Symbel

Literary Sources for Symbel

Feasts of this kind, with the gathered people drinking toasts and swearing oaths, are described in the sagas, and according to Hymiskviða 1, the gods themselves can be sumblsamir, “eager for Symbel.” However, the most detailed descriptions of Symbel appear in Beowulf, especially the scene in which Beowulf boasts that he will kill Grendel and refutes challenges from Hrothgar’s counselor Unferth (320-661). Symbel is one of the great pleasures that a ruler’s thanes enjoyed in the meadhall, and losing it was keenly missed, as seen in the lament The Wanderer 92-96 (Krapp and Dobbie, The Exeter Book, p. 136):

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?

Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?

Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!

Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,

genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.

Where has the horse gone? Where has the man gone? Where has the treasure-giver gone?

Where have the seats at Symbel gone? Where are the hall-joys?

Alas, the bright cup! Alas, the mailed warrior!

Alas, the ruler’s majesty! How that time has departed,

grown dark under night’s cover, as if it never existed.333

The Religious Significance of Symbel

How does a Heathen Symbel differ from a group of friends sitting around a table and drinking?

The single most important cosmological image in Germanic mythology is the World Tree, which holds all the worlds. At the root of the Tree is the great Well. Snorri speaks of three wells, each at one of the three roots of Yggdrasil (Gylfaginning 15), but Paul Bauschatz feels that these are three repetitions of the same fundamental image (pp. 22-26), and many Heathens think of the three wells as levels of a single Well.

Boasts of our own past deeds, or of the deeds of past heroes or our own ancestors, bring the might and main of the past into the present moment.

Oaths and promises to accomplish great deeds work in the other direction: they take the might and main of the present moment and set it in the past, where they shape the individual’s and the group’s own wyrd (pp. 109-110).

Those who speak worthless words over the horn—such as false boasts, or oaths that will never be fulfilled—risk shaping their wyrd in ways that they cannot escape without harm or humiliation.

Many Heathens feel that such words are potentially damaging to the wyrd of everyone present, not only the speaker of the false words.

What do you Drink for Symbel?

Typically, alcohol is consumed during Symbel, and here are the most common kinds listed from most common to least common

• Mead
• Beer
• Wine
• Cider

Spirits like Vodka, Tequila or Rum are never used in Symbel. They are far too potent!

You can also use something else besides alcohol. Alcohol is merely traditional because fermented beverages were far more commonly consumed in Medieval times due to water generally being unsanitary and the fact that fruit juices and milk didn’t preserve well.

Thankfully, nowadays, we have a lot of different non-alcoholic drinks to choose from. We suggest a sweet drink for the delight of guests. Of course, take into account dietary restrictions like lactose intolerance and diabetes into your own calculations.

• Fruit Juice (apple or grape is typical but if you want to get fancy and wow your guests you can have mango, lychee or tamarind)
• Sweetened Milk (You can mix sweetened condensed milk or dissolve some honey in milk or make something like Egg Nog or Horchata to really surprise your guests)
•  Get creative! You’re not operating within the realm of tradition here, so the only goal is to delight God and Guest alike.

“But My Ancestors would not have drank that!”

You’ll hear from some circles that we want to stick as closely to “tradition” as possible when it comes to Symble. I say “tradition” in quotes because the fact is, we don’t know that Symbel was a ritual for one thing. For another thing, we don’t know if the beverage was important.

The fact of the matter is, Symbel is not a ritual for the Gods. It is a ritual for us, the community. Symble, like the Feast, is time for us to be together in fellowship and enjoy the good things life has to offer. In that spirit, and in the spirit of Hospitality, you should always fill your cup with what you think is going to delight your Guests.

In all likelihood, your ancestors would have loved Horchata. They just never got the chance to drink it.

How to Symbel

It is usual to stand in Blót, but several texts use the set phrase “to sit at Symbel.”

Symbel is also almost always said to take place indoors, unlike blóts, which could be performed indoors or outdoors. Today it is usual to sit in a ring or rectangle, with the hosts or group leaders sitting at the head of the hall. In the sagas, halls are described as having two rows of benches; the head of the hall sat at the high seat, in the center of one bench, flanked by his highest-ranking and most trusted thanes, while the most highly honored guest sat facing the host at the opposite bench. Less honored guests sat farther away from the head of the hall. Modern groups with a developed hierarchy may choose to assign seating by rank, with higher-ranking personages closer to the head.

Although the word is sometimes translated “feast,” food is usually not served during a Symbel; Paul Bauschatz suggests that food was deliberately excluded (The Well and the Tree, p. 74).

