts of poetry—in Stufs þáttr, the poet Stuf boasts that he knows thirty drápur (long poems of praise) and twice as many flokkur (shorter poems). And they performed it for their audiences.

Naturally, we have no recordings of what skalds or scops sounded like, but we can find a few clues. Dwight Conquergood has drawn attention to the Old English Riddle 8, whose answer is “nightingale.” In this riddle, the nightingale describes itself as eald æfenscop, “an old scop in the evening.” Sometimes, it says, hlude cirme, “I shout loudly;” and ic stefne styrme, “I storm with my voice.” In fact, the nightingale boasts of how it varies its voice: ic þurh muþ sprece mongum reordum, “I speak through my mouth with many voices.” Its song is called sceawendwis, which seems to be the word for a jester’s song. If the nightingale is called a scop for speaking loudly and varying its voice, then we may assume that actual scops did the same (“Literacy and Oral Performance,” pp. 119-121).

Conquergood points out that this is supported by a passage in Byrhtferth’s Manual (ed. Crawford, pp. 170-173) that refers to the “common style” or “mixed style” of narrative, explaining it as “when the poet introduces other persons who talk with him as if they were answering him.” This suggests that poets might take the parts of several different characters in a poem, probably using a different voice for each character (“Literacy and Oral Performance,” p. 121). Finally, he cites a ruling of the Council of Clovesho in 747 (edict 12; ed. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, vol. 3, pp. 366-367), which instructed priests how not to sing in church:

Ut presbyteri sæcularum poetarum modo in ecclesia non garriant, ne tragico sono sacrorum verborum compositionem ac distinctionem corrumpant vel confundant, sed simplicem sanctamque melodiam secundum morem Ecclesiæ sectentur: quo vero id non est idoneus adsequi, pronunciantis modo simpliciter legendo, dicat atque recitet quicquid instantis temporis ratio poscit. . . .

That the priests may not chatter in church, according to the fashion of worldly poets, lest they corrupt or confuse the composition and distinction of the sacred words with the noise of a tragedy, but let them follow a simple and holy melody, according to the custom of the Church. Let him who is unfit to do this speak and recite whatever the reason of the moment demands, pronouncing in the simple manner of a reader.

Evidently, secular poets “chattered” and used “the noise of a tragedy.” Again, this points to highly theatrical styles of performance, with the scop speaking and singing loudly and dramatically, using multiple voices and probably taking on different characters. It’s worthwhile to watch the DVD recording (or a live performance, if you’re lucky) of the first third of Beowulf as performed by medieval music specialist Benjamin Bagby. With only a six-stringed harp for accompaniment, he creates spellbinding sound pictures by varying his voice in almost every possible way to set the action and mood of each verse. As Bagby describes his own performance: “all aspects of the singer’s art are called into use, including the wide and flexible spectrum of vocal utterance: plain speech, heightened speech, sung speech, spoken song, simple syllabic song, melismatic song, as well as the more radical elements of human vocal sound: whispering, moaning, groaning, hoarse speech, barking, shouting, and, yes, even a scream when it’s called for in the story” (“Beowulf, the Edda, and the Performance of Medieval Epic,” p. 186).

Practice delivering your poems or rituals before you perform them in public or address them to the deity you wish to honor. You don’t have to memorize them, but it’s better to be familiar enough with your words that you’re not staring fixedly at a sheet of paper while you read. It can get off-putting to your audience if every fourth word out of your mouth is “um,” so rehearse until you’re confident what to say. Enunciate clearly, and if you’re leading a ritual for many people, practice speaking more slowly than you’re used to. Work out the pronunciation of unfamiliar words or names well in advance; if you’re invoking Odin in his aspect of a god of wisdom and want to use names for him that invoke this aspect, it makes for a more powerful effect on your hearers if you can pronounce his name Fjǫlsviðr (“Fully Wise”) smoothly. (See the pronunciation guides in Chapter 26.) And make sure that you haven’t written anything that is unexpectedly difficult to say. Back in the 1930s, radio programs were always broadcast live, and there’s a story about a scriptwriter who got in trouble for making an actor have to speak the risky line “Show me the seat where Schmidt sat when he was shot.” Running through your ritual beforehand will ensure that any awkward phrases can be detected and rewritten.

Learn to breathe from the diaphragm and project your voice.

