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111-564: Filefjell or sometimes Fillefjell, might be a double-name as "file" is thought to be derived from Old Norse word Fjáll , the same root that evolved into the modern word "fjell". Thus Filefjell in English would be "Mountain-Mountain". Filefjell stretches from Lærdal Municipality in the eastern part of Vestland county, at the innermost part of the Sognefjorden , to Vang Municipality in Valdres in

222-407: A 15-meter longhouse have revealed gullgubber and "strike-a-lights," suggesting cultic use. The as yet unpublished site is identified as a 6th-7th century building that was part of a farm and apparently was never used as a residence, and so far has yielded 29 gullgubber, a half-dozen strike-a-lights, a scramasax dated to approximately 550 C.E., pearls, knives, and a ring-nail. In 2011, remains of

333-400: A building with size 14 by 7 meters with slightly curved walls marked by large postholes was found at Ose on the outskirts of the town of Ørsta in the county of Møre og Romsdal . It is located 150 meters from the current shore of the local fjord. The building was remarkable in that it in its centre, a quadratic-shaped structure had four holes for round pillars which is interpreted as holding up

444-470: A central spire, similar to Uppåkra. The longer side walls had probably rectangular heavier roof carrying posts with a size of about 40x40 cm. It is interpreted as being a hof. In one of the pillars of the building a part of an iron plough was found. This is interpreted as an offering for a place of worship. Remains of fireplaces was found in the building thought to be used in heathen ceremonies. The burnt remains of pillars were C-14 carbon dated in 2021 to be from

555-701: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse

666-549: A dedicated temple: an independent sacred place, built specifically for ritual proceedings, comparable to a Christian church . By extension, it was also commonly believed that the hofs had been located on the same sites as the churches that had superseded them. This was the dominant theory until in 1966 the Danish archeologist Olaf Olsen published the results of a comprehensive study of archeological investigations in Iceland and Sweden and of

777-416: A farmhouse and only incidentally a hof. However, in addition to clarifying the relationship between the annexes and the main hall, the re-excavation revealed even more bone fragments, and analysis shows that at least 23 cattle had been sacrificial offerings. They were killed in an unusual manner, by a blow between the eyes, and their skulls displayed outside for years. The horns had not been removed and in age

888-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within

999-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has

1110-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative  – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive

1221-408: A heathen hof in its entirety. The remains of the building consist of holes and trenches for the placement of the pillars and walls that once stood there. Various floor levels were discernible, and it was possible to determine that the hof was initially erected in the 3rd century C.E. on the site of an unusually large longhouse, and then rebuilt six times without appreciable changes, the last version of

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1332-411: A large longhouse with a small separate room at the north end, 42 meters long overall and 8 meters wide in the main section. It had three small protruding sections, two near the south end and one on the opposite side. There was a fireplace in the center and smaller fireplaces at both ends of the main room. Animal bones were found all around the inside of the walls in the main room, and a smaller number in

1443-455: A large number of the oldest Danish churches. He was not able to confirm a single case of a heathen hof underlying a Christian church, and concluded in light of this that a hof could not have been an independent building. Particularly in reference to the Hofstaðir building in Iceland (see below), he suggested the model of the temple-farm: that rather than being dedicated exclusively to religious use,

1554-415: A large temple built in his hayfield, a hundred feet long and sixty wide. Everybody had to pay a temple fee. Thor was the god most honoured there. It was rounded on the inside, like a vault, and there were windows and wall-hangings everywhere. The image of Thor stood in the center, with other gods on both sides. In front of them was an altar made with great skill and covered with iron on the top. On this there

1665-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,

1776-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to

1887-448: A piece of a string instrument were found. These finds indicate with a high degree of likelihood that the hall was used for ceremonial feasts. In addition, large numbers of offered items were found in the area, among others a huge gold ring, amulets with mythological motifs, and animal bones. These finds all suggest that the entire complex was an important religious center. Other finds in the area, for example weapons and jewelry, show that

1998-435: A place of frequent ritual gatherings, probably in spring and summer. The unusual method of slaughter was deliberately dramatic and would have produced a fountain of blood. The skulls were found among roof and wall debris, all but one grouped in two places at the south end of the hall: inside the southeast annex and between the southwestern annex and the wall of the main building; it seems plausible that they were on display when

