What’s a wedding without some pig’s blood? Not a very good wedding if you ask a Viking.
So that’s why Norwegian couple Elisabeth and Rune Dalseth made sure to include a blood feast during their special day.
The Dalseths, who are part of a 6,000 person Norwegian Viking revivalist movement and have a baby together, opted to have a traditional Viking ceremony for their wedding.
And they went all out. Both Elisabeth and Rune were raised in Christian families.
“I come from a very Christian family. When I announced that we were not going to have a Christian wedding my mum was a little unsure about it,” Rune told Daily Mail. “But I think she has now come to accept it. She can see how happy paganism makes me and how it has helped me get my life together. Before I was a Viking, I didn’t have a wife, a baby and a house – now look at me.
But instead of having a conventional Christian ceremony they went with a 1,000-year-old wedding trend.
Instead of limos, they traveled to the ceremony in two authentic Viking longboats.
“We had two longboats built,” Rune told Daily Mail. “They were made by a local shipbuilder.”
Instead of a church, they were wed on the banks of a Norwegian lake.
And forget about bridal gowns and tuxedos.
They were dressed head to toe in Viking wedding attire.
“The traditional dress is not easy to find, so another friend helped us with that,” Rune explained.
The Dalseths’ 130 guests drank honey-beer and danced to traditional Norse songs that included throat singing.
“We had no Spotify. Instead, we danced to live music that our ancestors danced to over a millennium ago,” Elisabeth told Daily Mail.
Dinner included a hog-roast feast. Instead of having a priest officiate the wedding, they had something called a gothi.
The most unusual part of their wedding was the blood sacrifice.
“I arrived with my father, one of the few bits of modern tradition that we observed. I was also in a white dress, but not a princess dress,” Elisabeth explained. “Before we said our vows we did the ‘blot’ ritual. This is when a cauldron of blood is put on top of a pile of stones. The blood is then drizzled over little figures of the gods and then across the forehead. It is supposed to symbolize the union of gods and people.”
Elisabeth was running a beauty salon when she met Rune and knew nothing about paganism or Viking traditions.
He proposed a year later at a Viking festival near Oslo.
“Rune completely opened up a new world for me, and I soon fell in love with the people and the spirituality of it,” Elisabeth said.
The unconventionalness of their wedding had some family members unsure about what they were about to witness.
“We were so pleased that everyone was willing to join in with us and be open to our way of life,” Rune said.
Guests also partook in a fun game called the Brullaup where losers would have to serve alcohol to the victors during the wild board feast.
“We stayed up very late afterward, into the following morning. We danced and sang and listened to old stories about the gods,” said Elisabeth. “Some of the people who came were a little skeptical about it at the start, but by the end, they could all feel the energy and the love that we generated.”
Love looks very different to different kinds of people and for the Dalseths it means celebrating their bond, nature, land, animals, and even a blood sacrifice.
Check out a video from the wedding below.
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