The Germanic year knew no spring – only summer and winter. And its feasts followed the rhythm of field and war. Snorri names three great blóts; to these come Yule, the Winter Nights and the Dísir sacrifices. An honest overview of the real Germanic festival calendar – and what in it is a modern invention.
The Germanic feast is called blót – literally „sacrifice", but in fact sacrifice and feast in one. The blood of the sacrificial animals was sprinkled on altar and participants, the meat shared, and in the toasting the cups were dedicated to gods and ancestors. To feast meant: to renew the bond with gods, the dead and the kin.
The clearest source is Snorri’s Ynglinga saga. It names three fixed sacrifice-times in the year:
“There should be sacrifice at the beginning of winter for a good year, at midwinter for good growth, and a third at the beginning of summer – the victory-sacrifice.”— after Snorri, Ynglinga saga 8 (public domain)
Winter begins with the Winter Nights (Vetrnætr) in October – harvest-thanks and the start of the dark half-year. Into this time falls the Álfablót, a private farmstead sacrifice to the elves/ancestors, from which strangers were shut out, and the Dísablót for the protecting female ancestral spirits (dísir). Its peak is Yule (Jól) at midwinter: the great feast of the twelve nights, with oaths, mead and Odin’s Wild Hunt across the night sky.
At the beginning of summer stands the Sigrblót – the victory feast over the winter frost- and ice-giants. Now Odin moves to the fore, with Thor, who subdues the frost-giants, and Freyr and Freyja. People prayed for victory and prosperity in the summer’s undertakings – in older times also for the coming raids.
Between winter and summer, at the equinox, lies the Várblót, the fertility feast of the Vanir – treated in detail in our article on Ostara, Várblót & Sigrblót. And the bright season is crowned by the solstice festivals at midsummer.
Ostara, Várblót & Sigrblót · The solstice festivals · Sunna / Sól · The Norse pantheon.
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla (Ynglinga saga, Hákonar saga góða). Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur. A. E. Zautner, Der gebundene Mondkalender der Germanen. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte; Walter Baetke, Die Religion der Germanen in Quellenzeugnissen.