page_title: Norse rituals
section_title: Birth and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Norse rituals / Private religion / Rites of passage / Birth and naming
caption_attribution_description: Frigga Spinning the Clouds (the title given to the work in the list of illustrations on page vii)
context_page_description: Norse religious worship is the traditional religious rituals practiced by Norse pagans in Scandinavia in pre-Christian times. Norse religion was a folk religion, and its main purpose was the survival and regeneration of society. Therefore, the faith was decentralized and tied to the village and the family, although evidence exists of great national religious festivals. The leaders managed the faith on behalf of society; on a local level, the leader would have been the head of the family, and nationwide, the leader was the king. Pre-Christian Scandinavians had no word for religion in a modern sense. The closest counterpart is the word sidr, meaning custom. This meant that Christianity, during the conversion period, was referred to as nýr sidr while paganism was called forn sidr. The centre of gravity of pre-Christian religion lay in religious practice — sacred acts, rituals and worship of the gods.
  Norse religion was at no time homogeneous but was a conglomerate of related customs and beliefs.
context_section_description: Giving birth has always been extremely dangerous for mother and newborn. Thus, rites of birth were common in many pre-modern societies. In the Viking Age, people would pray to the goddesses Frigg and Freyja, and sing ritual galdr-songs to protect the mother and the child. Fate played a huge role in Norse culture and was determined at the moment of birth by the Norns. Nine nights after birth, the child had to be recognised by the father of the household. He placed the child on his knee while sitting in the high seat. Water was sprinkled on the child, it was named and thus admitted into the family. There are accounts of guests being invited to bring gifts and wish the child well. Children were often named after deceased ancestors and the names of deities could be a part of the name. People thought certain traits were connected to certain names and that these traits were carried on when the names were re-used by new generations. This was part of ancestor worship. Putting the child on the knee of the father confirmed his or her status as a member of the clan  bestowed the rights connected to this status. The child could no longer be killed, or exposed by the parents, without its being considered murder. Exposing children was a socially accepted way of limiting the population. The belief that deities were present during childbirth suggests that people did not regard the woman and the child as excluded from normal society as was the case in later, Christian, times and apparently there were no ideas about female biological functions being unclean.
caption: Goddess "Frigga Spinning the Clouds" by J. C. Dollman.
exif: {}