A (
Old Norse
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...
, ) or (
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, ) is a type of
altar
An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religion, religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, Church (building), churches, and other places of worship. They are use ...
or cult site, possibly consisting of a heap of stones, used in
Norse religion, as opposed to a roofed hall used as a
''hof'' (temple).
The Old Norse term is attested in both the ''
Poetic Edda
The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related ''Prose Edda'', although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse ...
'' and the ''
Prose Edda
The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' () or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some exten ...
'', in the
sagas of Icelanders
The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic Saga, sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and earl ...
,
skaldic poetry, and with its Old English cognate in ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...
''. The word is also reflected in various
place names
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for a proper nam ...
(in
English placenames as ''
harrow''), often in connection with
Germanic deities.
Etymology
Old Norse ''
hǫrgr'' means "altar, sanctuary", while Old English ''
hearg'' refers to a "
holy grove; temple, idol".
[Simek (2007:156).] From these, and the
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...
cognate ''harug'',
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...
''
*harugaz'' has been reconstructed, possibly cognate with
Insular Celtic ''
carrac'' "cliff".
Old Norse tradition
Literary
The term ''hörgr'' is used three times in poems collected in the ''
Poetic Edda
The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related ''Prose Edda'', although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse ...
''. In a stanza early in the poem ''
Völuspá'', the
völva says that early in the mythological timeline, the gods met together at the location of
Iðavöllr and constructed a hörgr and a
hof (
Henry Adams Bellows and
Ursula Dronke
Ursula Miriam Dronke (née Brown, 3 November 1920 – 8 March 2012Heather O'Donoghue"Ursula Dronke obituary: Inspirational teacher of Old Norse literature specialising in the sagas and poetry of medieval Iceland" ''The Guardian'' 25 March 201 ...
here
gloss ''hörgr'' as "temples"):
In the poem ''
Vafþrúðnismál''
Gagnráðr (the god
Odin
Odin (; from ) is a widely revered god in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism. Most surviving information on Odin comes from Norse mythology, but he figures prominently in the recorded history of Northern Europe. This includes the Roman Em ...
in disguise) engages in a game of wits with the
jötunn
A (also jotun; plural ; in the normalised scholarly spelling of Old Norse, ; or, in Old English, , plural ) is a type of being in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, are often contrasted with gods (the Æsir and Vanir) and with other no ...
Vafþrúðnir. Gagnráðr asks Vafþrúðnir whence the Van god
Njörðr came, for though he rules over many hofs and hörgar, Njörðr was not raised among the Æsir (
Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe (1782 – 19 July 1870) was an English scholar of Old English language, Anglo-Saxon literature.
Biography
In the early 1820s he worked as a banker in the House of Rothschild, in Paris. There he met Thomas Hodgkin, who treated hi ...
here glosses ''hörgr'' with "offer-steads" and Bellows glosses with "shrines"):
In the poem ''
Hyndluljóð'', the goddess
Freyja
In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a char ...
speaks favorably of
Óttar for having worshiped her so faithfully by using a hörgr. Freyja details that the hörgr is constructed of a heap of stones, and that Óttar very commonly reddened these stones with sacrificial blood (Thorpe glosses ''hörgr'' with "offer-stead", Bellows with "shrine", and Orchard with "altar"):
Epigraphic
The place name Salhøgum, that is mentioned on a 9th-century Danish
runestone known as the
Snoldelev Stone, has a literal translation which combines Old Norse ''sal'' meaning "hall" with ''hörgar'' "mounds," to form "on the hall mounds," suggesting a place with a room where official meetings took place. The inscription states that the man Gunnvaldr is the ''
þulaR'' of Salhøgum, which has been identified as referring to the modern town Salløv, located in the vicinity of the original site of the runestone.
Toponymy
Many place names in
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
and
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...
contain the word hörgr or hörgur, such as
Hörgá and Hörgsdalur in Iceland and Harg in
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
. When
Willibrord Christianized the Netherlands (~700 AD) the church of Vlaardingen had a dependency in Harago/Hargan, currently named Harga. This indicates that near those places there was some kind of religious building in medieval times.
Old English tradition
In the interpretation of Wilson, ''Anglo-Saxon Paganism'' (1992),
''hearg'' refers to "a special type of religious site, one
that occupied a prominent position on high land and was a communal place of worship for a specific group of people, a tribe or folk group, perhaps at particular times of the year", while
a ''
weoh'', by contrast, was merely a small shrine by the wayside.
''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...
'' has the compound ''hærgtrafum'' in the so-called "Christian excursus" (lines 175–178a), translated as "tabernacles of idols" by Hall (1950).
Following the regular evolution of English phonology, Old English ''hearg'' has become ''harrow'' in modern
English placenames (unrelated to the homophone ''
harrow'' "agricultural implement").
The London Borough of
Harrow derives its name from a temple on Harrow Hill, where
St. Mary's Church stands today.
The name of
Harrow on the Hill (''Harewe atte Hulle'') was adopted into Latin as ''Herga super montem''; the Latinized form of the Old English name is preserved in the name of ''Herga Road'' in Harrow.
[Room, Adrian: “Dictionary of Place-Names in the British Isles”, Bloomsbury, 1988. ]
Notes
References
*
Bellows, Henry Adams (Trans.) (1936). ''The Poetic Edda''.
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
. New York:
The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
* Bellows, Henry Adams (Trans.) (1923).
The Poetic Edda'. American-Scandinavian Foundation.
*
Dronke, Ursula (Trans.) (1997). ''The Poetic Edda: Volume II: Mythological Poems''.
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
* Kvaran, Guðrún (May 29, 2006).
Hvað þýðir orðið hörgur?" Vísindavefurinn.
* Orchard, Andy (1997). ''Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend''.
Cassell.
* Peterson, Lena (2002).
Nordisk runnamslexikon'. Swedish Institute for Linguistics and Heritage (Institutet för språk och folkminnen).
*
Simek, Rudolf (2007) translated by Angela Hall. ''Dictionary of Northern Mythology''.
D.S. Brewer.
*
*
Thorpe, Benjamin (Trans.) (1866).
Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: The Edda of Sæmund the Learned'' Part I. London: Trübner & Co.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horgr
Altars
Germanic paganism
Norse mythology