Chapter 3

Animal sacrifices were mainly thank-offerings, but sometimes also expiatory, and as such they are not seldom, by way of mitigation, took the place of a previous human sacrifice. I will now quote the evidences (see Suppl.). Herculem et Martem concessis animalibus placant, Tac. Germ. 9; i.e., with animals suitable for the purpose (Hist. 5, 4), 'concessum' meaning sacrum as against profanum; and only those animals were suitable, whose flesh could be eaten by men. It would have been unbecoming to offer food to the god, which the sacrificer himself would have disdained. At the same time these sacrifices appear to be also banquets; an appointed portion of the slaughtered beast is placed before the god, the rest is cut up, distributed and consumed in the assembly. The people thus became partakers in the holy offering, and the god is regarded as feasting with them at their meal (see Suppl.). At great sacrifices the kings were expected to taste each kind of food, and down to late times the house-spirits and dwarfs had their portion set aside for them by the superstitious people.---Quadraginta rustici a Langobardis capti carnes immolatitias comedere compellebantur, Greg. M. dial. 3, 27; which means no more than that the heathen Langobards permitted or expected the captive christians to share their sacrificial feast. (31) These 'immolatitiae carnes' and 'hostiae immolatitiae, quas stulti homines juxta ecclesias ritu pagano faciunt' are also mentioned in Bonifacii epist. 25 and 55, ed. Würdtw.

In the earliest period, the Horse seems to have been the favourite animal for sacrifice; there is no doubt that before the introduction of Christianity its flesh was universally eaten. There was nothing in the ways of the heathen so offensive to the new converts, as their not giving up the slaughter of horses (hrossa-slâtr) and the eating of horseflesh; conf. Nialss. cap. 106. The Christian Northmen reviled the Swedes as hross-æturnar; Fornm. sög. 2, 309. Fagrsk. p. 63. King Hâkon, whom his subjects suspected of Christianity, was called upon 'at hinn skyldi eta hrossaslâtr;' Saga Hâk. gôða cap. 18. From Tac. Ann. 13, 57 we learn that the Hermunduri sacrificed the horses of the defeated Catti. As late as the time of Boniface (Epist. ed. Würdtw. 25. 87 Serr. 121. 142), (32) the Thuringians are strictly enjoined to abstain from horseflesh. Agathias bears witness to the practice of the Alamanni: ippouj te kai boaj, kai alla atta muria karatomountej (beheading), epiqeiazousi, ed. bonn. 28, 5.---Here we must not overlook the cutting off of the head, which was not consumed with the rest, but consecrated by way of eminence to the god. When Cæcina, on approaching the scene of Varus's overthrow, saw horses' heads fastened to the stems of trees (equorum artus, simul truncis arborum antefixa ora, Tac. ann. 1, 61), these were no other than the Roman horses, which the Germans had seized in the battle and offered up to their gods (33) (see Suppl.). A similar 'immolati diis equi abscissum caput' meets us in Saxo gram. p. 75; in the North they fixed it on the neidstange (niðstöng, stake of envy) which gave the power to bewitch an enemy, Egilss. p. 389. In a Hessian kindermärchen (no. 89) we have surviving, but no longer understood, a reminiscence of the mysterious meaning of a suspended horse's head. (34)---But on horse-sacrifices among the heathen Norse we have further information of peculiar value. The St. Olaf's saga, cap. 113 (ed. holm. 2, 181), says: þat fylgði ok þeirri sögn, at þar væri drepit naut ok hross til ârbôtar (followed the saying that there were slain neat and horse for harvest-boot). A tail-piece at the very end of the Hervararsaga mentions a similar sacrifice offered by the apostate Swedes at the election of king Svein (second half of 11th century): var þâ framleidt hross eitt â þingit, ok höggvit î sundr, ok skipt til âts, en rioþuðu blôðinu blôttrê; köstuðu þâ allir Sviar kristni ok hôfust blôt; then was led forward a horse into the Thing, and hewed in sunder, and divided for eating, and they reddened with the blood the blôt-tree, &c. Fornald. sög. 1, 512. Dietmar of Merseburg's description of the great Norse (strictly Danish) sacrificial rite, which however was extinct a hundred years before his time, evidently contains circumstances exaggerated legendwise and distorted; he says 1, 9: Sed quia ego de hostiis (Northmannorum) mira audivi, haec indiscussa praeterire nolo. est unus in his partibus locus, caput istius regni, Lederun nomine, in pago qui Selon (35) dicitur, ubi post novem annos mense Januario, post hoc tempus quo nos theophaniam domini celebramus, omnes convenerunt, et ibi diis suisment lxxxx, et ix. homines, et totidem equos, cum canibus et gallis pro accipitribus oblatis, immolant, pro certo, ut praedixi, putantes hos eisdem erga inferos servituros, et commissa crimina apud eosdem placaturos. quam bene rex noster (Heinrich I. an. 931) fecit, qui eos a tam execrando retu prohibuit!---A grand festive sacrifice, coming once in nine years, and costing a considerable number of animals---in this there is nothing incredible. Just as the name hecatomb lived on, when there was nothing like that number sacrificed, so here the legend was likely to keep to a high sounding number; the horror of the human victims perhaps it threw in bodily. But the reason alleged for the animal sacrifice is evidently wide of the mark; it mixes up what was done at funerals (36) with what was done for expiation. It was only the bodies of nobles and rich men that were followed in death by bondsmen and by domestic and hunting animals, so that they might have their services in the other world. Suppose 99 men, we will say prisoners of war, to have been sacrificed to the gods, the animals specified cannot have been intended to escort those enemies, nor yet for the use of the gods, to whom no one ever set apart and slaughtered horses or any beasts of the chase with a view to their making use of them. So whether the ambiguous eisdem refers to homines or diis (as eosdem just after stands for the latter), either way there is something inadmissible asserted. At the new year's festival I believe that of all the victims named the horses alone were sacrificed; men, hounds and cocks the legend has added on. (37) How Dietmar's story looks by the side of Adam of Bremen's on the Upsal sacrifice, shall be considered on p. 53.

