While Christmas was celebrated far and wide by Christians of medieval Europe, Vikings celebrated a winter holiday of their own. Yule or Jól (in Old Norse), was a pagan ceremony held for three nights, beginning at winter solstice, in mid- to late December during the time of year when days are long and winter is at its peak.
Origins of Yule
The word “yule” pre-dates the Christianization of Scandinavia around the year 1000 and refers to a midwinter festival that took place in December. The word appears in Anglo-Saxon sources that list the names of the months, according to Terry Gunnell, Professor Emeritus of Folkloristics at the University of Iceland and an expert in pre-Christian Scandinavian traditions.
Some scholars suggest that the term yule may derive from one of the names for Odin, the Norse war-god. Another theory is that it refers to the “wheel” of the calendar year.
“If you go to the north of Scotland around this period you find traditions of rolling burning wheels down hillsides at this time of the year” Gunnel explains. “And that’s to do with the turning of the year. This is really what Yule is about.”
Vikings celebrated Yule in midwinter, the darkest time of the year in Scandinavia when sunlight is limited to a few hours each day. In the northernmost reaches of Norway, the sun doesn’t rise for over 24 hours during peak polar nights. A deeply agrarian society, medieval Scandinavians depended on the sun for survival and Yule marked the beginning of the return of daylight amid darkness.
Yule was also a time of remembrance when memories of the deceased were brought to the forefront. “All times of changing tend to be liminal times when the doors between different worlds open up,” says Gunnel. “The dead and the living blend together. Even now you find people in Scandinavia going out to churchyards and lighting up candles—it’s a time to think about the dead.”
Feasting and Drinking
Yule celebrations involved great amounts of feasting and drinking. While sources for cultural festivals during the Viking Age are limited, Old Norse sagas and poems offer glimpses into the events of the pagan holiday. The Saga of Hakon the Good, a literary account written in the 1260s about Hakon the Good, king of Norway from 934 to 961, describes a Yule festival.
Jackson Crawford, a scholar of Norse mythology, notes that Hakon the Good was a Christian king, however, he allowed his subjects to remain pagan. He only insisted that everyone celebrate a holiday in December—Christmas or Yule—and stipulated that every free man consume a minimum amount of alcohol (approximately four gallons over the course of three nights, according to Crawford) in observance of the holiday.
Horse meat also played a significant role in Yule festivities. In The Saga of Hakon the Good, the Norwegian king attends a Yule feast thrown by his pagan subjects who insist that he eat some of the meat. Hakon refuses to partake, apparently because the eating of horse meat was considered a pagan ritual. After being threatened with violence, the Christian king compromised, laying a linen cloth on the kettle of boiling horse meat and inhaling some of the smoke. The sacrificing of horses was important in Viking religious practices, as demonstrated in several Old Norse sagas and the excavation of burial sites.
The Swearing of Oaths
Similar to making a New Year's resolution, the swearing of oaths was a tradition at Yule celebrations. However, in Viking culture, these resolutions were solemn, iron-bound agreements. The central conflicts of many Old Norse sagas revolve around someone’s ill-conceived oath that had to be fulfilled. An oath sworn on Yule was deemed extra sacred, Crawford notes.
Oaths sworn at Yule feasts, as written in the 13th-century The Saga of Hervor and Heidrek, pertain to the marriage of a woman. Meanwhile, oaths mentioned in Sturlaugs Saga Starfsama, a medieval Icelandic saga, and in The Poetic Edda, a collection of mythological poems dating to the 13th century, involve touching a pig while declaring the oath.
One example of an oath sworn on Yule is detailed in The Lay of Helgi Hjörvarðsson, a poem included in The Poetic Edda. The protagonist's brother, Hethin, vows to woo Helgi's partner, Svava, while under the influence of a curse cast upon him by a sorceress. Hethin can't bring himself to fulfill the oath and flees his homeland. Helgi tracks him down, but when Hethin tells him of the oath, Helgi does not grow angry, but instead notes an opportunity.
Helgi knows he is likely to die in an imminent duel with one of his enemies and readily leaves Svava to his brother. In stanza 33 of the poem, Helgi tells his brother, “Grieve not, Hethin, for true shall hold The words we both by the beer have sworn.”
