RUNTUNA, Sweden — The cries of “Hell!” “Hell!” ringing out across a snow-clad landscape attracted a curious crowd of weekend tobogganers. At the foot of an ancient Viking burial mound, one of the prime sledding spots near the Swedish village of Runtuna, a circular gathering of pagan worshipers was completing a sacrificial ceremony.

The religious service involved a wooden hammer held aloft, various invocations to Norse deities and ceremonial drinking from two large black horns, one brimming with beer, the other with nonalcoholic mead. Two women led the service, which honored female Norse gods and spirits.

Several worshipers explained later that no one was referring to eternal damnation while shouting “Hell!” The group are not Satanists. Their chants, they said, were a salutation in the Old Norse language, a commonplace greeting in Sweden and other Nordic countries during the era of the Vikings, whose cultural and political peak was about a thousand years ago.

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