Åsgårdsreien — The storm that rides through the winter sky

Through the long nights of yule Jul × Adolph Tidemand, Norsk juleskik (1846), Trondheim kunstmuseum About this image ▸ The Norwegian (and broadly Scandinavian) midwinter feast — the modern Christmas, but with a pre-Christian inheritance from the Norse jól-blót still visible in its structure. The long run of nights, the great toasts, the porridge bowl set out on the barn threshold for the unseen one who lives on the farm, the julebukk (Yule goat) surviving now in a children's costume-walk, the Swedish Christmas ham traditionally traced back to the sonargöltr (yule-boar). The Norwegian Jul is the clearest practical example of how the household religion survived the official conversion — the form remained, the gods at its centre changed. Also discussed in Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayJulebukk — the masked goat of midwinterTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year , Norwegians painted tar crosses on the doors of every barn, byre, and beer cellar — because the Oskoreia was riding, and a household that forgot paid for it.

Oskoreia means, by one reading, roughly the terrifying ride: a host of the unquiet dead that swept across the sky on the darkest nights of the year, from Lussinatt on the thirteenth of December through Epiphany. The riders were the ones the churchyard could not settle — executed criminals, suicides, the unbaptized, drunkards, killers — and their horses were black and breathed fire. (The name most people use now, Åsgårdsreien, the ride out of Asgard led by Odin Odin × Georg von Rosen, Oden som vandringsman (1886), illustration for the 1893 Swedish Edda edition About this image ▸ Chief of the Æsir in Norse mythology. The god of chieftains, poets, warriors, wisdom, magic, and the runes. He gave one of his eyes for a drink from Mímir's well of wisdom and hanged nine nights and days from the world-tree Yggdrasil — pierced by his own spear — to win the secret of the runes. Half of those who died well in battle came to his hall, Valhalla; the other half went to Freyja's hall, Folkvang. In farm religion Odin was the god of the warband elite — the chieftain weighing his odds, the skald who served him — not the god of ordinary protection. Mjölnir hung at the farmer's neck; the Odin-oath belonged in the chieftain's mouth. Also discussed in Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayNordisk Mytologi — Odin, the giants, and Ragnarok , is the newer reading: “Asgard” had already crept into the old word in some valleys — Andreas Faye recorded the folk name as early as 1833 — and the nineteenth-century Romantics seized on it and handed the host to a god. The farmers who actually feared it never put one at its head.)

You could not fight the host; you could only hide from it. A man who heard the hooves come over the ridge threw himself face-down in the snow, lower than a horse’s belly, and did not look up. The buildings were guarded with the tar crosses, the people by staying indoors and keeping still.

Mostly, the Oskoreia took. It raided the farms it crossed — drank the Christmas ale dry, emptied the larder, and borrowed the horses, riding them across the sky and leaving them foundered and sweat-dark in the stalls by morning. The story told most often turns on a man who forgot the cross on his beer-cellar door. On Christmas morning a stranger thanked him for the ale; the man said he had given none. You slept, the stranger told him, while we drank your cask dry and filled it back with horse’s blood — and the man remembered then being dragged across the night sky until dawn. People left ale and food out to be spared exactly this.

The host’s leader changed with the valley. In Telemark Telemark × August Cappelen, Foss i nedre Telemark (1852), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Historic region and county in the inland-southern part of Norway, between the southeastern coast and the central Hardangervidda plateau. Home to Heddal Stave Church — the largest of the twenty-eight surviving Norwegian stave churches, standing nearly thirty metres tall — and to the heavy-water production facility at Vemork whose sabotage by Norwegian commandos in February 1943 disrupted the German atomic-weapons programme. The name Telemark also gives the world the modern ski-turn technique developed there in the nineteenth century. In the folklore record Telemark is the deepest vein of all — the landscape of the ballad collectors, the hardingfele legends, and the lake serpent of Seljord. Telemark Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playTroll — the monsters of the mountainsUtburd — the unbaptized child that will not restHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretSjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjords and Setesdal it rode behind Guro Rysserova — Guro Horse-Tail — on her black mare, and the ballad tells of Sigurd Svein, whom she meets and asks whether he would be foremost in the ride or lowest in heaven; he chooses the ride. The pastor Magnus Brostrup Landstad wrote the ballad down in Seljord Seljord × Unknown photographer, Seljord kirke (c. 1935–1950), Mittet collection, National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Village and municipality in Telemark, on lake Seljordsvatnet — a parish unusually rich in recorded folklore. The lake serpent, Seljordsormen, entered the written record in 1750, when Gunleik Andersson Verpe of Bø reported it overturned one of his boats; the priest Hans Jacob Wille described it in his 1786 Beskrivelse over Sillejords Præstegield. In 1989 the municipality took the serpent, gold on red, as its coat of arms; a sonar expedition in August 2000 found nothing it could identify. The medieval stone church (c. 1150–1180) carries the legend that seven huldra tails — invisible to a Christian eye — hang inside, fallen from huldra brides wed there. Magnus Brostrup Landstad, parish priest 1839–1848, and Olea Crøger gathered most of the ballads in Norske Folkeviser (1853) here. Seljord, Telemark Also discussed in Sjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjordsHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secret in the 1840s. The thirteenth of December carried its own terror in Lussi, a hag who led her own ride and came down the chimney of any house behind on its yule work.

Peter Nicolai Arbo Peter Nicolai Arbo × Peter Nicolai Arbo, Selvportrett (Drammen byleksikon / Drammen kommune) About this image ▸ Norwegian history painter (1831–1892), raised at Gulskogen manor in Drammen and trained at the academy in Düsseldorf, who specialized in large narrative canvases from Norse mythology and Norwegian history. Valkyrien (1869) sends a lone armored battle-maiden on a black horse across a storm sky; Åsgårdsreien (1872), his best-known work, painted in Paris after Johan Sebastian Welhaven's 1844 poem, fills the night with the airborne host — black horses, ravens, spear-bearing riders. Both hang in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, where the 1872 canvas carries the English title The Wild Hunt of Odin. painted the hunt in 1872, after Welhaven’s poem Asgaardsreien, and titled the canvas Åsgårdsreien — the Asgard reading the farmers themselves had never used. It hangs in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, catalogued in English as The Wild Hunt of Odin.