2109-509: A ritual space based in overall form on the long house. Under the medieval stone church at Mære in Nord-Trøndelag , archeological investigation in the 1960s revealed remnants of a hof, the only one found under a Norwegian church. The building had been of post construction, and gullgubber were found in one post-hole. At Hov in Vingrom near Lake Mjøsa in southern Norway, excavations of

2220-477: A shelter for the god-images which were mounted on the inside pillars. The site dates to about 400 CE, during the Nordic Iron Age , and had been covered with earth to conceal it. Several human teeth, a partial skull, and two glass beads were found, but no gullgubber. The site was later bulldozed to make way for housing. In late summer and early autumn 2020, during archeological survey for a build site, remains of

2331-472: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after

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2442-399: A site of heathen worship were found at Ranheim on the outskirts of Trondheim , consisting of a stone circle approximately 15 m in diameter and 1 m in height delineating an altar, a ceremonial way marked by standing stones, and a building about 5.3 x 4.5 m in size, consisting of 12 large pillars resting on stone bases and enclosing 4 pillars. The building is thought to have been

2553-410: A slope, and interpreted this as a very large baking pit. A number of square ruins in Iceland, above all one at Sæból , were interpreted as the remains of hofs, but Olsen demonstrated that they are identical in form and scale with horse stalls still in use in Iceland. He ascribed the hof legends attached to them to romantic nationalism and pointed out that many were called medieval chapels ( bænhús ) at

2664-457: A subject of scholarly debate. Tacitus famously wrote in Germania : The Germans do not think it in keeping with the divine majesty to confine gods within walls or to portray them in the likeness of any human countenance. Their holy places are woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to that hidden presence which is seen only by the eye of reverence. There are in fact several sites in

2775-601: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It

2886-460: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created

2997-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding

3108-477: Is a better way, volunteers to personally lead the destruction of the temple and its idols, which Bede says was located at Goodmanham , just east of York : So he . . . asked the king to give him arms and a stallion—for hitherto it had not been lawful for the Chief Priest to carry arms or to ride anything but a mare. . . . Girded with a sword and with a spear in his hand, he mounted the king's stallion and rode up to

3219-403: Is believed to have been built on a pagan temple . This site was the meeting place for people from Sogn , Valdres and Hallingdal , who met to perform midsummer blót and trade. When Christianity came the hov was transformed into a church but the traditions remained mostly unchanged. Little is known of this until the 17th century when the church was upgraded. People started to believe that

3330-537: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke

3441-461: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At

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3552-403: Is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian

3663-574: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to

3774-445: Is not found, the people's wish will be granted. Rather than a single tree, the passage that follows on the great sacrifices held every nine years at Uppsala speaks of a sacred grove adjoining the hof, of which each and every tree is sacred and in which the human and animal victims are hanged. Adam's presumed source, Sweyn Estridsen, was in service as a young man (from 1026 to 1038) with King Anund Jakob of Sweden, and therefore had

3885-457: Is said that when the wives packed for their husbands going to the market, they also packed their funeral-shirts. In 1808 the priests were so angry with the ungodly activities that they demanded the church to be torn down and the market was banned. A modern church were built at the site in 1971. Filefjell is nowadays used mostly in recreational activities. Fishing , hunting , hiking and skiing are popular. Many holiday cottages have been built

3996-558: Is taken from Old Norse . Etymologically, the Old Norse word hof is the same as the Dutch and German word hof , which originally meant a hall and later came to refer to a court (originally in the meaning of a royal or aristocratic court) and then also to a farm. In medieval Scandinavian sources, it occurs once as a hall, in the Eddic poem Hymiskviða , and beginning in the fourteenth century, in

4107-459: Is that at Gamla Uppsala ("Old Uppsala") in Sweden , which was described by Adam of Bremen around 1070, likely based on an eyewitness description by King Sweyn Estridsen : That folk has a very famous temple called Uppsala . . . . In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor , occupies a throne in the middle of

