Androphagi

Androphagi (Greek : "Ἀνδροφάγοι" for "man-eaters") was an ancient nation of cannibals north of Scythia (according to Herodotus), probably in the forests between the upper waters of the Dnepr and Don. These people may have assisted the Scythians when King Darius the Great led a Persian invasion into what is now Southern Russia to punish the Scythians for their raids into the Achaemenid Empire.

Due to a false etymology, a popular belief is that they were most likely Finns – the obsolete name of Nenets people, Samoyed, has a similar meaning in Russian: "self-eater".^[1] See Nenets.

The Gutasaga tells of the blóts on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea:

Firi þan tima oc lengi eptir siþan. Troþu menn a hult. oc a hauga. wi. oc. stafgarþa. oc a haiþin guþ. blotaþu þair synnum oc dydrum sinum Oc fileþi. miþ matj oc mundgati. þet gierþu þair eptir wantro sinnj. land alt. hafþi sir hoystu blotan miþ fulki. ellar hafþi huer þriþiungr. sir. En smeri þing hafþu mindri blotan meþ fileþi. matj. Oc mungati. sum haita suþnautar. þi et þair suþu allir saman.

This is roughly translated:

Before this time, and a long time thereafter, they believed in groves and barrows, sanctuaries, and sacred enclosures and in the pagan gods. They sacrificed (for?) their sons, daughters and cattle, and practiced blóts with food and drink. This they did due to their superstition. The whole country (the althing) had the largest blót with sacrifice of people, otherwise every trithing had its blót and smaller things had smaller blóts with cattle, food and drinks. They were called food-, or cooking-brethren, because they prepared the meals together.

References

1. ^ http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/Samoyed

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

See also

• Issedones
• Anthropophagi