You Are What You Eat: Hearts and Blood

The image of a warrior drinking blood or eating the heart of a recently killed animal is something most people today would probably associate with fantasy. It appears constantly in modern depictions of "Viking" culture, usually as a display of savagery or as an attempt to absorb the strength of an enemy. But there is an actual idea behind it in Norse literature.

Across several Old Norse sources, we find blood and hearts being consumed immediately before a person undergoes some kind of transformation. Sometimes the change is physical strength or courage. In other cases, it is wisdom, supernatural perception, prophecy, or even a transformation of the body itself.

That does not mean we can say historical Norse people commonly ate hearts or drank blood as a religious practice. The sources do not allow us to make a claim that broad. What we can say is that the concept existed. Within Norse storytelling, the heart and blood could contain something belonging to the being they came from... strength, courage, knowledge, or some other quality that could seemingly be transferred through consumption. Once the examples are placed beside one another, the pattern becomes difficult to ignore.

Elg-Fróði and Bǫðvarr Bjarki

One of the clearest examples comes from Hrólfs saga kraka. Bǫðvarr Bjarki eventually encounters his brother Elg-Fróði, a powerful figure whose appearance is partly animal. Elg-Fróði is associated with the elk and possesses extraordinary physical strength. When the brothers meet, Elg-Fróði tests Bǫðvarr's strength and decides that his brother is not strong enough.

Before Bǫðvarr continues his journey, Elg-Fróði cuts open his own leg and has Bǫðvarr drink his blood. After drinking it, Bǫðvarr becomes substantially stronger. The connection here is unusually straightforward. This is not simply a warrior drinking blood and then later becoming powerful through unrelated events. The drinking of Elg-Fróði's blood is directly associated with the increase in Bǫðvarr's strength. Something possessed by Elg-Fróði has seemingly passed into his brother through his blood. The other interesting, and important, part of this story, is that the blood came from his leg. His legs were what appeared to be animalistic. So the blood did not come from his “human” body. Even more interesting is that Hrólfs saga kraka uses essentially the same idea again.

Höttr Becomes Hjalti

When Bǫðvarr arrives at the hall of King Hrólfr Kraki, he encounters a young man named Höttr. Höttr is almost the opposite of Bǫðvarr. He is weak, frightened, and regularly abused by the other men in the hall, so Bǫðvarr takes him under his protection.

Around this time, a terrifying beast has been attacking Hrólfr's lands. Bǫðvarr eventually goes out and kills it, but what happens afterward is particularly interesting. Bǫðvarr brings Höttr to the dead creature and has him consume its blood and heart. Afterward, Höttr undergoes a dramatic transformation. The frightened and physically weak young man becomes remarkably strong and courageous. He eventually receives the name Hjalti and becomes one of Hrólfr Kraki's famous champions.

Again, consumption and transformation occur together. Blood and heart are associated with strength and courage. This makes Hrólfs saga kraka especially important to this subject because we are not dealing with an isolated scene. Within the same saga, we encounter the same basic idea twice. Elg-Fróði's blood strengthens Bǫðvarr, while the beast's blood and heart transform Höttr. In both cases, qualities belonging to one being appear capable of being transmitted into another through consumption.

Sigurd Holding Fafnir's Heart

Sigurðr and the Heart of Fáfnir

The story of Sigurðr and Fáfnir takes this concept much further. After Sigurðr kills Fáfnir, Reginn cuts out Fáfnir's heart and instructs Sigurðr to roast it. While cooking the heart, Sigurðr touches it to determine whether it is finished. He burns his finger and instinctively places it into his mouth, causing Fáfnir's blood to touch his tongue.

Immediately, Sigurðr discovers that he can understand the speech of birds. The birds warn him that Reginn intends to betray him, and they also tell him that if he eats Fáfnir's heart, he will become extraordinarily wise. Sigurðr subsequently eats part of it. The important thing here is that Fáfnir's body is not merely food. His blood and heart contain something extraordinary. Contact with the blood gives Sigurðr supernatural perception, allowing him to understand something ordinary humans cannot. The heart, meanwhile, is associated with wisdom. There is another detail that is sometimes forgotten in retellings of the story. In the Vǫlsunga saga version, Reginn himself drinks Fáfnir's blood. Once again, blood drinking and heart eating appear together within the same story.

This gives us a different kind of transformation than we saw in Hrólfs saga kraka. There, consumption produced physical power and courage. Here, it produces knowledge and supernatural perception. The basic concept, however, remains similar. A quality contained within another being can seemingly be obtained through consuming part of that being.