4218-456: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of

4329-736: Is the dominant word for a temple in the Icelandic sagas , but is rare in skaldic poetry . Many places in Scandinavia, but especially in West Norse regions, are named hof or hov , either alone or in combination. These include: Some placenames, often names of farms, combine the word, such as: There is also one in England: the village of Hoff in Cumbria , with an associated Hoff Lund, "temple grove." The nature of Germanic places of worship has long been

4440-426: Is the same as most other Norwegian mountain areas. In the main valley, birch and species of salicaceae grows up to elevations of about 1,200 metres (3,900 ft). Higher up, the landscape can be described as a tundra where moss and different forms of ericaceae dominate the landscape. Grouse , hare , fox , and the occasional wolverine and moose are found. Filefjell also has numerous wild reindeer . In

4551-528: Is thought to have been a hof associated with the longhouse residence. In addition, a nearby hillside appears to have been a sacred grove : numerous settings of crushed stone and fire sites were found all over it, and evenly distributed on, under, and around them, large amounts of burned and crushed bone, burned and crushed clay fragments, and resin drops, and smaller numbers of beads and blades such as knives and arrowheads. The bone fragments were very worn, indicating they had been left exposed or possibly ground, and

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4662-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩

4773-499: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on

4884-525: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation

4995-657: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks

5106-548: The Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse

5217-576: The Wendish temple at Arkona , a later and non-Germanic site. Moreover, Schuchhardt's excavation was rushed and his own data do not certainly support the square plan that he later claimed to have found at two other Baltic sites. Further excavations at Gamla Uppsala in the 1990s uncovered remains of a large settlement and a very large hall near the church, which has been identified as a hall hof, either "a feasting hall in which pagan festivals took place at certain times" or, based on its lack of internal divisions,

5328-654: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for

5439-590: The "court" meaning. Otherwise, it occurs only as a word for a temple. Hof also occasionally occurs with the meaning "temple" in Old High German and is cognate with the Old English hof . In Scandinavia during the Viking Age , it appears to have displaced older terms for a sacred place, vé , hörgr , lundr , vangr , and vin , particularly in the West Norse linguistic area, namely Norway and Iceland. It

5550-551: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within

5661-904: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants

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5772-642: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian

5883-509: The 1990s, someone attempted to start reindeer herding in Filefjell, but the project was later abandoned. Some of the reindeer herd, which was moved down from Trøndelag , was left to mix with the native reindeer. The lakes are populated by trout . People have used Filefjell since the Stone Age . Reindeer hunters dug systems of pits to catch their pray and these can still be seen. Arrow heads from

5994-560: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French

6105-513: The Norwegian winter. The road is rarely closed due to wind or snow, making it the most reliable of the mountain passes in Norway. On both sides of the valley the terrain climbs steeply up to plateaus, with rolling hills and numerous lakes at sitting at elevations of about 1,300 metres (4,300 ft). The highest peak of the range is Sulefjellet at 1,812 metres (5,945 ft). The biology of Filefjell

6216-468: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused

6327-411: The animals ranged from just full-grown to middle-aged, both of these being unique in Icelandic farming at the time; also the majority appear to have been bulls, which is very surprising in a dairy economy. The dates of the skulls varied, with the last having been slaughtered around 1000 C.E., and one sheep skeleton was found that had been killed in the same manner as the cattle. The bone finds thus indicate

6438-637: The aristocracy, but others, for example Uppåkra in Scania (formerly in Denmark, now in Sweden) functioned as places of assembly for the local population. The temple found in England, at Yeavering , now appears to be an early example of a hall-associated hof, rather than an anomaly. Gro Steinsland , a historian of Norse paganism , is of the opinion that in effect it was economic resources as much as local tradition that led to

6549-463: The beginning of the 19th century and had transformed into ruined hofs by the end of that century. In 2000–2004, excavations in Uppåkra , south of Lund in Scania , revealed that a heathen hof was located there for several hundred years. Since it was possible to excavate the entire site and since it had not been disturbed, this excavation afforded the first opportunity for a purely archeological study of

6660-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,

6771-520: The bowl. This blood, which was called sacrificial blood [ hlaut ], was the blood of live animals offered to the gods. The gods were placed around the platform in the choir-like structure within the temple. All farmers had to pay a toll to the temple . . . . The temple godi was responsible for the upkeep of the temple and ensuring it was maintained properly, as well as for holding sacrificial feasts in it. Snorri Sturluson 's description in Heimskringla of

