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Halogiaptann - What Halloween truly is.
It won’t be long before October ends once again. While things will obviously be different this year because of Corona, it won’t stop people from celebrating Halloween. To most people in Norway and Europe at large, Halloween is an imported tradition from America. But the fact is that the last night of October is one of the oldest pre-christian heathen/pagan traditions we still have, and that this night has been marked and celebrated by our ancestors for tens of thousands of years, all the way back to the ice age. It was the festival to our dead ancestors. It was the night we remembered those who came before us.
Today a commercial, hyper-Americanized, and downgraded version of the holiday has gained a foothold in Norway and large parts of Europe. Unfortunately, this tradition today is limited to lavish shopping, hedonistic partying, and children begging for toxic sweets. It can be said that very few people know of the original traditions around this evening and its true meanings.
I will try my best to translate several things from Norwegian, Old Norse, and Germanic, which can be a little difficult, so bear with me.
The feast of Halloween, which our ancestors probably in pre-christian heathen times called Hâlogiaptann, falls in the month of Valaskjálfr (“the shivering of the chosen/fallen”) – and is the divine home of the god Vali/Våle (“The chosen/fallen”).
This month was in the iron age calendar known as Ýlir, Frermánuður (“Month of frost”). The original Germanic heathen year (probably from the Bronze Age and before), began on Haloween. The more well-known Alfablotet (“Ancestorblot”) was most likely the Iron Age designation for this holiday. The first month of the year is the month where everything dies - only for it to be reborn later on. This is logical, as our tribal ancestors followed nature.