Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Side 136

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LE NORD
ornaments reserved for the rich farms. They were, however,
indispensable for the brewing of ale, and perhaps this is the
particular reason why coppers were objects of property used
for letting. But in everyday life in the small farms people were
thrown upon seething their meat in pits, and besides living on
dried food and milk dishes, which might be preserved in wooden
vessels made by coopers. That the latter method was much used
appears from the impressions of the huge vessels found in the
store-rooms of several of the farms. The rareness of the cooking
vessels for that matter appears directly from the mention in the
sagas of the ancient method of heating milk by putting hot stones
into a wooden vessel filled with milk.
The pagan Icelandic temples (hof) have to a great extent
excited interest, so that a material part of the modern archæo-
logical research of buildings in Iceland has actually been con-
centrated on the identification of the temples of the 39 “temple-
parishes” known to have existed in the country. They have
especially been searched for near farms in the names of which
the word hof enters. Some of these farms are indeed farms of
chiefs and connected with the most important families of the
country.
In the Icelandic sagas sacrificial temples are described twice,
but one of the sagas in question is pure fiction from the I4th
century, and the second place in which the temple is described
in close correspondence with a Christian church gives the im-
pression of being a later interpolation in the otherwise reliable
Eyrbyggjasaga. From Norway Snorri mentions a hof with a fire-
place in the middle of the floor without offering any further
description, and Master Adam of Bremen renders the account
of an eye-witness of the sacrificial feast in Uppsala. Otherwise
we shall have to go as far as Riigen and North Germany to
hear in Saxo and other authors about temples, which thus, it is
true, are Wendish. It is remarkable that the Gottlandish law,
Gutalagen, collected in the nth century, in connexion with of-
fering mentions holy places, hills, groves, etc., but not temples,
and on the whole there is much in favour of the view that the
Scandinavian temples are comparatively rare phenomena, which
only arise by influence from approaching Christianity, and that
the holy acts down to this time were carried out in the open.
This would be in accordance with the custom described by Taci-
tus as follows: