Table of Contents
- Bede’s Account of Winter-fylleþ
- Scandinavian Correlations: Álfablót and Ancestor Worship
- Probable Anglo-Saxon Rituals for Winterfylleth
- Reconstructing Winterfylleth Traditions
- Ingwine Winterfylleth
Bede’s Account of Winter-fylleþ
In De Temporum Ratione, Bede describes Winter-fylleþ (often modernized as Winterfylleth) as the “winter full moon,” a time marking the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon winter.1Bede. (1999). The Reckoning of Time (F. Wallis, Trans.). Liverpool University Press. (Original work published c. 725). This lunisolar calendar practice suggests that the Anglo-Saxons saw October’s full moon as a significant calendrical boundary, one that divided the productive agricultural season from the long, dark winter months. The importance of transitions between seasons in pre-Christian Germanic cultures often correlates with offerings, sacrifices, and rituals to gods, spirits, and ancestors.
Bede’s brief description points to a functional need to prepare for the challenges of winter. However, because Bede was a Christian monk, the ritual or spiritual significance of this observance is omitted or lost. We must fill the gaps using Norse and broader North Sea traditions.
Scandinavian Correlations: Álfablót and Ancestor Worship
The Álfablót was a private household offering to spirits or elves (álfar), likely performed in late autumn. Sources like the Heimskringla describe it as a secretive ritual, with strangers turned away from households participating in the blót. This suggests that it was intimate, tied to the land, and perhaps aimed at securing good fortune and fertility through winter.
Sigvatr Þórðarson and the Álfablót Encounter
Sigvatr Þórðarson, a Christian skald serving King Olaf II of Norway, describes in his poem Austrfararvísur2Wellendorf, J. (2022). Austrfararvísur and Interreligious Contacts in Conversion Age Scandinavia. In Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 74, 469-489. how he was turned away from several farmhouses during his travels in Sweden. These rejections occurred because the households were performing the Álfablót, a private ritual honoring elves and ancestors. This ritual reflects the intimate, family-centered nature of pre-Christian practices, emphasizing exclusion and sacred privacy. Outsiders, particularly Christians, were not permitted to witness or interfere with these rites, reinforcing boundaries between adherents of the old faith and the growing influence of Christianity.3Murphy, L. J. (2018). Paganism at Home: Pre-Christian Private Praxis and Household Religion in the Iron-Age North.
In a revealing exchange, one woman at a farmhouse explicitly identifies herself and her household as “heathens”. Her self-identification is not used pejoratively but as a deliberate expression of religious adherence. This detail, often overlooked, illustrates how some households actively maintained their pagan identity even during the conversion period. The woman’s words highlight the persistence of traditional beliefs as an intentional choice, rather than a passive survival of old customs.
Sigvatr’s rejection underscores the exclusivity of the Álfablót, which was not only a religious event but also a form of resistance to Christian encroachment. The privacy of the ritual and the refusal to offer hospitality to the Christian skald exemplify the tensions between the two worldviews. Scholars interpret these stanzas from Austrfararvísur as a reflection of the cultural and religious shifts in Scandinavia, where traditional rites persisted despite increasing pressure from Christian authorities.
• Elves and Ancestors: The elves were closely connected to ancestors in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon thought, with some scholars suggesting the word denotes a class of supernatural beings or even deified ancestors.
• Seasonal Rituals for Luck and Fertility: Offering to spirits at the threshold of winter may have been necessary to appease land-wights (guardian spirits) and ancestral figures to ensure survival through the winter months.
Given the similarity between the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythological frameworks, the Álfablót might have parallels in Anglo-Saxon practice. A Winterfylleth offering could have involved household rituals that sought blessings from spirits or ancestors for protection and prosperity in the dark half of the year.
Probable Anglo-Saxon Rituals for Winterfylleth
Though no direct description of an Anglo-Saxon Winterfylleth ritual survives, several elements can be inferred from Bede, Norse lore, and broader North Sea traditions:
1. Offerings to Elves, Ancestors, and Land-Spirits: Rituals to honor the ælfe or ancestral spirits would have been appropriate at this seasonal threshold. This could involve offerings of food, drink, or a portion of the last harvest.
2. Household Rituals and Sacrifice: Like the Norse Álfablót, this may have been a private event within households rather than a large community gathering.
3. Preparing for the Dead’s Return: There may have been early forms of ancestor veneration connected with Winterfylleth, anticipating the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead, as seen in later European traditions like Samhain and All-Hallows.
