THE SCENE: Olaus Magnus provides a description of the Blót, one of the signature religious occasions of the viking world. At these celebrations, human sacrifice – and even the sacrifice of kings – was not unknown.
THE TEXT: At one time, the number nine was particularly esteemed in the sacrifices of the Goths. And, though they paid weekly and daily the most exalted adoration to their own gods, yet every ninth month, by way of offering more solemn reverence to these very gods, they devoted nine days to dispatching sacrifices with due religious observance. On each separate day they offered up nine kinds of living creatures, to which they also added human victims. Then, after this nine-day period, in a solemn gathering of the whole kingdom a vast number of the inhabitants would go to see the temple at Uppsala; and there, at a nine days festival and with the appointed number of sacrifices, they slew victims to the gods at the altar.
Now the man whom chance had presented for immolation would be plunged alive into the spring of water which gushed out by the sacrificial precinct. If he quickly breathed his last, the priests proclaimed that the votive offering had been auspicious, soon carried him off from there into a nearby grove, which they believed sacred, and hung him up, asserting that he had been transported into the assembly of the gods. As a consequence he thought himself blessed when he left the company of the living by being slain in this way. Sometimes it occurred that even kings were chosen by lot in similar fashion to be sacrificed, and since this was considered to be an offering most favourable for the kingdom, the whole mass of the people would attend such an eminent victim and wish him utmost joy. To be sure, they were convinced that those who died in this way had not perished at all but were immortal no less than themselves.
– A Description of the Northern Peoples, Olaus Magnus, 16th Century AD