At larger gatherings today, Symbel is often held after dinner. Some groups like to begin with the gathered folk being ceremonially offered a basin of water and a towel to wash and dry their hands, taking a cue from Hávamál 4:

Vatns er þǫrf þeim er til verðar kømr,

þerru ok þjóðlaðar,

góðs um oeðis, ef sér geta mætti,

orðs ok endrþǫgu.

A man who comes to a meal needs water,

a towel, and a friendly welcome,

good manners (if he might get them for himself),

talk, and silence in turn.337

The host of the Symbel may make some requests before the rite actually begins, especially if some of the guests are not Heathen, new to Heathenry, or new to the group that is hosting the Symbel. For example, some groups consider it disrespectful to shout at the Gods; others find nothing wrong at all with a rousing bellow of “HAIL THOR!!” or the like.

Symbel Begins: Filling the Drinking Vessel

The Symbel begins with the filling of a drinking horn with mead, beer, ale, wine, or cider. As with blót, a Symbel can be celebrated with non-alcoholic beverages, or may be celebrated using two horns, one with alcohol and one without. Large cups can be used if a horn is not available; the Bayeux Tapestry, for example, depicts a feast at which people are drinking from both horns and cups.

There are several references to Germanic rulers being inordinately proud of their table furnishings for feasting; Chilperic of the Franks boasted of his fifty-pound golden serving tray, and the treasure of the Vandals included golden drinking cups and other tableware (see Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup, pp. 49-51).

Toasts

The leader may speak a blessing or other prayer over the filled horn, and then speaks a toast, traditionally to a god or goddess, or to a group of them. This can be as simple as “Hail Odin!” or as complex as an original poem in elaborate skaldic meter. The leader then takes a swallow of drink from the horn. Before 2020 this was often drunk directly from the horn, but in the post-Covid age, it is much safer for leaders to pour a little drink from the larger horn into their personal vessel. It is traditional for the gathered people to reply to the toast with “Hail!” or “Wassail!”

Passing the Drinking Vessel at Symbel

The leader then passes the horn. At smaller and less formal Symbels, the horn may be passed directly from one person to the next, but at larger Symbels the horn is usually handed to a designated horn-bearer, who goes around the room, giving each person the horn, hearing their toast, and then taking the horn from each person and giving to the next in turn. Horn-bearers may give their own toasts either at the beginning of the round or at the end. They also keep track of the level of drink in the horn, and may refill the horn whenever necessary.

When the horn has gone round the first time, the leader may pour out some drink into the blessing-bowl, giving the gods their share. In some traditions, the leader pours out the gods’ share and then ladles some of that share back into the horn, symbolizing the exchange of gifts of might and main between gods and humans. The horn may then be passed for another round.

Roles at Symbel

Besides the roles we talked about before, the Host, the Cup/Horn-Bearer and the assembled, there are some specialized Roles you might want to consider for your Symbel.

The Thul

It has become common in general Heathen practice to designate a thul (OE þyle, ON þulr) at Symbel.

The only thul depicted in the lore as acting in his office is Unferth in Beowulf, who’s portrayed unsympathetically, but Michael Enright has reconstructed what a thul would have done (“The Warband Context of the Unferth Episode”). The thul was, and should be today, both a religious functionary and a trusted warrior of proven bravery.

At Symbel, a thul today should be familiar with the deeds and reputations of the gathered people, and should know very well which ones are likeliest to back up their words with deeds. As Unferth does in Beowulf, a thul may challenge others’ oaths and boasts in a ritualized verbal duel known as flyting—especially if the person is a stranger to the hall, as Beowulf was.

Flyting may come across as confrontational, but there’s a serious point to it: by his challenges, the thul ensures that everyone who oaths or boasts at Symbel is worthy and able to back up what he or she has said. If the person truly is worthy, the flyting will make this worth evident to everyone in the hall (as when Beowulf replies to Unferth’s challenges).

The thul also forces would-be swearers to define exactly what their oaths will entail, and what they will have do to keep it—it may be easy to wriggle out of a vaguely worded oath, but it’s hardly a worthy act to swear one.

