Two of the fullest surviving descriptions of pre-Christian Norse sacrificial practice, in Eyrbyggja Saga and in Snorri Sturluson's Hakonar saga Goda within Heimskringla, describe a blot, a sacrificial feast held in honour of the gods, as involving both a bowl, the hlautbolli, and a bundle of twigs, the hlautteinar, used together as a single ritual set. Animals were slaughtered and their blood, hlaut, was collected in the bowl; the twigs were then dipped into the blood and used to sprinkle, or aspers, the temple altar, its interior walls, and the worshippers gathered for the feast, an act the sagas describe in terms suggesting it consecrated the space and the participants together rather than serving as a mere disposal of the sacrificial blood.
The twigs, rather than the bowl, were the tool actually applied to people and surfaces, functioning much as an aspergillum does in later liturgical traditions that likewise use a bundle or brush to distribute a consecrated liquid by sprinkling. Snorri's account specifically situates this practice at a formal midwinter blot hosted by the Norwegian king Hakon the Good, a nominally Christian ruler under strong pagan political pressure, and stages his reluctant participation as a set piece illustrating exactly how central the hlautteinar and hlautbolli were to a properly performed Norse sacrificial feast.