Winternights

The Winternights, or Vetrnætr, is a twelve-day festival that begins on a night in mid-October, and marks the end of summer and the start of the winter. The name Vetrnætr (pronounced Vetter-natter) is Old Norse, composed of two words, vetr - meaning winter, and nætr - meaning nights. Vetrnætr is series of feasts and ceremonies (blóts, pronounced bloots) that celebrate the bounty of the harvest, and also honor the Disir, or female ancestor spirits.

Vetrnætr is celebrated by the Ásatrú; Ásatrú is an Icelandic name, taken by the modern-day Norse and Germanic people who worship the old northern gods (such as Thor, Odin, and Frey) and goddesses (such as Freya and Frigg). Though its practice was interrupted, Ásatrú has been reconstructed as closely as possible to the original religion of the Northern European people, based on the surviving historical records. Ásatrú intrigues me, because it would have been the religion of my ancestors.

2022 ofrenda

This month, Winternights festivals are held across Scandinavia, Germany, and New England and are marked by bonfires, tournaments, feasts, and arts and crafts vendors.

Agenda for today:

1. Read Root and Ritual

2. Set up my ancestor altar (ofrenda)

3. Disir meditation
4. Make more runes

5. Carve jack-o-lanterns
6. Feast and blót

1. Read "Root and Ritual":

I'm reading again from "Root and Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self," by Becca Piastrelli (2021). I'm on Part 2: Lineage, about tapping in to our ancestral memories to activate our connection to our line of descent. Or to our "affinity" ancestors.

Chapter 4 is called No Matter What, You Have a Lineage. "You have around one billion ancestors from the past 750 years, and all those lives existed to create yours. ... Sensing your connection with all that has evolved to create your existence today can pull you into the rewilding of the self - you in your most primal form."

I like this image. She says this is an entry into remembering that I belong here on earth; that I am already home. This is her offering to those of us whose ancestors have wandered so far from our ancestral homes that we are left feeling culture-less, and unconnected to the land we I've on.

"The truth is, we are all indigenous to somewhere. But so many of us feel the amnesia of the past several hundred years of colonization and white supremacy and long to know about those lands and what our people used to know and do with their hands. ... Despite any shame or confusion you might feel about your ancestral connections, it is possible to feel integrated with those who came before you..."

2. Set up my ancestor altar (ofrenda):

The veil between my world and the spirit world becomes thinner at the start of the winter season. Since Vetrnætr is a time to honor my ancestors, this is when I begin to set up my ofrenda, or ancestor altar. 

An ofrenda is a special table for the Mexican Days of the Dead that holds offerings and decorations, such as arches, candles, incense, skeleton toys, marigolds, photographs, sugar skulls, as well as some of the ancestor’s favorite foods and things, and little gifts. I've been collecting and making things for my ofrenda for years. This week I've arranged:

• skeletons, to remind me that death is a part of life
• tree of life candles, symbolic of the creation
• photos of my grandparents, father, my in-laws, and dear friends.

I will continue to add to my ofrenda throughout the next week.

3. Disir meditation:

As I said, Vetrnætr is series of feasts and ceremonies that celebrate the bounty of the harvest, and also honor the Disir, or female ancestor spirits. Sometime around now, the Norse tribes held a dísablót (sacrifice to the Disir), but the Anglo-Saxons honored the Disir later, on Mother’s Night”, which takes place in late December.

The female spirits known as the Disir (pronounced DEE-sir) are an enigmatic group of beings in the mythology and religion of the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples. The Disir are my female ancestors - grandmother spirits and guardians of the household. They have special knowledge in matters of family luck, illness, childbirth, personal problems, and other everyday matters.

Today I will hold a personal dísablót - I will light a candle on my ofrenda and settle into meditation. I'll bring a picture into my mind of my grandmothers - those strong German, Dutch, and Anglo women who traveled across the ocean and the frontier. I read their names out loud, and picture them gathering around me. I ask my grandmothers to make themselves known to me and stand by me during the coming year, that I may face the demands of the world with the wisdom of my kin at my back.

4. Make more runes:

Runes are an ancient writing system created about 100 - 200 AD by Germanic tribes and spread all over middle and northern Europe by the migration of these tribes. The runes were used by the Germans, the Scandinavians, the Angles and Saxons. They are found inscribed onto stone, bone, and metal, and were used for poems and ornamentation, as well as divination.

I've been working on a set of runes, burned onto circles cut from a hazel branch, and today I made three new ones:

laguz = water, flow

stan = stone, obstacle

cweorð = fire, transformation

5. Feast and blót:

Tonight my family is coming for a meal! And then we will have a very informal blót.

The blót ceremony, which means “to worship with sacrifice,” comes after the food. The purpose of the blót is to thank the gods for a successful end to the growing season, to share the bounty with the gods, and to ask for protection against the harshness of winter. The old prayer was til árs ok friðar, “for a good year and frith (peace)”.

In the old days the sacrifice would have been a blood sacrifice of a horse, pig, or cow, because they were farmers and had those. Today the Ásatrú usually substitute mead, beer, or juice (we will use fresh grape juice from our vines). The offering is made with a lot of ceremony, and those gathered can sense that the deity has tasted the drink. After that the group passes the drink around and everyone makes a toast and takes a sip.

6. Carve jack-o-lanterns:

2021 pumpkin carving

After the blót, we will carve our jack-o-lanterns!

The origin of the Jack-o-lantern can be traced back to Ireland and Scotland, where early Celtic people carved the images of spirit-guardians onto turnips and set them outside their doors to keep out the unwelcome visitors from the spirit world.

(It's possible that they used skulls before they used turnips, and turnips resembled the white bone of a real skull.)

When Irish and Scottish folks arrived in North America, they began to carve the native pumpkins instead.

We managed to gather for pumpkin carving all the way through the pandemic. Pumpkin carving together as a family is Unity Art, a thanksgiving for pumpkins and for family.