The thul’s flyting may also incite each man to furious effort to accomplish what he has set out to do. But the thul’s role was and is also similar to that of a “sergeant-at-arms”, who must either soothe or forcefully end any serious strife building up in the hall; he had to be both a pacifier and an inciter. Today, if a Symbel has gotten out of hand—if people are becoming combative, or otherwise losing control—the thul should intervene, and either calm the people down, expel them, or in the very worst case, shut down the Symbel.349

The Shope

One more personage that is sometimes seen at Symbel is a scop (OE), shope (modernized English), skald (ON), or minna-singer (OHG), a poet and singer. At any Symbel, individual participants may offer toasts in verse or in song, if they have the skill; in the story of Cædmon in Bede’s History of the English Church (IV.xxiv), Cædmon’s fellows at Symbel pass a harp around, taking turns playing and singing. (A Symbel in which everyone offers a song or poem is sometimes called a “shopes’ Symbel,” similar to the bardic circles seen at pagan gatherings.)

But at Symbels held by kings or lords, there was generally a designated singer or poet.

For instance, in Beowulf (1065-7), Hrothgar’s scop sings a lay: gomenwudu grēted, gid oft wrecen / ðonne healgamen Hrōþgāres scop / æfter medobence mǣnan scolde—“he touched the joy-wood [harp], he often wrought a song, when Hrothgar’s scop had to proclaim hall-joy before the mead-bench.”

Many Symbels don’t have a designated shope, and many groups may not have one, or feel the need for one. But if someone in the group has great poetic or musical skill, he or she may be designated the shope or skald.

The shope may recite a poem or sing a song at the beginning of the Symbel, perhaps a retelling of a myth to put the people in the right frame of mind. He may also perform at designated times throughout the Symbel, or may simply walk through the hall, playing softly and witnessing all that happens.

The shope’s poetry and music should be enjoyable, but their duties go beyond simple entertainment. By recounting the deeds of the gods, the heroes of old, and today’s Heathen heroes and leaders, the shope brings the might and main of their deeds up from the Well of Wyrd and into the present. He or she is also there to witness the words and deeds of the folk. If they are sufficiently worthy, he may sing of them at later Symbels.

Boasts during Symbel

In the third round, people may choose to hail a deity or ancestor again. However, many choose to offer a boast, or yelp (from OE gilp, gielp; OHG gelph; OS galpon). This is a public statement of the person’s strengths and of worthy deeds they have done. The word comes from the PIE root *ghel– meaning “to shout; to cry out,” and this root also gave rise to ON galan “to speak a spell, to enchant,” galdr “spoken magic,” and gylfra “sorceress.”

Not only was a gielp spoken loudly and confidently, it had special power, affirming the speaker’s strength in the face of all challenges, and implying that the speaker would do equally mighty deeds in the future (Nolan and Bloomfield, “Bēotword, Gilpcwidas, and the Gilphlæden Scop of Beowulf,” pp. 501-502).

But properly done, boasting isn’t empty bragging (which Unferth calls dolgilp, “foolish boast,” in Beowulf 509). It sets your deeds firmly in the Well of Wyrd, affirms your true worth for all to see, and announces your willingness to use your strengths to rise to future challenges. Arrogance is not a Heathen virtue, but neither is false modesty; you’re allowed to express pride in the worthy deeds you’ve done, and you have the right to receive thanks and praise for them.

Obviously, you should never make a false boast. The great baseball player Dizzy Dean expressed a rather Heathen sentiment when he said “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.”

Oaths during Symbel

Participants may also choose to swear promissory oaths to accomplish deeds of worth (sometimes called by the Old English name bēot or Old Norse heit).

Both bēot and heit are related to a verb meaning “to name; to call; to command” (OE hātan, behātan; ON heita), which in turn derives from a PIE root that originally meant “to set in motion.”

A Symbel-Oath is often treated as more serious than any other kind of oath or promise, but there is some serious dispute about that.

Ann Sheffield commented:

Despite the popularity of this idea in modern Heathenism, I see absolutely no evidence in Germanic literature that someone’s swearing a heit they failed to keep had any effect on “the wyrd of everyone in the hall.” If it did, King Sveinn would never have manipulated the Jómsvikings into swearing such disastrous heit. If your wyrd is already interwoven with to someone else’s (through kinship, friendship, etc.), then what happens to them will naturally have an effect on you, but I reject the idea that just witnessing such a heit, even in Symbel, has any implications greather than the right to mock a person who fails to keep their heit.

But lest you be tempted to just start popping off, any heit that you cannot keep makes you look foolish and like an arrogant braggart. People will get to rolling their eyes at you whenever you speak. Not a great position to be in, if we are honest.

Life can always take sudden turns, and even the most capable speaker can sometimes fail at keeping what seemed like a perfectly reasonable oath. You promise your kids that you’re going to get pizza from Pepe’s but Pepe’s oven wasn’t working and only Sally’s was open. Are you a worthless parent now? Hardly. But say you pound your chest and swear upon all your ancestors that Pepe’s shall be what your kids eat for dinner and that the Gods may strike you down if it’s not so…

You’ll just look silly. Calm down. 

