Alfablót - Ancient Norse “Day of the Dead”
Why is a Norse feast honoring elves- nature spirits- equated with a feast honoring the dead? It seems the Norse in some way equated elves (alfar) with male ancestral spirits. (Female ancestors had a separate festival called the Disablót.) One explanation is that elves were associated with burial mounds and, so, by extension, with spirits of the dead. (Burial places are often thought as “thin places”- places where the barrier between different dimensions of reality is weak and easily passable.)
We think you’ll love these
