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THE DIVINE SEEVICE OF THE HEATHENS. 221
The tliird great sacrificial festival vfas held at the
beginning of Sunmier, probably on Summer's-daj,
which, according to both the ancient and the modem
Calendar of the Northmen, falls on the middle of
April. This festival was called blot at sumri
—
Sac-
rifice toward Summer, or Sigr-blot Sacrifice for
Victory, a name which it received because they
then sacrificed for victory and success in the mili-
tary and Viking- expeditions which they might
undertake in the approaching summer.* It is,
therefore, probable that this festival was specially
in honor of Odin.
Some have also supposed that a great sacrificial
festival was held at Mid-summer-time,t but there
is scarcely sufficient ground in the ancient sagas for
this assumption. It is true that Snorri speaks in a
single place of a mi6sumars-bl6t, but this is evidently
a confusion in the account, and it is properly a Mid-
winter sacrifice, and not a Mid-summer one that is
alluded to.
The heathen Northmen had many smaller sacri-
ficial feasts, beside the three great ones above cited,
but to pretend to decide upon the times when they
Tryggv. Saga in Forum. Sogur, 162, 165, 166; from Trhich it ap-
pears that Tule and the Mid-winter Sacrifice were the same fes-
tival, and that the heathen Tule was held in January, therefore
later than the Christian festival. Tule is doubtless the same fes-
tival that Procopius says the Thulites (Northmen) celebrated on
the return of the sun, after it had been, at midwinter's time, forty
days below the horizon. Proc. de BelL Got. lib. 11. cap. 16.
» Snor. :
Tngl. S. 8, OL HeL S. 115.
Magnusen : Specimen Oalendarii Gentilis in the 3d part of the
—
f
Arna-Magnsean edition of the 0. Edda, p. 1086, et al.