The poem The Wanderer 65-72 (ed. Krapp and Dobbie, The Exeter Book, pp. 135-136) has excellent advice for those who would speak boasts and oaths:

Wita sceal geþyldig,

ne sceal no to hatheort ne to hrædwyrde,

ne to wac wiga ne to wanhydig,

ne to forht ne to fægen, ne to feohgifre

ne næfre gielpes to georn, ær he geare cunne.

Beorn sceal gebidan, þonne he beot spriceð,

oþþæt collenferð cunne gearwe

hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille.

A wise man must be patient,

must not be too hot-headed, nor too quick to speak,

nor too weak a fighter, nor too reckless,

neither too fearful nor too rash, nor too greedy for wealth,

never too eager to boast [gielp] before he sees clearly.

A warrior must wait, when he speaks an oath [beot],

until the fierce-minded one clearly sees

where the thought in his breast will turn.

Gifting at Symbel

Symbel is often also a time for gift-giving. Rulers—who were expected to be generous—gave gifts at Symbel to their retainers in exchange for their loyalty and service, a practice that appears several times in Beowulf, for example. It was customary in Norse society for the host of a feast to distribute gifts to his honored guests, which was called leysa menn út med gjǫfum, “to dismiss people with gifts” (Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, p. 202) Sometimes retainers and guests gave gifts to their host, as when Beowulf gives Hygelac the treasures that Hrothgar has given him (2142-2176).

Gifting usually happens in the third round in modern Symbels. Descriptions in the lore usually show the lord of the hall giving gifts to his retainers and guests, or vice versa. A Symbel is thus a very fitting time for kindred or organization leaders to thank and gift persons who have contributed to the group’s success, or for members to gift their leaders in thanks for a job well done.

There’s less literary evidence that gifting took place at Symbel among persons of equal rank. Nonetheless, in modern times, the person whose turn it is may choose to bestow gifts on any of the other people who are present. Getting gifts is always fun, isn’t it?

What do I say during Symbel?

You can always say nothing.

This is critically important. During any round and for whatever reason, you can choose to say nothing at all. You can simply close your eyes, bow your head, raise the horn and take a drink (or kiss the drinking vessel). There are Heathens out there who can make that simple gesture be more powerful than any words.

Sometimes you may be thinking of someone to toast who has recently died, and you find yourself overcome with emotion and you can’t speak. Or perhaps something particularly wonderful happened and you just can’t seem to speak to how grateful you are, you simply feel it. You need not steel yourself for a speech! The most fitting tribute to that feeling is to simply let it be in silence, and not try to force it down so that you can speak.

This isn’t Lokasenna and it isn’t your opportunity to hold court

In the first three rounds of Symbel, it’s important to be polite to your Host or your Guests. You may feel like you are the center of attention and you may (like many in the Pagan community) love the spotlight, but remember: this ritual is not for you. It is for the community. You are part of the community, not the center of it.

This is not the time to bring up gripes, air your grievances or hold court on an issue. This is a time for gratitude, reflection and most especially empathy.

You should be listening far more to what others say than thinking of what kind of brilliant thing you are going to say when your turn at the horn comes.

What Happens Next? The later rounds of Symbel and the value of Heathen Friendship

Well, now that you’ve got a few drinks in us…

Normally now Symbel starts to break up into a smaller and smaller group. Sometimes the remaining group gets rowdy, sometimes they get very serious and thoughtful.

This is also where community safety becomes really important. Because we can’t have these great moments in later rounds without the assumption of safety. If you don’t feel comfortable staying, or are getting a bad feeling, you can absolutely say “imma head out.”

You should also remember, alcohol and driving don’t mix. Don’t jump up from a symble and hit the road. If you drank booze it doesn’t matter if it was in a ritual or not. It’s going to be in your system all the same. Make sure you’re not going anywhere for a while.

But if you’ve got a good feeling, you’re not going anywhere and that trust in community safety is there, then drink on!

The great thing about sitting in Symbel is that if you stay long enough, you’ll have made friends for life. Almost guaranteed. No Heathen ever forgets people they sat in a long Symbel with when it was just down to the last ten, or five or even just two people.

Even though you could be four or five sheets to the wind, get dragged off to bed at 5 in the morning and sick with the worst hangover of your life (mead hangovers are the absolute worst, bet), those later rounds can be treasured memories that you wouldn’t trade for anything.