Þorbjǫrg and the Hearts of the Farm

A somewhat stranger example appears in Eiríks saga rauða. During a period of hardship in Greenland, a vǫlva named Þorbjǫrg lítilvǫlva arrives at a farm. She has been invited because the community wants knowledge about their circumstances and what the future holds. Her arrival is treated with considerable ceremony. A special seat is prepared for her, and her clothing, staff, gloves, knife, and other possessions are described in unusual detail.

Then we are told about her food. Þorbjǫrg is served porridge prepared with the milk of a kid, along with the hearts of the animals available around the farm. This is where we have to be careful. The saga does not explicitly say that Þorbjǫrg ate the hearts in order to gain the ability to prophesy. Claiming that as fact would be speculation.

However, the meal is unusual enough that it deserves attention. It occurs within an elaborate sequence surrounding the arrival and divinatory work of a woman whose purpose is specifically to obtain supernatural knowledge. The connection has also attracted scholarly attention. Andrea Maraschi examined the episode in a paper titled Eaten Hearts and Supernatural Knowledge in Eiríks saga rauða, discussing the meal within the broader context of sympathetic magic and supernatural knowledge in medieval Scandinavia.

We should not claim certainty where the saga gives us none. However, when the Þorbjǫrg story is placed beside Sigurðr eating Fáfnir's heart and gaining extraordinary knowledge, the similarity becomes difficult to overlook. Once again, the consumption of hearts appears near supernatural knowledge.

Loki Eats a Heart

Then we have perhaps the strangest example of all. In the section of  Vǫluspá in skamma, we are told that Loki finds the half-burned heart of a woman and eats it. The Old Norse states it very plainly: Loki át hjarta... "Loki ate a heart."

What follows is even stranger. After consuming the heart, Loki becomes pregnant, and supernatural beings are subsequently produced from this transformation. Exactly how the beings described in the poem should be understood varies depending on the translation and interpretation, but the act itself is what matters here. Loki consumes the heart, undergoes a supernatural transformation, and something new is produced from it.

This time, the heart does not transmit physical strength or wisdom. The transformation is bodily, supernatural, and generative, but the idea is similar. Something contained within another being has been consumed, and that consumption produces a change in the person who ate it.

The Heart Was More Than Meat

When these stories are placed beside one another, an interesting pattern emerges. Bǫðvarr drinks Elg-Fróði's blood and becomes stronger. Höttr consumes the beast's blood and heart and becomes strong and courageous. Sigurðr tastes Fáfnir's blood and gains supernatural perception, then eats the heart associated with extraordinary wisdom. Þorbjǫrg is served the hearts of the animals around the farm in the ritual setting surrounding her divination. Loki consumes the heart of a woman and undergoes a supernatural bodily transformation.

These stories come from different contexts and should not simply be treated as descriptions of one standardized Germanic ritual. However, they repeatedly return to the same basic concept... consumption can transmit qualities. Strength can be taken into the body. Courage can be taken into the body. Knowledge can be taken into the body. Something of the nature of another being can survive within its blood or heart, and by consuming it, that nature can become part of you.

This makes sense when we consider how the heart itself could be understood. The Old Norse hjarta means heart, but the heart could also be conceptually connected with courage, emotion, thought, and the inner nature of a person. That makes the consumption of a heart symbolically powerful. You are not merely eating meat. You are consuming the part of the body associated with what that being IS.

What Does This Mean for Us?

This is where reconstruction requires restraint. These sources do not prove that Viking Age Scandinavians regularly drank blood from animals they killed. They do not prove that warriors commonly ate hearts to gain courage, and they definitely do not give us enough evidence to reconstruct some universal "heart eating ritual." Saga literature is literature, and mythological poetry is mythological poetry. A literary motif is not automatically evidence of widespread historical practice.

Dismissing the entire idea as modern fantasy would go too far in the opposite direction. The concept absolutely exists in the Norse material. Blood can carry strength. A heart can carry courage or wisdom. Consumption can create transformation. The qualities of another being can, at least within the worldview preserved by these stories, cross the boundary between bodies.

For a modern Heathen, that distinction matters. We do not need to invent historical practices that our sources cannot support, but neither should we ignore ideas simply because modern culture has turned them into fantasy tropes. There is something very old behind the image of consuming the heart or blood of a powerful being.

Maybe the most important idea running through these stories is actually quite simple... what we consume becomes part of us. The strength of the beast, the courage of the creature, the wisdom carried within the heart, and the blood that carries life through the body could represent more than physical substance. They represented qualities.

In the stories our ancestors preserved, those qualities could sometimes be taken into ourselves.