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6882-440: The building dating to the early Viking Age. The building material was in all cases wood, which was also sunk into the ground. The building was not large, only 13 meters long and 6.5 meters wide. The walls on the long sides were made of slightly convex, rough-cut oak posts or "staves," which were sunk into a trench in the earth more than one meter deep. At each corner of the building stood a pillar or corner-post. The central part of

6993-427: The building did indeed serve as a hof. So do the surprisingly small size of the main hearth despite the great size of the building; the relatively few finds of valuable objects (and complete lack of weapons), and the location, which is convenient for travel and highly visible, but not good for a farmstead. Hence, the unusual evidence of frequent meat feasting does not simply indicate a particularly wealthy settlement, but

7104-536: The building was in use and that where they were found was storage, whether normal winter storage or concealment after conversion to Christianity caused the abandonment of the building in the mid-eleventh century. The goat sacrifice can be interpreted as a termination ritual. Olsen also regarded as highly significant that only 9 meters from the south door of the building was an oval pit containing ash, charcoal, fragments of animal bone, and sooty stones. He pointed out that Icelandic farms usually disposed of their refuse down

7215-418: The building, which stood free of the outer walls, was formed by four gigantic wooden columns. The holes for these and for the corner-posts are unusually wide and more than two meters deep, and stone packing found in three of the center holes indicates columns at least 0.7 meters in diameter. The building had three entrances, two in the south and one in the north. Each opening had hefty posts on either side, and

7326-466: The building. The hof is near the center of the settlement and there are at least four burial mounds to the west and north of it, probably dating to the early Bronze Age or the early Iron Age. At Lunda farm in Södermanland , excavation revealed a small building parallel to the north side of a longhouse, with three phallic figurines inside, one solid gold, the other two cast in bronze and gilded. This

7437-671: The chamber; Wotan and Frikko [presumably Freyr ] have places on either side. The significance of these gods is as follows: Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather and crops. The other, Wotan—that is, the Furious—carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus. But Wotan they chisel armed, as our people are wont to represent Mars . Thor with his scepter apparently resembles Jove . . . . For all

7548-465: The church had healing power, and that sinners had a better chance of getting absolution here. People started to come here in great numbers for the Mass on July 2. But the main attraction was the market, where herring and other sea products were traded for inland products like fur . Horse trading were also part of the market. Drinking, fighting, gambling, rape and murder were not uncommon in these markets. It

7659-417: The church, dated to approximately 900 C.E., he found post-holes that he interpreted as the remains of the great hof described by Adam of Bremen . He interpreted them as two concentric rectangles, the remains of an almost square building with a high roof. However, as Olsen demonstrated, the remains are too sparse to support this interpretation, which is in any case based on Carl Schuchhardt 's reconstruction of

7770-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/

7881-460: The development of dedicated hofs: in the richest areas, actual temples developed, while in poor areas, the spaces that people had were what they used for blót . In the first chapter, in in heiðnu lǫg , of book four of Landnámabók (Hauksbók) it is stated that Iceland was divided into four courtdistricts all containing three hofs each. Chapter 2 of Kjalnesinga saga contains an extended description of Thorgrim Helgason's temple at Hof: He had

7992-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it

8103-429: The gods there are appointed priests to offer sacrifices for the people. If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor; if war, to Wotan, if marriages are to be celebrated, to Frikko. A note or scholion appended to this passage adds the following description: A golden chain goes round the temple. It hangs over the gable of the building and sends its glitter far off to those who approach, because

8214-450: The hill than the modern asphalt-road does today, and is still used for hiking . It has its name after king Sverre I of Norway who traveled here with his army. The road got official status as main road in the year 1791. Maristova (built on Queen Margrete's command around 1390) and Nystuen in Vang (first mentioned in 1627 but believed to be much older) guesthouses provide for travelers along

8325-456: The historical period at which heathen rites apparently took place in the open, including Hove in Trøndelag , Norway, where offerings were apparently brought to images of the gods on a row of ten posts, but no trace of buildings was found. Yet Tacitus himself wrote of an image of Nerthus . And in his Annals he refers to a temple of Tanfana . Most older scholars considered that a hof would be

