Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls

Vanir, part 2

In Sweden, even kings could be sacrificed, and at least two of them-Olof Trätälja and Domalde-were, after years of famine. Domalde had it easy. His retainers just cut him up and sprinkled his blood on an altar. Olof went the hard way. His people accused him of shirking sacrifices, and when he didn't straighten up fast enough for them, they surrounded his house and burned him inside it.
The Greek historian Strabo wrote about human sacrifice among the Cymri, who hung prisoners taken during a battle over bronze bowls before priestesses cut their throats. The priestesses performed divinations from the flow of blood into the bowls, and from this predicted the outcome of the battle. Strabo also mentions the Wicker Man sacrifices, in which a "colossus of straw and wood" was filled with wild animals, livestock, and humans before being burned.
Julius Caesar, in his memoir of the Gallic Wars, described the Wicker Man as "with limbs woven out of twigs, filled with living men and set on fire so that the victims perished in a sheet of flame."
And then there are the Aztecs, who genuinely believed that if they didn't keep the blood flowing on their altars, the world would stop existing. Enough said.
That wasn't how they did things in Burkittsville. Their Vanir took the form of a scarecrow, which isn't a big jump, since scarecrow-like effigies were common in pagan Europe. Depending on the source you look at, the scarecrow was either a later replacement for an actual human sacrifice conducted on the vernal equinox to make sure the crops came in, or, according to other lore, worshipers of gods would erect totem figures of those gods at the edge of town, just so everyone knew who was running the show. Time went by, and those sacrifices or effigies turned into your friendly scarecrow dancing hand-in-hand with Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road.
Well, maybe not in Burkittsville. Their scarecrow hopped right down off his pole and took his sacrifices with a sling blade. We nearly ended up on the wrong side of this Norse Billy Bob Thornton until we discovered that the Vanir was bound to a sacred tree-the first tree planted by Burkittsville's original settlers, back when they'd come over from Norway. Now, a tree we can handle; a little gas, a quick match, and the people of Burkittsville all of a sudden had to face the twenty-first century without their bloodthirsty guardian god.
Things are tough all over.