page_title: Norse funeral
section_title: Human sacrifice
hierarchical_section_title: Norse funeral / Rituals / Human sacrifice
caption_attribution_description: sketch
context_page_description: Norse funerals, or the burial customs of Viking Age North Germanic Norsemen, are known both from archaeology and from historical accounts such as the Icelandic sagas and Old Norse poetry.
  Throughout Scandinavia, there are many remaining tumuli in honour of Viking kings and chieftains, in addition to runestones and other memorials. Some of the most notable of them are at the Borre mound cemetery, in Norway, at Birka in Sweden and Lindholm Høje, and Jelling in Denmark.
  A prominent tradition is that of the ship burial, where the deceased was laid in a boat, or a stone ship, and given grave offerings in accordance with his earthly status and profession, sometimes including sacrificed slaves. Afterwards, piles of stone and soil were usually laid on top of the remains in order to create a tumulus. Additional practices included sacrifice or cremation, but the most common was to bury the departed with goods that denoted their social status.
context_section_description: Thralls could be sacrificed during a funeral so they could serve their master in the next world. Sigurðarkviða hin skamma contains several stanzas in which the Valkyrie Brynhildr gives instructions for the number of slaves to be sacrificed for the funeral of the hero Sigurd, and how their bodies were to be arranged on the pyre, as in the following stanza:
  Occasionally in the Viking Age, a widow was sacrificed at her husband's funeral.
caption: Sketch of the executioner during a pagan Norse sacrifice by Carl Larsson, for Midvinterblot.
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