Androphagi was an ancient nation of cannibals

Cannibalism

Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

 north of Scythia

Scythia

In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...

 (according to Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

), 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

Achaemenid Empire

The Achaemenid Empire , sometimes known as First Persian Empire and/or Persian Empire, was founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation...

.

Due to a false etymology

False etymology

Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...

, a popular belief is that they were most likely Finns – the obsolete name of Nenets

Nenets people

The Nenets are an indigenous people in Russia. According to the latest census in 2002, there are 41,302 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them living in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Nenets Autonomous Okrug...

people, Samoyed, has a similar meaning in Russian: "self-eater". See Nenets

Nenets

Nenets may refer to:*Nenets Autonomous Okrug, a federal subject of Russia*Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, a federal subject of Russia*Nenets people, a Samoyedic people...

.

The Gutasaga

Gutasaga

Gutasaga is a saga treating the history of Gotland before its Christianization. It was recorded in the 13th century and survives in only a single manuscript, the Codex Holm. B 64, dating to ca. 1350, kept at the Swedish Royal Library in Stockholm together with the Gutalag, the legal code of...

 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

Althing

The Alþingi, anglicised variously as Althing or Althingi, is the national parliament of Iceland. The Althingi is the oldest parliamentary institution in the world still extant...

) had the largest blót

Blót

The blót was Norse pagan sacrifice to the Norse gods and the spirits of the land. The sacrifice often took the form of a sacramental meal or feast. Related religious practices were performed by other Germanic peoples, such as the pagan Anglo-Saxons...

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.