VIKING FESTIVALS AND CALENDAR

The Viking year revolved around three great sacrifice feasts (blót), at which animals (and, by some accounts, people too) were offered to win the gods' favor, followed by banquets where the meat was shared and mead flowed. It was religion and politics at once: whoever hosted the feast displayed power and gathered allies.

The most famous was Yule (jól), deep winter: twelve nights of feasting around the solstice, with boar sacrificed to Freyr, toasts to Odin and solemn vows for the new year. From it come the log, the ham and even the Christmas toast we still keep. Spring brought Sigrblót, the sacrifice for victory before campaign season, and autumn the Winter Nights (vetrnaetr), opening the year with a blót to elves and ancestors (álfablót).

Honesty demands saying it: sources are fragmentary and late, written by Christians centuries later. Much of what is told about these feasts mixes historical testimony with modern reconstruction. But the skeleton is solid: a three-season calendar, feasts uniting the sacred with the social, and a winter fought, as today, by eating and drinking together.