Ritual directed toward álfar at a hill — NOT ÁLFABLÓT

OLD NORSE

Hóll einn er héðan skammt í brott er álfar búa í. Graðung þann er Kormákur drap skaltu fá og rjóða blóð graðungsins á hólinn utan en gera álfum veislu af slátrinu og mun þér batna.

TRANSLATION

“There is a hill a short distance from here in which álfar dwell. You shall obtain the bull that Kormákr killed and redden the outside of the hill with the bull’s blood, and make a feast for the álfar from the slaughter/meat, and you will recover.”

DIRECTLY ATTESTED:

Þorvarðr seeks advice from Þórdís concerning his wound. Þórdís says that álfar dwell in a nearby hóll (hill). She instructs him to obtain the bull that Kormákr killed, redden the outside of the hill with the bull’s blood, and make a veisla (feast) for the álfar from the slaughter. The stated purpose is healing. The instructions are subsequently carried out.

CONTEXTUAL:

This is the strongest independent narrative evidence examined in this study for deliberate ritual action directed toward álfar outside ALF-001. It provides unusually concrete details: álfar dwelling in a hill, the use of an animal’s blood upon that hill, food from the slaughter prepared as a feast for the álfar, and healing as the intended result.

The passage does not, however, call this rite alfablót. It therefore belongs to the broader álfar corpus rather than the explicit Álfablót attestation corpus.

MY INTERPRETATION:

KOR-001 demonstrates that Old Norse tradition could imagine álfar as recipients of deliberate ritual attention involving blood and food from an animal slaughter. This makes the passage highly relevant when considering the broader religious context in which an observance called Álfablót could exist.

It does not permit those ritual details to be transferred into ALF-001. The fact that both passages concern álfar does not establish that the actions described in Kormáks saga were the actions taking place inside Sigvatr’s farmstead.

NOT ESTABLISHED:

That this rite was Álfablót; that historical Álfablót involved bulls, blood, hills, feasting, or healing; that hóll here means a grave or burial mound; that the álfar inhabiting the hill were deceased humans or ancestors; that the rite was connected with Freyr, fertility, Vetrnætr, or Dísablót; that women generally officiated rites for álfar; or that Þórdís’s instructions preserve the procedure of ALF-001.

QUOTED FROM:

Kormáks saga, chapter 22.

FIND IT YOURSELF:

Locate chapter 22 of Kormáks saga and search for the Old Norse phrases álfar búa í, rjóða blóð graðungsins á hólinn, and gera álfum veislu af slátrinu.

TEXTUAL NOTE:

The wording of the passage requires two particularly important controls.

First, the bull is not described as being killed as part of Þórdís’s instructions. She tells Þorvarðr to obtain “the bull that Kormákr killed” (Graðung þann er Kormákur drap). The ritual instructions concern what is subsequently done with the bull’s blood and slaughter/meat. We should therefore not silently reconstruct a ritual slaughter performed at the hill.

Second, the location is called a hóll—a hill. The passage does not call it a haugr (mound/burial mound), identify it as a grave, or say that a dead person is buried there. The fact that álfar are said to dwell within the hóll does not by itself establish that these álfar are deceased humans or ancestors.

For those reasons, KOR-001 is important contextual evidence for ritual directed toward álfar, but it remains explicitly NOT AN ATTESTATION OF ÁLFABLÓT.

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