The origins of Walpurgisday – bonfires, witches and the pagan spring festival

As April draws to a close and flames begin to dance across Scandinavian hills, it’s easy to think of Walpurgisday as a student festival of choir singing and spring speeches. But behind the bonfires lies a much older story – a tale of pagan spring bloodletting, the church’s struggle against old traditions, and a night when witches were believed to fly across the sky.

A holiday older than Christianity

Walpurgis Eve has roots that go back far before Christianity. In the pre-Christian Nordic countries, the holiday is believed to have been connected to the spring victory rite – a ceremony celebrating the return of light and warmth after the long winter. At the same time, the Celts celebrated their spring festival of Beltane, which marked the transition to the light half of the year.

Both Beltane and the Norse spring sacrifices had fires at their center. The fires protected people and livestock from disease and evil forces, but also symbolized the return of the sun and the awakening of nature. Spring was not a given in older societies – it needed to be welcomed, strengthened and sometimes even magically defended.

How Valborg got its name

The name Walpurgis comes from the German saint Sankta Walpurgis, or Valborg in Swedish. She lived in the 8th century and became the subject of a strong saint cult in Germany after her death in 779. She was canonized on May 1, which made her feast day coincide with the old Germanic spring festivals.

It was no coincidence.

The church had long tried to Christianize older holidays by giving them new names and new content. Just as Christmas and Midsummer were given Christian layers on top of older traditions, they also tried to make the spring festival a Christian holiday through Saint Walpurgis.

But the old lived on beneath the surface.

The Witches and Walpurgis Night

During the Middle Ages, the church and folk beliefs began to link Walpurgis Night to witches and dark forces. It was believed that during the night between April 30 and May 1, witches flew through the air on broomsticks or goats to meet with the devil.

The most mythical place was the Blocksberg – today called Brocken – the highest mountain in the Harz in Germany. There the witches were said to hold their nightly parties. The spectacle was later made famous through the scene “Walpurgisnacht” in Faust.

But here is an interesting twist.

Many scholars believe that the church's stories about witches' sabbats were actually a way to cast suspicion on older pagan spring rites and sacrificial sites. The old feasts were reinterpreted as devil worship, and people were warned against participating in them.

The role of fire – protection and community

This is where the Walpurgis fires come in.

To protect themselves from witches and evil forces, people made noise with horns, shouts and gunshots. Large fires were lit on hills and mountains to scare away the supernatural. The church gave this a Christian explanation: the fires would keep the forces of darkness away during the dangerous night.

But the fires were likely much older than that.

In pre-Christian times, fire was a sacred and purifying element. Cattle could be driven between fires to be protected before the summer grazing season, and the flames symbolized life, strength and fertility. When we gather around May fires today, we are therefore doing something that people in the Nordic countries may have done for over a thousand years.

Is Walpurgisday celebrated throughout Scandinavia?

Walpurgisday is celebrated in various forms around Scandinavia, but the traditions differ.

In Sweden, the holiday has gained a particularly strong position, with large bonfires, choir singing and student celebrations. In university cities such as Uppsala and Lund, Valborg is one of the biggest folk festivals of the year.

In Finland, the holiday is celebrated as Vappen, where student caps, parties and spring celebrations take center stage. In parts of Denmark and Norway, there are also Walpurgis fires, but the tradition is not as strong or widespread as in Sweden and Finland.

In Iceland, the holiday has never had the same significance.

An echo from the old world

Walpurgisday is therefore more than just a spring festival. It is a strange meeting between paganism and Christianity, between the joy of spring and the fear of dark powers. The fires we light today bear traces of both ancient sins and the church's struggle against them.

Maybe that's why the holiday still feels so special.

As the flames rise into the night sky and winter finally lets go, the echoes of something very old can still be heard – a night when people gathered around the fire to protect themselves from the darkness and welcome the return of spring.