8436-748: The hof was used for the feasts and blóts that were held when the king was at the location. Similar complexes of buildings are known from other places in southern Scandinavia, for example Järrestad in Scania, Lisbjerg in Jutland, and Toftegård on Zealand. These royal centers, called central places by archeologists, perhaps also constituted a parallel to the royal palaces of the Merovingian , Carolingian , and Holy Roman Emperors , such as Charlemagne 's palace complex at Aachen . These also included religious buildings, marketplaces, and workshops that were primarily used when

8547-438: The hofs were also dwellings, and that the word hof referred to the great farm in a rural settlement, at which the most powerful man also held sacrifices ( blótar ) and feasts. However, new archeological discoveries in the late 20th century revealed several buildings in various parts of Scandinavia that do appear to have functioned purely as cult sites. Some of them, for example the hall at Tissø , Denmark, were associated with

8658-416: The idols. . . . [W]ithout hesitation, as soon as he reached the shrine, he cast into it the spear he carried and thus profaned it. Then . . . he told his companions to set fire to the shrine and its enclosures and destroy them. . . . Here it was that the Chief Priest . . . desecrated and destroyed the altars that he had himself dedicated. In the 1990s, Danish archaeologists excavated a chieftain's residence on

8769-455: The last 30 years. Several hotels are used by tourists who come to ski in the mountain or in the downhill skiing park. Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with

8880-402: The layout of the hof: There he had a temple built, and it was a sizeable building, with a door on the side-wall near the gable. The high-seat pillars were placed inside the door, and nails, that were called holy nails [ reginnaglar ], were driven into them. Beyond that point, the temple was a sanctuary. At the inner end there was a structure similar to the choir in churches nowadays and there

8991-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If

9102-410: The middle of the temple floor, and kettles hung over them. The sacrificial beaker was to be borne around the fire. Jan de Vries considered the 100 by 60 foot dimensions and the eternal flame exaggerated; the human sacrifices in a pool by the door, not so much. Several sagas, including Kjalnesinga saga , also mention hofs being surrounded by a fence. The most famous heathen hof of the Viking Age

9213-708: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse

9324-503: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around

9435-468: The opportunity to personally see the hof at Uppsala. But we do not know how accurately Adam reports what he said. Accuracy concerning heathenry was not his objective in writing his history. In his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ( Ecclesiastical History of the English People ), Bede describes the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria . His high-priest, Coifi , convinced that Christianity

9546-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having

9657-510: The outskirts of Tissø in West Zealand County . Among other finds, they uncovered the remains of a large longhouse or hall that was in use between the 6th and 11th centuries C.E. It was apparent from the postholes that the roof had been supported by a few very strong columns and that the building had been tall, possibly two-story. It contained a large central room, where a large number of animal bones, fragments of Frankish glass beakers, and

9768-431: The paved area in front of the entrance, suggesting the building had been used for ritual feasts. In the eleventh century the building and its yard had been covered with a thick layer of gravel and a church erected 100 m away. In a 1926 excavation, Sune Lindqvist found at least three levels of previous occupation under and immediately to the north of the church at Gamla Uppsala . In the layer immediately underlying

9879-594: The peripatetic court was in residence. The name of the settlement of Hofstaðir, near Mývatn , and local tradition indicate it was the site of a hof. The site was excavated by Daniel Bruun in 1908 and again by Olaf Olsen in 1965. Since 1991, the Icelandic Archeological Institute ( Fornleifastofnun Íslands - FSI) has re-investigated it; since 2002, in an international investigation under the Landscape of Settlements program. The excavations have uncovered

9990-422: The process of blót repeats the same information about the blood and the bowl, and continues: . . . and with [the hlautteinar ] were to be smeared all over with blood the pedestals of the idols and also the walls of the temple within and without; and likewise the men present were to be sprinkled with blood. But the meat of the animals was to be boiled and to serve as food at the banquet. Fires were to be lighted in

