sites, and burial customs, indicating ideas of what happened after death, revealed in the
graves. Artefacts should also be mentioned, as some of them may be loaded with
religious meaning. There are also regular illustrations, as for example on the Gotlandic
picture stones and on preserved textile wall hangings, so iconography is essential in this
connection.
CULT SITESThe description by Adam of Bremen of the cult site in Old Uppsala is well known.
He mentions a big temple, totally covered in gold, where three idols were placed,
representations of Óðinn, Þórr and Freyr. Men, horses and dogs were sacrificed in a holy
grove nearby, the bodies hanging in the trees. However, there are many source-critical
aspects to be considered. Adam himself had never visited Uppsala – or even Scandin-
avia – he got his information from persons who had been there, for example the Danish
king Sven Estridsen, who spent some time in the town of Sigtuna and then probably
visited Uppsala or at least was told about what happened there. It may also be a question
of glorifying Adam’s own diocese by describing Uppsala as primitive and as pagan as
possible – that made the successful Hamburg–Bremen mission among the Svear the
more important. The question of the Uppsala temple is one of the most discussed
through the years. After an excavation in 1926 , under the medieval church, Sune
Lindqvist published a reconstruction of the pagan temple, based on the evidence of post-
holes found under the church (Nordahl 1996 ). However, he later denied that the temple
could be reconstructed from his excavation. A new analysis in the 1990 s of all evidence
from the 1926 excavation has finally rejected the temple (Nordahl 1996 ). The post-holes
belong to one or more buildings, probably a hall, and^14 C-analyses from various layers
under the church give dates from the third and up to the tenth century. Therefore
perhaps the cult performances that Adam had been told about took place in the hall of
the royal manor at the site, which is what could be expected. There is evidence from
Snorri’s Heimskringla as well as from many sites of halls where the cult was practised.
Important sites of this kind to be mentioned are Mære in Trøndelag, Borg in Lofoten,
Järrestad in Skåne, Helgö in Lake Mälaren and so on. One indication of cultic perform-
ances in the hall is the presence of the so-called guldgubbar, tiny picture foils of gold
depicting either a couple or a single man or woman. The couple motif has been inter-
preted as a representation of the ‘holy marriage’ between the god Freyr and the giantess
Gerðr (Steinsland 1991 ).
It has long been argued that the pre-Christian Scandinavians had no cult houses and
that the cult was performed in the open air. Descriptions of cult houses, such as Adam’s,
are late and probably influenced by Christianity or by knowledge of classical antiquity.
However, in the beginning of the 1990 s examples of possible cult houses were recovered
at large settlement excavations of farmsteads, one at Borg in Östergötland (Nielsen
1997 ), the other at Sanda in Uppland (Åqvist 1996 ). At Borg (Figure 18. 1 ) a small
house, situated close to an elevated rock, was built on sills and probably made of corner-
joint timber. It was erected on a paved yard with an area of about 1 , 000 m^2. Outside the
building a large number of animal bones were found and iron slag together with
depositions of many amulet rings of fire-steel shape with attached Þórr’s hammers;
inside there were few finds. Among the animal bones there were dog and horse bones,
normally very rare at settlements but frequent in graves and in sacrifices, and, above all,
–– Anne-Sofie Gräslund––