Boar, sacrificed as a part of Yule celebrations in Germanic paganism
Thesonargǫltr orsónargǫltr was theboar sacrificed as part of the celebration ofYule inGermanic paganism, on whose bristles solemn vows were made in some forms of a tradition known asheitstrenging.
Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks refers to the tradition of swearing oaths on Yule Eve by laying hands on the bristles of the boar, who was then sacrificed in thesonar-blót:
Ok skyldi þeim gelti blóta at sónarblóti. Jólaaptan skyldi leiða sónargöltinn í höll fyrir konúng; lögðu menn þá hendr yfir burst hans ok strengja heit.[1][2]
Translation:
And they would sacrifice a boar in thesonarblót. On Yule Eve the sonar-boar was led into the hall before the king; then people laid their hands on its bristles and made vows.
Um kveldit [jólaaftan] óru heitstrengingar. Var fram leiddr sónargöltr. Lögðu menn þar á hendr sínar ok strengðu menn þá heit at bragarfulli.
Translation:
That evening [of Yule Eve] the great vows were taken; the sacred boar was brought in, the men laid their hands thereon, and took their vows at the king's toast.[3]
The association with the Yuleblót and with the ceremonialbragarfull gives the vows great solemnity, so that they have the force ofoaths. This becomes a recurring topos in later sagas,[6] although we have only these two saga mentions attesting to the custom of making vows on the sacrificial animal.[7]
The choice of a boar indicates a connection withFreyr,[8] whose mount is the gold-bristled boarGullinbursti,[4][9] and the continuing Swedish tradition of eating pig-shaped cakes at Christmas recalls the early custom.[5][10][11][12] According toOlaus Verelius's notes in his 1672 edition ofHervarar saga ok Heiðreks, part of thisjula-galt would then be saved for mixing with the seed-corn and giving to the plough-horses and ploughmen at spring planting.[13] AsJacob Grimm pointed out, theserving of a boar's head at banquets and particularly atThe Queen's College, Oxford, may also be a reminiscence of the Yule boar-blót.[14][15][16]Gabriel Turville-Petre suggested thatnames for Freyr and his sisterFreyja which equate them with a boar and a sow respectively implied that consumption of the sacrificed boar was believed to be consumption of the god's flesh and absorption of his power.[17]
It was formerly usual to spell the wordsónargǫltr and to interpret it as "atonement-boar" (the rare elementsónar- can also mean "sacrifice").[10][18] However, followingEduard Sievers, it is usually now spelled with a shorto and taken as meaning "herd boar, leading boar", asLombardicsonarþair is defined in theEdictus Rothari as the boar "which fights and beats all other boars in the herd".[4][5][15]
^For the alternate version, in which the procedure is the same but the wordsonargǫltr does not occur, see Richard North,Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 22, Cambridge, 1997,ISBN978-0-521-55183-0,p. 74.
^Peter Habbe,Att se och tänka med ritual: kontrakterande ritualer i de isländska släktsagorna, Vägar till Midgård 7, Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2005,ISBN9789189116795,p. 43(in Swedish).
^Hannon, W. B. “Christmas and Its Folk-Lore.”The Irish Monthly, vol. 52, no. 607, 1924, pp. 20–27. JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/20517297. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.
^Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand points to a prohibition in theSalic law that suggests theFranks sacrificed only the generative organs of the boar to the fertility god Freyr, reserving the rest for the feast: "Spuren paganer Religiosität in den frühmittelalterlichen Leges", inIconologia sacra: Mythos, Bildkunst und Dichtung in der Religions- und Sozialgeschichte Alteuropas: Festschrift für Karl Hauck zum 75. Geburtstag, ed.Hagen Keller and Nikolaus Staubach,Arbeiten zur Frühmittelalterforschung 23, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1994,ISBN978-3-11-013255-7, pp. 249–62,pp. 256–57(in German).
^Ernst Anton Quitzmann,Die heidnische Religion der Baiwaren: erster faktischer Beweis für die Abstammung dieses Volkes, Leipzig: Winter, 1860, OCLC 252676776,p. 86(in German) notes that Bavarian farmers feasted on a slaughtered pig at Yule.
^E. O. G. Turville-Petre,Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia, London: Weidenfeld, 1964,OCLC645398380, p. 255; Habbe wrongly sees this as referring to a bear sacrifice.
