Jolablot: Chapter 1: Vikings in a snowstorm?
Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
—Proverb.
Blizzard. That was what the weather forecast promised. Complete with a cold-blue picture of snowflakes and stormy winds. Maybe this trip was not going to be as much fun as I had hoped….
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Norse Artisans at the Jorvik Viking Festival.
Date: 1999-02-19 Views: 752
I'm not sure where I first heard about the Jorvik Viking Festival of Jolablot – the festival of spring. Maybe it was in a newspaper, maybe it was on the net. Anyhow, I had decided to go and go I would, blizzard or no blizzard.
I had to go: I had a new camera to test! Actually I had the camera since Christmas, but I had been working on a project in Hamburg and had not had much time to use it. I was determined to make up for lost time on this trip.
The festival was scheduled for Thursday 18th February to Saturday the 20th of 1999. I had decided to drive up on Tuesday in order to have Wednesday to find the lab I was going to use to develop my slides and to photograph the Minster. It was for Wednesday they promised a snow blizzard….
I think I was reasonably well prepared for the trip. Certainly by my standards. I still remember when I turned up at an airport, suicase packed but no ticket. I bought a cheap ticket for the next flight: it turned out to be heading for Rome. Naturally I arrived without any hotel reservation. My usual travel luck was with me: there was some major convention in the city at just that time. Several hours, and many, many, lira, later I had secured a room a twice the normal price.
For this trip I had planned to stay at a nice Bed and Breakfast in the centre of town. Unfortunately, they were all booked, so I ended up having to book a room at the Forte Posthouse: a terrible place. I don't have much luck with travels.
So I had prepared. I had a room (of sorts), I had my camera with spare everyting and forty rolls of film. I was ready!
Jolablot
A word about the word “Jolablot”. You can skip this section if you are not interested in etymology.
The material from the Jorvik Viking Centre does not go into details about the origins or detailed meaning of the word Jolablot other than to say it is the “Viking celebration of the coming of spring”. Here are my notes and guesses; if you are a scholar and knows better, then please let me know.
The last part of the word, blot, is the easiest. All Danish school children knows that is means offering or sacrifice. These events were often quite bloody with plenty of animals and humans loosing their lives (hence childrens' interest!). We know this from 11th century descriptions, of which the one by Adam of Bremen (around AD 1070) is the most famous.
I'm not so sure about the first part of the word, Jola. But I would be surprised if it was not related to the Nordic word for Christmas (Danish, Swedish: jul) which we also find in the English yule. The old-Norse root is given as jól in my dictionary with the comment that it originally refers to the mid-winter celebrations around 12. January.
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