No place stands more for the pagan cult of the North than Gamla Uppsala: the golden temple, the great sacrifice every nine years, the mighty royal mounds. But how much of it is real – and how much the hearsay of a hostile Christian?
Gamla Uppsala in central Sweden was for centuries a religious and royal centre – seat of the legendary Yngling dynasty and scene of great sacrificial feasts. It owes its fame above all to a single source: the account of Adam of Bremen around 1075.
Adam describes a temple entirely decked in gold with the statues of three gods, and a grim festival: every nine years nine male beings of each kind were sacrificed – humans among them – and the bodies hung in the sacred grove.
“In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods: Thor, the mightiest, enthroned in the middle, with Wodan and Fricco (Freyr) at his sides.”— Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis IV.26 (c. 1075, public domain)
To this day three vast royal mounds (Kungshögar) of the 5th/6th century rise at Gamla Uppsala – called „gods’ mounds", in fact rich princely graves. Beside them lay the Thing place; Uppsala was a centre of worldly and spiritual power in one.
Excavations (among them in 2013) revealed, beside a great hall, spectacular rows of posts: avenues of massive timber posts almost a kilometre long, along with animal sacrifices. A „golden temple" in the literal sense could not be confirmed, however – much points rather to a cult in and around a monumental royal hall.
The Old Germanic Feasts · Freyr · Odin · The Norse pantheon.
Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis (c. 1075). Olof Sundqvist, works on Uppsala; Neil Price, The Viking Way. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Gamla Uppsala museum / Riksantikvarieämbetet (excavation reports).