legendary Swedish king of the House of Ynglings
Domalde
Domalde is a legendary king of Sweden from the House of Ynglings, whose reign ended with his sacrifice to bring an end to a long famine. His story, passed down mainly through medieval Norse texts, illustrates the belief that the king's luck was bound to the luck of the land.
The myth
According to tradition, Domalde was the son and heir of Visbur. His stepmother cursed him with ósgæssa, a spell of ill-luck, and from then on his reign was marked by bad harvests and starvation. Snorri Sturluson, in the Ynglinga saga, explains that the king's luck was the luck of the land, so the people looked for a remedy in worship.
The first autumn the Swedes sacrificed oxen at the temple at Uppsala, but the next harvest was no better. The second autumn they sacrificed men, and the results were even worse. In the third year, gathered at Gamla Uppsala for the thing of all Swedes, the chiefs decided to sacrifice the king himself. They sprinkled the statues of the gods with his blood and, according to the account, the good harvests returned. He was succeeded by his son Domar, whose reign was prosperous.
Worship and religion
The accounts place the sacrifices at the temple of Uppsala and at the thing of Gamla Uppsala, where the gods were honoured with offerings of animals and, according to tradition, of people too. The blót rite centred on offering blood to the divinities.
Ancient sources: Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga (c. 1225), the poem Ynglingatal (9th century), the Historia Norwegiae and Íslendingabók.