by Dirk Bruere (NeoPax)

The Winter Nights — Vetrnætr in Old Norse — mark the beginning of the cold half of the year, traditionally the time when the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin and the spirits of ancestors are closest. In modern Asatru they are one of the principal seasonal blótar, a time for sacrifice and remembrance. Ormswald is a private woodland near London, maintained by Dirk Bruere and the NeoPax Asatru community as a dedicated heathen ritual site — a rare and remarkable thing in early twenty-first century Britain.

This brief post, sent to alt.religion.asatru in October 2003, is a practitioner's immediate account of the previous evening's ceremony. It documents, in plain and vivid detail, what a small modern Heathen community actually did: the archery practice, the kindling of the hearthfire, the placing of a wooden Frey statue among the feast-food, the three rounds of mead poured from a rune-carved horn passed through the flames, the food sanctified under Thor's hammer. This is primary source material for the living practice of Asatru in early twenty-first century Britain.

Yesterday we celebrated the Winter Nights Blot.

In the afternoon some of us took our bows for archery practice in the arena, shooting over about 25yds into a target picture of a boar. As evening drew in we kindled a fire in the open hearth inside the Hof and made ready.

By 20:30 all the guests had arrived, making eleven of us (plus six dogs!), and a long table was set up across the width of the Hof. This was laden with food and drink — fruit, mead, beer, breads and cheeses. In the communal cauldron over the fire we cooked up a pork stew, while others roasted sausages. A small wooden statue of Frey was placed amongst the food on the table.

The Blot began with the filling of a rather remarkable mead horn. It was about three feet long, with silver fittings and carved with runes winding around and along it. There were three rounds of toasts, and between each participant the horn was passed across and through the flames of the fire.

The food was then sanctified under Thor's hammer and we drank and ate for the next four hours, sitting on benches covered in sheep and deerskins. The Hof was ablaze with candlelights and the fire, visible through the darkened forest when one looked into the doorway, which was kept open throughout.

Colophon

Dirk Bruere (screen name: "Dirk Bruere at Neopax") was a British Asatruar and the steward of Ormswald, a private woodland dedicated to the Norse gods located approximately 25 miles north of London. The NeoPax community used Ormswald for seasonal blótar and other ritual gatherings. This post to alt.religion.asatru and soc.religion.paganism was written on 19 October 2003, the morning after the Winter Nights Blot described.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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