Hörgr

A hörgr (Old Norse, plural hörgar) or hearg (Old English) was a type altar or cult site, possibly consisting of a heap of stones, used in Norse paganism, as opposed to a roofed hall used as a temple (hof).

The Old Norse term is attested in both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, in Icelandic sagas, skaldic poetry, its Old English cognate in Beowulf. The word is also reflected in various place names (in English placenames as harrow), often in connection with Germanic deities.

Old Norse hǫrgr "altar, sanctuary", Old English hearg "holy grove; temple, idol".Old High German harug continue a Proto-Germanic *harugaz, possibly cognate with Insular Celtic carrac "cliff".

Old Norse tradition

Literary

The term hörgr is used three times in poems collected in the Poetic Edda. In a stanza early in the poem Völuspá, the völva says that early in the mythological timeline, the gods met together at the location of Iðavöllr and constructed a hörgr and a hof (Henry Adams Bellows and Ursula Dronke here gloss hörgr as "temples"):