In the depth of winter, when cold and darkness weigh heaviest, the Old Icelandic month Þorri begins – and with it a feast that does not dodge winter but honours it. Þorrablót is today Iceland’s great winter festival.
When Þorrablót Falls
Þorrablót opens the month Þorri, the thirteenth week of winter in the old Icelandic calendar. Its first day is Bóndadagur, the „farmer’s day", a Friday between 19 and 25 January. The month is named after „Þorri" – a figure of calendar-lore, in places a winter-king, in places (disputed) linked to Þórr.
What the Sources Say
The month-name Þorri is old and well attested; a heathen „Þorrablót" as a feast in its own right, however, is not directly witnessed for the Viking Age – the idea rests mainly on the name. The feast as we know it is a deliberate revival: in 1873 Icelandic students in Copenhagen, amid the independence movement, held the first modern Þorrablót to revive the old customs.
Myth-Check: much „tradition" is young
The famous trough-food þorramatur – fermented shark (hákarl), boiled sheep’s head (svið), pickled ram’s testicles (hrútspungar) – was only assembled in 1958 by a Reykjavík restaurant as an „ancestral" winter buffet. It reflects real old preservation methods, but as a festive menu it is modern. So here we keep less a Viking ritual than a living winter custom with deep roots.
Celebrating Today
Host a hearty winter meal – with music, poems and stories, as the students revived it in 1873. Honour those who carry the household through winter, and raise the horn to endurance. Winter is a guest to be honoured, not cursed.
A verse for the feast
a guest at the hearth;
we hand him
the brimming horn.
No curse on the frost –
a greeting to frost:
who honours him
outlasts the storm.
And now you: write your own short verse for this feast – four or five lines are enough, it need not rhyme. Recite it next time by the fire or at the sumbel. That is the finest honour one can pay a feast.
Sources
Old Icelandic calendar (Þorri, 13th week of winter); revival 1873 in Copenhagen; þorramatur as a restaurant menu 1958 (Guide to Iceland; World Religions & Spirituality Project).