Among all animal sacrifices, that of the horse was preeminent and most solemn. Our ancestors have this in common with several Slavic and Finnish nations, with Persians and Indians: with all of them the horse passed for a specially sacred animal. (38)



ENDNOTES:

32. Inter cetera agrestem caballum aliquantos comedere adjunxisti, plerosque et domesticum. hoc nequaquqam fieri deinceps sinae. And imprimis de volatilibus, id est graculis et corniculis atque ciconiis, quae omnino cavendae sunt ab esu christianorum. etiam et fibri et lepores et equi silvatici multo amplius vitandi. Again, Hieronymus adv. Jov. lib. 2 (ed. basil. 1553. 2, 75) Sarmatae, Quadi, Vandali et innumerabiles aliae gentes equorum et vulpium carnibus delectantur. Otto frising. 6, 10. audiat, quod Pecenati (the wild Peschenære, Nib. 1280, 2) et hi qui Falones vocantur (the Valwen, Nob. 1279, 2. Tit. 4097), crudis et immundis carnibus, utpote equinis et catinis usque hodie vescuntur. Rol. 98, 20 of the heathen: sie ezzent diu ros [[they eat the horse]]. Witches also are charged with eating horseflesh (see Suppl.).  (back)

33. Also in that passage of Jornandes about Mars: huic truncis suspendebantur exuviae.  (back)

34. Gregory the Great (epist. 7, 5) admonishes Brunichild to take precautions with her Franks, 'ut de animalium capitibus sacrificia sacrilega non exhibeant.'  (back)

35. Sêlon for Sêlond, ON. Sælundr. afterwards Sioland, Seeland, i.e., Zealand. Lêderûn, the Sax. dat. of Lêdera, ON. Hleiðra, afterwards Lêthra, Leire; conf. Goth. hleiþra tabernaculum.  (back)

36. With Sigurðr servants and hawks are burnt, Sæm. 225; elsewhere horses and dogs as well, conf. RA. 344. Asvitus, morbo consumptus, cum cane et equo terreno mandatur antro; Saxo gram. p. 91, who misinterprets, as though the dead man fed upon them: nec contentus equi vel canis esu, p. 92. (back)

37. 'Pro accipitribus' means, that in default of hawks, cocks were used. Some have taken it, as though dogs and cocks were sacrificed to deified birds of prey. But the 'pro' is unmistakable.  (back)

38. Conf. Bopp's Nalas and Damajanti, p. 42, 268. The Hyperboreans sacrificed asses to Apollo; Pindar Pyth. 10. Callimach. fr. 187. Anton. Liberal. metam. 20. The same was done at Delphi; Böckh corp. inscr. I, 807, 809. In a Mod. Greek poem Gadaron, lukon kai alwponj dihghsij vv. 429-434, a similar offering seems to be spoken of; and Hagek's böhm. chron. p. 62 gives an instance among the Slavs. That, I suppose, is why the Silesians are called ass-eaters (Zeitvertreiber 1668, p. 153); and if the Göttingers receive the same nickname, these popular jokes must be very old in Germany itself (see Suppl.).  (back)