4. Culling Livestock and Offering Thanks: As with later Scandinavian Vetrnætr (Winter Nights), Winterfylleth could have involved the culling of animals, preserving meat for winter, and sacrificing animals or food in gratitude to the gods and spirits.
Cultural Continuity in Later Traditions
• Samhain: Though a Celtic festival, Samhain shares the theme of preparing for winter and interacting with the dead. It’s likely that both Celtic and Germanic peoples held parallel festivals centered around the season’s change, ancestral spirits, and ensuring good fortune through winter.
• All-Hallows and Hallowe’en: The Christianization of pre-Christian rites likely influenced the adoption of All-Hallows, with themes of honoring the dead surviving into these practices.
The Anglo-Saxon Winterfylleth may represent a more pragmatic, agricultural focus on preparing for scarcity while still engaging with gods, spirits, and ancestors for protection and blessings.
Reconstructing Winterfylleth Traditions
Carving and lighting Lanterns
The practice of carving vegetables into lanterns, particularly turnips, has roots in both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures. Although the modern jack-o’-lantern is often associated with Irish Samhain traditions, evidence from Worcestershire in England points to similar customs. References to “Hoberdy’s Lantern” or “Hob o’ Lantern” describe glowing turnips carved to ward off spirits or guide them, indicating a convergence of practices across the British Isles. This suggests that Anglo-Saxon communities likely engaged in parallel customs, using carved lanterns during seasonal transitions to protect against wandering spirits or honor the dead.
Both Irish and English traditions share motifs involving spirits needing light to navigate the land or to be repelled. In Irish Samhain lore, turnip lanterns were believed to distract malevolent spirits or guide friendly souls back to their homes. Anglo-Saxon customs involved bonfires and lanterns during harvests or other liminal times, aligning with later All Hallows’ observances. These lights, whether in the form of carved vegetables or bonfires, created symbolic boundaries between the living and the dead, underscoring the shared cultural importance of such practices.
Germanic contributions to these customs are reflected in folklore that associates liminal times with spirit crossings, where light-based protections play a central role. Lanterns and torches were significant in Anglo-Saxon rituals during harvests and Yule, serving both symbolic and practical purposes. This mirrors practices across European cultures where light was used to mark time, space, and protect the household from unseen forces during vulnerable seasonal transitions.
The development of carved vegetable lanterns likely represents a broader European tradition, shared across Celtic and Germanic cultures, with each group adapting their practices around seasonal changes. Over time, these customs evolved and merged, making it difficult to attribute the origins of the jack-o’-lantern to any single culture.
North Sea and Scandinvian Overlap
Interestingly, the Nordification of Frisian identity—where modern Frisians rediscovered and embraced their cultural affinity with Scandinavian pagan traditions—further highlights their ancient connection to these practices. This rediscovery includes the reinterpretation of figures like King Redbad, who resisted Christianization and came to symbolize the persistence of indigenous beliefs against external religious pressures. Such reinterpretations help shed light on the kinds of beliefs and seasonal rituals that may have defined Frisian pagan practice before the full imposition of Christianity in the region.4Schaakstukkenmuseum (n.d.). Vikings and Magna Frisia. Available at schaakstukkenmuseum.nl
Thus, Winterfylleth for the Frisians and their Anglo-Saxon cousins would likely have been a time to perform quiet household rituals, offering food, drink, or animal sacrifices to spirits and ancestors while preparing for winter’s hardships. These private, family-oriented rites—much like those observed in the Álfablót—focused on ensuring fertility, safety, and prosperity during the long dark months ahead, with each household playing an active role in safeguarding its own fortunes.
Sources such as Leiden University’s research into Frisian medieval history and cultural rediscoveries in the Netherlands illustrate how these regions shared common spiritual themes, further hinting at these authentic seasonal observances tied to Winterfylleth-like festivals. This continuity also explains why much of the Frisian heritage today continues to reflect subtle echoes of these older seasonal rites, though they have often been adapted into more Christianized or secular practices over time.
Winterfylleth likely served as a liminal point marking the boundary between the bright half of the year and the dark. Drawing from Bede, Norse Álfablót, and Winter Finding practices, we can envision an Anglo-Saxon observance that involved:
• Private household offerings to spirits, ancestors, and elves.
• Culling animals to prepare for the long winter.
• Prayers or small rites (e.g., gield) to secure blessings from the gods and spirits.
• Marking the close of the agricultural season with gratitude.