10101-424: The road. The hosts of the shelters were compensated by the king to aid travelers and provide shelters for those who used the road. This lasted until 1830. In Smedalen there has been, and still is, dairy farming in the summer. Goats , cows and sheep are herded in the rich mountain pastures and goat cheese is still sold in some places. In the middle of Smedalen, at Kyrkjestølen, St. Thomas Church stands. It

10212-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because

10323-522: The sacrificial blood bowl [ hlautbolli ]. This blood was to be sprinkled over men and animals, and the animals that were given in sacrifice were to be used for feasting when sacrificial banquets were held. Men whom they sacrificed were to be cast into a pool which was outside by the door; they called it Blótkelda (Well of Sacrifice). There is a similar passage in Eyrbyggja saga about Thorolf Mostrarskegg's temple at Hofstaðir, which gives more information about

10434-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains

10545-463: The same period have also been found. Smedalen is the main valley in Filefjell. The name means The Smith Valley and evidence of Iron production in the Iron Age . Burial Mounds from the same period are also found here. The Filefjell Kongevegen (The Kings Road) is the name of the old trail over Filefjell. Due to the sometimes wet and marshy land in the valley bottom, the old trail runs farther up in

10656-403: The shrine stands on level ground with mountains all about it like a theater. Another scholion describes natural features near the hof: Near this temple stands a very large tree with wide-spreading branches, always green winter and summer. What kind it is nobody knows. There is also a spring at which the pagans are accustomed to make their sacrifices, and into it to plunge a live man. And if he

10767-406: The site was associated with the highest strata of society, possibly with the royal family. The entire complex, which also included workshops and a marketplace, may have functioned as a temporary residence for the king when he made periodic visits to that part of the kingdom. Investigations have shown that the complex was only in use for short periods. The king also functioned as a religious leader, and

10878-413: The small room. Various associated buildings have also been excavated. Olsen used Hofstaðir as a particularly good example of the idea of the temple-farm. Despite its large size, in form the building is identical to other longhouses, the small room at the north end was a later addition, and the 1908 excavation had not fully revealed the entrances, annexes, and ancillary buildings. He considered it primarily

10989-404: The southwestern had a projecting section in addition. That must therefore have been the main entrance of the hof. This has been interpreted as the men's entrance, the entrance on the north side as the women's entrance, and the southeastern entrance as for the priest, on the model of stone churches. Two large iron door rings were found, one in the fill around a post, the other about 10 meters from

11100-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/

11211-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though

11322-548: The very few that could be identified were from pigs and either sheep or goats. At Borg in Norrköping Municipality , Östergötland , a small building was excavated that had two rooms on either side of a central hallway. There was a stone foundation interpreted as a hörgr at the far end of the hallway from the entrance. Two amulet rings were found near this and 98 amulet rings and 75  kg of unburned animal bones, including numerous skulls and jawbones, were found in

11433-523: The western part of Innlandet county. In the north, it borders the western part of the Jotunheimen mountain range. To the south, it meets with the Buskerud county border. The European route E16 crosses the mountain and reaches its highest point at the 1,013-metre (3,323 ft) Varden. The road follows a valley through the mountainous area, and because of this is somewhat protected from the fierce weather of

11544-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to

11655-425: Was a raised platform in the middle of the floor like an altar, where a ring weighing twenty ounces and fashioned without a join was placed, and all oaths had to be sworn on this ring. It also had to be worn by the temple priest at all public gatherings. A sacrificial bowl [ hlautbolli ] was placed on the platform and in it a sacrificial twig [ hlautteinn ]—like a priest's aspergillum—which was used to sprinkle blood from

11766-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in

11877-571: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of

11988-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut

12099-684: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into

12210-434: Was to be a fire which would never go out—they called it sacred fire. On the altar was to lie a great armband, made of silver. The temple godi was to wear it on his arm at all gatherings, and everyone was to swear oaths on it whenever a suit was brought. A great copper bowl was to stand on the altar, and into it was to go all the blood which came from animals or men given to Thor. They called this sacrificial blood [ hlaut ] and

12321-410: Was used partitively and in compounds and kennings (e.g., Urðarbrunnr , the well of Urðr; Lokasenna , the gibing of Loki). There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong" inflectional paradigms : Temple (Germanic paganism) A heathen hof or Germanic pagan temple is a temple building of Germanic religion . The term hof

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