If you're roasting a boar on a spit indoors, you need a way for smoke to escape. It is more likely that the central tower is not a copy of a steeple, but a venting system above the central fire/roasting pit, no different than a New England Sugar Shack. Norse practice was always to feast in long halls, with a firepit in the middle. It s also unsubstantiated conecture that the form of the temple was copied from churches at the time, church steeples were at the end of the church above the altar area. It is quite clear from the historical record that the Norse did *not* celebrate on the winter and summer solstices, as is cavalierly mentioned in the article: As late as the 1100s, Norse pagans were still celebrating on the traditional days of Jol (January full moon), Sigrblot (3 moons later) and Winternghts (6 moons later.) The Norse calendar and ceremonies were based on a lunar, not a solar, calendar. While the discovery is exciting, the assumptions regarding social practices are entirely unsubstantiated. Meat, drink and sometimes precious metals like gold would have been offered to wooden figurines within the building that represented the Old Norse gods - in particular the war god Odin, the storm god Thor, and the fertility god Freyr, who were commonly worshipped in the Old Norse religion and gave their names in English to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Related: 25 cultures that practiced human sacrificeĬeremonies would have been held in the god house for important festivals on the religious calendar, such as the midsummer and midwinter solstices - the shortest and longest nights of the year, respectively. The purpose of the site is also revealed by a concentration of cooking pits where food for religious feasts was prepared, and numerous bones - the remains of animal sacrifices.Ī large white "phallus" stone, roughly representing the male genital organ, was also found nearby several years ago and was probably part of the Old Norse fertility rituals, Diinhoff said. (Image credit: University Museum of Bergen) Ancient worship Post-holes that show its distinctive shape, including its central tower, have been unearthed at the site. The Old Norse "god house" was built from wood about 1200 years ago to worship gods like Odin, Thor and Freyr. Norse religious worship became more ideological and organized, and god houses at Ose were patterned on Christian basilicas that travelers had seen in southern lands, he said.Īs a result, Old Norse temples featured a distinctive high tower above the pitched roof, which was a copy of the towers of early Christian churches, he said.Īlthough the wooden building is now long-gone, the post-holes that remain show its shape, including the round central posts of its tower - a very distinctive construction that was only ever used in god houses, Diinhoff said. Related: Photos: Viking outposts possibly found in Canada "When the new socially differentiated society set in, in the Roman Iron Age, the leading families took control of the cult," he said. The remains of the god house at Ose, however, are from a later time when the area began to be dominated by an elite group of wealthy families - a distinction that arose as Scandinavian societies began to interact with the more stratified societies of the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. Their excavations revealed traces of early agricultural settlements dating to between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, including the remains of two longhouses that would have each been the center of a small farm for a family and their animals, Diinhoff said. Archaeologists unearthed the foundations of the ancient building last month at Ose, a seaside village near the town of Ørsta in western Norway, ahead of preparations for a new housing development.
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