Hey lore buffs! Im building a crypt for Bruma for Oblivion and am wondering about the burial traditions of the nords. Im currently raiding the imperial library but havent found anything yet. any help appreciated! thx

:shrug: I dont think that the Nords have any burial traditions :shrug:

They dont seem to have any special ceremonies to get to Sovngarde atleast (Sovngarde, a reeximination talked about a Nord getting to Sovngarde, while seeing his quite dead body laying on the ground, no ceremonies), and burying people may be hard because of the frozen ground. I would think they either leave the corpses and move on or just burn the body. Maybe some of the richer ones get buried in crypts and churches but that is propably among the rarities.

Tukushapal is the only one I can think of thats in Morrowind; burial of a king's son, and of course Hrothmund's Barrow and the other Nord barrows in Bloodmoon. But nothing written.

well vikings (vikings=Nords) had three ways of burial traditions

:grad: #1 If the dead guy had royal blod, they would make him a small hill (yes a hill) and put him inside of it.

#2 They would burn him and his wife (if they didnt have kids).

#3 If they had lost alot of men, they would make one big grave for them (if they had the time)

else they would just leave them. :grad:

The Nords of Solstheim encase their dead in stalhrim, I believe. They keep these bodies in accessible barrows.

Solstheim Nords are pretty culturally isolated from Mainland Nords though. While the beliefs may be the same, their rituals and actions based on those beliefs are pretty different.

I'd probably say that they entomb their dead, yes. Some might guard them with their hounds. Some may become occupied by barrow-wights or whatever those berserk undead Nords were called. It probably depends on their status. Given the cold, they probably don't preserve their dead, but may protect them from the elements (bind their bodies/draqe them in cloth/dress them in armor). They seem like they wouldn't entomb families or houses together, but they probably do with lovers, very close friends and war bands.

That's about all I can think of.

Vikings are one of the inspirations for Nords, but they are not equivalent.

According to Bloodmoon, Nords need to be buried in Skyrim. Those warriors with tombs on Solstheim are those whose bodies could not be returned. Since this was back in the early 1st era, I'd say the barrow burials are a pan-Nordic tradition. I don't know whether they survived several thousand years of cultural revolution.

Bloodmoon also mentions ship burials and "burial grounds."

I was perusing Corpse Preparation the other day, which featured this particular snippet:


The second line makes it sound as though the Nords are pretty thorough with their burials: either the mody is treated in such a way as to make it unusable (cremation, encasemant in Stahlrim or other materials) or they're pretty adamant about going through all the proper rituals to protect the body/soul from necromancy and whatnot.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/morrowind-preparation-corpse-volume-one-acquisition-corpse



So for some reason you can't just grave-rob. and since arkay isn't highly prevalent in their mythology perhaps there is some like incineration or something.

Thank you for the information all, i was under the impression there was huge tradition for Nordic burials, seems i was wrong.

If anything, the nords would hate Arkay (Orkey), as he tried to trick them. If Shor didn't intervene, the nords surely would have perished.