This doesn’t mean that you shout or scream (unless it’s ritually appropriate). It means that you stand up straight, inflate your lungs fully, and use your full volume of breath to support a strong, resonant voice. Even if you’re working a solo ritual, “Hail Thor!” spoken deeply and confidently is more effective than “uhh. . . hailthor?” in a half-strangled squeak. Breathe from your diaphragm—your stomach should push outwards as you pull in your breath, and you should feel your lower ribcage expand, but your shoulders should not rise. (If you can’t figure out how to do this, try lying on your back on a hard floor; you should be able to feel your stomach rise and fall.) Try reciting your work in a large room and imagining that you’re reciting it to someone in the left back corner, then the right back corner, then the exact center, then the right back corner again, and so on. If you feel the need to improve further, look for classes or groups in your area that can give you some training and practice in singing, public speaking, acting, or improvisation.

Ritual, Music, and Theater

There is evidence that at least some rituals in ancient times were closer to theatrical performances: the leaders, and perhaps all the gathered people, not only spoke, but incorporated gestures, acting, music, and dance. This is a rich dimension of ritual that today’s Heathens have just begun to explore.

A commentor on Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen described the Uppsala temple as situated on level ground with mountains surrounding it, making it resemble a theater (Scholion 139; transl. Tschan, p. 207). The similarity may have gone deeper than just outward appearance; Saxo Grammaticus claims that the hero Starkad grew disgusted with “the womanish body movements, the clatter of actors on the stage and the soft tinkling of bells” at Uppsala (History of the Danes VI.185, transl. Fisher, p. 172). Occasionally, we get direct evidence of “theatrical” gestures; for example, one chamber grave at Birka contained a spear that had been thrown over the body and left embedded in the wall before the grave had been sealed. This immediately makes us think of the Odinic claiming of sacrifices by casting his spear over them; it implies that someone was re-enacting this myth at the funeral, flinging a spear into the grave to claim the deceased for Odin (Price, The Viking Way, p. 95). In fact, the drawn-out, elaborate funerals of wealthy rulers, such as the Rus chieftain buried on the Volga as well as funerals reconstructed from careful analysis of burials, seem to have been dramatic rituals in their own right, perhaps retelling the story of the deceased’s life and interweaving it with family history, myths, and legends (Price, “Mythic Acts,” pp. 38-41).

Scholars ever since Bertha Philpotts in 1920 have suspected that the poems of the Edda were written to be scripts for ritual plays (The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, pp. 118-212). Terry Gunnell, in his book The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia, has made a strong case that several of the poems of the Edda were intended to be performed. He notes that some of the poems are problematic for a single person to recite, because it’s not always clear which character is speaking. On the other hand, the main manuscript of the Eddic poems, the Codex Regius, has indications of which character is speaking, jotted in the margins—and this feature is also seen in manuscripts from northern France and Britain that we know were intended to be acted, or at least read dramatically (The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia, pp. 282-389). There is also considerable documentation of folk drama from all over Europe. At its simplest, this may be a person in a costume taking part in a procession.

Music may also be used in ritual. Unfortunately, we have no music notated from the pre-Christian period of northern Europe, and only a few scattered clues as to what it may have sounded like. There is plenty of evidence that songs and poems were performed in the halls of kings, accompanied on the six-stringed harp, as is copiously attested in Beowulf and other Old English poems, such as The Fortunes of Men 80-84 (Krapp and Dobie, The Exeter Book, p. 156):

Sum sceal mid hearpan æt his hlafordes

fotum sittan, feoh þicgan,

ond a snellice snere wræstan,

lætan scralletan sceacol, se þe hleapeð,

nægl neomegende; biþ him neod micel.

One shall sit at his lord’s feet

With a lyre, accept riches,

And always briskly pluck the strings,

Let the plectrum resound as it leaps,

The nail making music; he is most eager.

The historian Jordanes mentions that the Goths sang their ancestors’ deeds to the harp; Procopius says that King Gelimer of the Vandals once asked for a harp so that he could accompany a lament that he had composed himself; and the poet Venantius Fortunatus mentions German “barbarians” singing praise-songs to a harpa (all quoted in Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry, pp. 56-60). Remains of actual six-stringed harps have been discovered in England, Germany, and Scandinavia; the most famous is the one painstakingly reconstructed from fragments from Sutton Hoo, but some remains are more complete, such as the almost perfectly preserved Alemannic harp from a grave at Trossingen, Germany. The six-stringed harp is well enough known that there are modern instrument makers who build playable replicas, and musicians who play them.

Wooden and bone flutes (made with a fipple and blown through the end, like the modern recorder), panpipes, reed hornpipes, and cow horns with brass mouthpieces are also known from Migration Age and Viking Age remains (Lund, “Archaeomusicology of Scandinavia,” pp. 249-262).

At some times and places, music was a part of religious rituals.