Ingwine Winterfylleth
The Winterfylleth Blót is a seasonal rite to mark the transition from autumn to winter, invoking gods, ancestors, and elves for guidance and protection through the dark months. Framed within the concept of gield—a sacred exchange—this blót emphasizes offerings to honor the divine and ancestral spirits. Reflecting a playful defiance of early Christian penitentials, participants offer grains to the ancestors, reclaiming rituals once forbidden.
Structure of the Winterfylleth Blót
1. Lighting the Hearth and Opening Invocation
The ceremony begins with the lighting of a hearth or ritual fire. This flame symbolizes warmth, continuity, and community strength during winter. The officiant offers an invocation to the gods, inviting their presence and favor:
• Woden: Honored as the leader of the Wild Hunt, who rides through the skies gathering spirits during the winter.
• Ingui-Frea: King of the Elves, representing fertility, abundance, and the protection of the land through the winter season.
• Wulð (Ullr): Revered as the god who rules the heavens while Woden leads the hunt, a patron god of archery, hunting, winter skills and woods-craft, embodying strength and stability.
Sample Invocation for offering tiber to Woden:
Woden, wanderer, wreathed in shadow,
Huntsman riding on high winds’ howl,
Seeker of wisdom through woe and ruin,
Breaker of bindings, bearer of doom.
Wolf-friend, war-lord, wielder of runes,
Fierce is your host that flies in the night.
Through forest and field your footsteps echo,
Calling the lost to your cold-beaten hall.
Bless us this night, O rider of storms,
Guide us through winter’s gathering dark,
Guard us from wights who walk unseen,
And grant us courage to greet the spring.
Sample Invocation for offering tiber to Ing-Frea:
Ing-Frea, elf-king, eldest of seeds,
Warden of wealth in the waning year,
Bearer of light to land-wights hidden,
Guard of the grain and giver of gold.
Furrows are filled with the fruits of your hand,
Earth drinks deep from the draught of your grace.
Lead us through frost where fields lay sleeping,
Shield us in darkness till dawn’s bright rise.
Ing, we offer these gifts in return,
A king’s due share of the gathered store.
Rest with the roots where riches grow,
And rise with the sun when spring unlocks.
Sample Invocation for offering tiber to Wulð:
Wulð, bold one, bearer of bow,
Steady of hand on the high-held helm.
While Woden rides with winds untamed,
You hold the heavens, the hunter’s crown.
Guardian of winter, watcher on high,
Guide us through frost and far-straying storms.
Where paths grow dim and peril draws near,
Your steps are sure on the stoniest road.
Wulð, we honor your watchful care,
And offer you gifts in grateful trust.
Keep the cold sky and calm the night,
Till Woden returns with the rising sun.
Key Ritual Components
1. Offerings to the Gods
• Mead and meat are offered to Woden, poured into the earth or hearth fire, symbolizing strength and safe passage through winter.
• Bread and fruits from the final harvest are presented to Ing, calling for prosperity and protection through the dormancy of the land.
• Wulth receives carved wooden charms or symbols representing weapons and strength, recognizing his role as guardian of the heavens in Woden’s absence.
2. Grain Offering to the Ancestors and Elves
• Grains—deliberately defying early Christian prohibitions against pagan offerings—are scattered on the earth or altar. This act symbolizes nourishment for the dead and land-wights. Participants speak the names of ancestors or elves they wish to honor, inviting their presence and blessings.
Activities and Communal Celebration
• Games and Contests: Symbolizing Wulth’s strength and preparation for winter, participants engage in simple contests of strength, such as wrestling or spear-throwing.
• Storytelling and Songs: Myths of Woden’s Wild Hunt and Ing’s journeys are shared around the fire. Stories might also recount the ancestors’ deeds, connecting the community to their roots.
• Craving and Lighting Lanterns: As part of the celebration, participants may want to create lanterns from gourds or vegetables, or using other creative means to light after nightfall, invoking protection and good fortune throughout winter.
Closing and Feast
The ceremony concludes with a communal symbel, where participants take turns speaking toasts, oaths, and blessings over a shared drinking horn. This would be a good time to share stories or remembrances of the honored dead.
A portion of the feast—featuring meat, bread, and mead—is reserved for the ancestors and spirits, left outside as an offering. The hearth is extinguished, signaling the end of the rite, and participants depart with the closing words:
“We give thanks to Woden, Ing, and Wulð. May the ancestors walk with us, and may the light return with the spring.”
