<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/17/sweden-vikings-chaos-sacrifice-ritual-norse-pagan>
"“Hail Thor!” The priestess and her heathens, standing in a circle, raised
their mead-filled horns. We were gathered in an unassuming spot in a pine
forest outside Stockholm. This was our temple, and the large, mossy stone
before us was our altar. I was relieved to see that the animal-based
sacrificial offerings were long-dead and highly processed. A bearded man
reached his tattooed arms into his backpack and raised a red, horseshoe-shaped
sausage to the sky. A goth girl unboxed a plastic tub of hammer-shaped cookies.
The priestess offered me a handful of flaxseeds to toss on the altar, which was
overflowing with gifts, apples and bottles of homemade mead.
A dozen people had gathered for an autumn sacrifice to summon Thor, the
hammer-wielding Norse god of harvests and storms. Many pleaded for him to bring
rain, after a summer plagued with drought. Others asked for the strength to
battle unemployment, or for the recovery of a sick mother. We all had our own
reasons for being there. A middle-aged man, perspiring in his blue office
shirt, seemed to be there to connect with his hippy-looking wife and teenage
daughter.
I was there because pagan events kept popping up in my Facebook feed, and I
couldn’t fathom why. I’m not “spiritual”, or even agnostic. I’m staunchly
secular, I like modern medicine, and my social media usually reflects that.
Having just moved back to Sweden after five years living in the UK, my online
world mainly consisted of London friends and British banter. But there was a
glaring exception: my algorithm kept recommending that I check out neo-Norse
sacrifices in my local area. It suggested that the movement may be surprisingly
mainstream, and the two middle-aged women standing beside me in the forest
seemed to confirm this: they looked perfectly normal – like they could work at
a nursery. I really had not expected to return home to a Viking revival; nor
that it would be so chilled out, when I did."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