Adam of Bremen complained about the many different ritual songs at the temple of Uppsala, although all he would say about them was that the words were unfit to be written down (History of the Archbishops IV.xxvii, transl. Tschan, p. 208). The Lombards were said to have worshipped by singing songs while running around (Gregory, Dialogues III.28, transl. Zimmerman, p. 162). The poet Sidonius Apollinaris mentions Frankish wedding songs (Carmina V.219; transl. Anderson, vol. 1, pp. 80-81), and several early medieval Christian moralists got indignant about Heathen funeral songs (see Chapter 17). Snorri Sturluson claimed that Freyja is fond of a type of erotic song called mansǫngr (see Our Troth volume 2, chapter 9).

There has been some question as to whether the poems of the Edda could have been sung in ritual. The current thinking is that they probably weren’t (Gade, “On the Recitation of Old Norse Skaldic Poetry,” pp. 130-142), but that has not stopped the medieval ensemble Sequentia from recording an entire album of Eddic poems, sung and recited to fiddle and harp melodies that draw on old Scandinavian folk melodies and modes, and might be something like Viking Age music (Bagby, “Beowulf, the Edda, and the Performance of Medieval Epic” explains how this was done).

Songs “fair to hear” were sung during the seiðr ritual (Laxdæla saga 37; Eiríks saga rauða 4). The Old Norse word blót was borrowed into Finnish to mean “magic charm” (luote), and into Sámi to mean “magic song” (luotte), hinting that songs may have been a part of blót ceremonies (Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 45).

Some Heathen groups today might choose to perform one of the Eddic poems as written, as a drama. Other groups have created their own dramatic adaptations of the myths, which may be performed as part of a blót or as a free-standing performance. These may be written in the verse forms of Eddic poetry, or they may take a more modern approach to dialogue (e.g. Ayer, “The First (And Nearly Final) Marriage of Thor;” Collazo, “Thor Gets His Hammer Back,” in Blood Unbound, pp. 92-113). As for music, if a group has someone with musical skill, a performance can certainly be worked into a ritual. Some kindreds like to incorporate songs or chants into ritual that everyone can join in on. The author has heard entirely original songs, new words set to existing folk tunes, and existing folk songs that seem to have Heathen overtones (such as “John Barleycorn”) used in rituals. If no one wishes to perform live, some Heathen groups may wish to incorporate recorded music, to set the mood for a ritual or to enhance the atmosphere for meditation.

Putting It Together

You’ve tried your hand at writing praises and prayers, and suddenly you’ve been asked to lead a ritual for several people. How do you put it all together?

Gamligninn’s Nine-Point Blót

A well-wrought ritual isn’t just one thing happening after another; it should have a definite beginning, middle, and end. Wiccan rituals are often dedicated to magically “raising the Power.” Heathen rituals may not have this precise goal, but there should still be a sense of bringing the blót to a peak—a significant action that expresses the goal and gives people a sense of “having arrived”—and then bringing it back down for a return to the everyday world.

A number of outlines for Ásatrú ritual have been suggested. Gamlinginn’s “Nine-Point Blót Plan” was presented in the first edition of Our Troth, and Edred Thorsson presented a similar nine-part blót outline in A Book of Troth (p. 138).

With that in mind, we suggest the following outline for ritual. It happens to have nine parts, but the basic progression is much like the five-act play model; it may not matter very much how you divide it.

Landreth’s Five W’s

Troth godman and leader Rod Landreth gave much excellent advice in his article “Building a Better Blót” in the Troth’s Book of Blóts, which we have summarized here. He recommended asking the “Five Ws”—Why, What, Who, Where, When—and also How, as you plan and perform a ritual.

Baer’s Five-Act Form

A different way to look at ritual, focusing less on making sure it has nine parts and more on its dramatic structure, is to look at it as a traditional five-act play—an approach suggested by Jeremy Baer (Hammer, Oak, and Lightning, pp. 75-76).

A ritual structured this way might look like this:

• Introduction: The space is set up, the celebrants enter, the space is hallowed, and the leader welcomes everyone and announces the purpose of the ritual.
• Rising Action: The deities to be honored are invoked, asked to come and lend their presence to the rite.
• Climax: Offerings are made to the deities, who are invited to share in them. The people may pass the horn, each making a prayer to the deities and taking a drink from the horn.
• Falling Action: This could be anything from a simple sprinkling of the ritual drink, to a guided meditation, a ritual play, a song, a magical working, or whatever is fitting.
• Resolution: The return to everyday life. The deities are thanked, the offering is poured out or otherwise given, and the people are dismissed.

A well-written five-act play leads the action onwards in a way that holds the audience’s interest. A well-written ritual should ideally do the same. The assembled people should feel as if they are on a journey to meet the deity, interact with the deity and share gifts, and return to the human world. Because everyone experiences divinity in different ways, no two people will think of this in exactly the same way—and yet everyone’s experiences proceed according to the same logic.