Words from the Allsherjargoði
Hello everyone, I hope you have all had an amazing summer. This month, we mark the turning of the season and we welcome autumn with gusto. I invite you all to make the effort to attend your closest hof and celebrate Haustblót. I will be celebrating this month at Þórshof, and I hope to see a great many of you there!
We have several autumn holidays each year and a harvest theme runs through, but we make a special point at Haustblót to honor Lord Ullr and to celebrate the hunt. With that in mind, I would like to share a story of Haustblót past and Ullr's gift to me.
The year was 2009 and I was living in Anchorage, Alaska. For Haustblót that year, we all gathered at my friend Sean's house in the Matanuska Valley. September is moose hunting season in that part of the country. We were both leaving in a couple days for separate moose hunts, and, for the first time, we gave blót to Ullr.
Sean and his family lived way out in the woods, and in front of his house, there was a particularly grand spruce tree that we would decorate and pour out our offerings before. This particular September was the 2000th anniversary of Prince Hermann's victory over the Romans. After Hermann's victory, his men made offerings in the bogs and by hanging trophies in the trees. On this occasion, I brought the monogramed bible that was my baptismal gift, and I hung that upside down from the offering tree as a gift of devotion and a token of my rejection of that foreign faith. We asked Lord Ullr's blessings on our upcoming hunts, and we all could feel his presence and weight of that moment. We then went inside and celebrated the feast.
A few days later, I left with a party of experienced hunters, and we went for a week-long hunt many miles deep into the Alaskan wilderness somewhere near Tok. This was my first serious moose hunt, and I was by far the least experienced hunter of the group. We set up camp in a river valley along the water and were using spotting scopes to see the game coming down from the mountains on either side of us. One of our group shot a caribou early on but beyond that we were unsuccessful as the sun began to set on the final day of our hunt, also the final day of the hunting season in that area. At this moment the old man who was spotting for us saw a moose coming down the mountain!
This was 2009 and the "pandemic" that year was the Swine Flu. Little did I know when I left civilization, but I was afflicted with said Swine Flu. The hunting party set out to take our positions in the area we thought the moose would be appearing in. As I was the least experienced and was delirious with fever, I was positioned at the least likely location and left to be out of the way because we NEEDED to get this moose or we would have no other opportunity.
I sat down on a bed of moss and waited for the moose to come down from the mountain as I tried to get my head to stop spinning. After a short time, I heard a loud grunt. I looked uphill and saw nothing, so I sat back down. Moments later I heard a second grunt, this time closer. Again, I looked up and saw nothing. Finally, I heard a third grunt and the crashing of trees 15 yards from me. The moose had somehow gotten past and below me and now stood out in the open for me to see. As I stood up and raised my rifle, the moose shifted position to present himself to me broadside and stood there motionless. I took the shot and we came home successful—and with freezers restocked.
I am not a great hunter. In my feverous state, I was even less so. This moose and the way he was presented to me were undoubtedly the gift of Ullr; I was then and am now tremendously grateful.
I wish you all a glorious Haustblót!
I wish all our hunters success!
Allsherjargoði Matt Flavel
~ From The Runestone, September 2026 ~
