Fimbulvetr ('Fimbulwinter')

Fimbulvetr (or Fimbulvetur, Fimbulwinter, Fimbulvinter, Fimbul-winter, etc.) is the menacing winter that precedes and begins Ragnarǫk (Ragnarok).

[maryhegge]

The first I heard of fimbulvinter was relative to the climate catastrophe that started in 536 AD, in the northern hemisphere, after extreme volcanic eruptions.

[kylecurkan]

when did we get indiana jones intro music AND a whip crack?
Nice!

[YolayOle]

Love the Indiana Jones references. Happy Halloween week!

[Demara]

As an archaeologist, when I heard the Indiana Jones theme, I died.

Fimbulwinter video. Just in time to welcome the end of the year.

[Alphqwe]

"We named the dog Indiana!!!"

[tswanny]

Finally embracing the Indy role I see 🤣🤣🤣

[janetchennault]

Fun setup for the hat and jacket.

I think that the origin word I would be curious about in PIE would be a word for "sacred". We have a fairly narrow view of 'fool', but ancient cultures also had a touched-by-the-gods sort of 'sacred fool'. This could include poets (especially of the wilder sort) and seers - more along the lines of Bacchus/Dionysus.

The meaning could have been narrowing during the Viking Age, with the comments from native Icelandic speakers indicating that the present meaning of ie fiflin being limited to a foolish knave.

Signing off (whipcrack and snazzy music),

[f.goossens]

Hej from northern Sweden, currently under two foot of snow in my area. Looking at the state of the world today, I sometimes wonder if this, here and now, if our Fimbulvetr.

[Kaffemosterful]

The 536 AD event and the subsequent famine have been proposed as an explanation for the deposit of gold treasures by Scandinavian elites at the end of the migration period. The gold was possibly a sacrifice to appease the gods and bring back the sunlight. The legend of the Fimbulwinter, the mythical winter which in pre-Christian times was expected to precede Ragnarök, and which is mentioned in the Poetic Edda may have its origin in this climate anomaly.

[lakrids-pibe]

I wouldn't mind a propper cold, snowy, frosty winter for a change.

The last couple of winters has been mostly gray, wet, dark and depressing. ...for some reason.

[biscuit]

In my very academic opinion, fimbul is clearly predicting the British childrens tv show Fimbles. Fimble winter is the coming of the fimbles, in which they perform their fimble songs causing everyone to get the fimbling feeling.

[TheAntiburglar]

Love the hat. That's a great hat 😃

[chruell]

Reminds me of the word "fumble, " which kind of carries similar meanings. Perhaps a related word?

[achuvadia]

Fimbulvetr is skeery, we also need a word for Southwest summers that don't end ☀🌡☀ extremes increasing everywhere.

[tristanholderness]

I don't think *fimbulaz/fimfulaz can continue pre-Germanic *pimp-. Such a form is phonotactically problematic for a PIE root (we'd require either a root *pemp- or *peyp-/pyep- and like most languages, PIE doesn't seem to have been especially tolerant of two identical consonants so close together in a root, with a small number of exceptions for ideophones or recent reanalyses)

I also think a borrowing can be discounted due to the apparent Verner alternation, which would presumably only apply to a thoroughly nativised (and hence like very early) borrowing, that would probably also appear in other branches

However its similarity to *fimf "five" raises an interesting possibility - that it instead continues pre-Germanic *pinkw- with an irregular *kw > *p shift (as paralleled in an almost identical environment in *fimf < *pénkʷe)

A derivation from *pénkʷe itself seems implausible, so we can probably discount a pre-Germanic *penkw-, and isntead limit ourselves to *pinkw-. As the i is syllabic here rather than the n this must be a nasal-infix, and so we are instead looking for a root *peyK- (with either a labiovelar, or plain/palatovelar followed by a w)

There appears to be just such a root with pretty much perfect semantics (albeit some irregular correspondences): *peyk-/peyḱ- "hostile, enemy" (either distinct or becoming distinct in some branches from *peyḱ- "to cut out"), the source of *faihaz "hostile" per Kroonen, with cognates in Baltic seemingly reflecting *peyk- and possibly in Indo-Iranian reflecting *peyḱ-

So, if we take the nasal-present stem of this verb *pink- and form a double deverbal adjective in -wós from it we have *pinḱwós > *pinkwós > *fimbaz, with the *-ulaz being a secondary derivation from this form. It would then follow *fimfulaz would be a parallel form from the substantivised form *pínḱwos

The irregular *kw > *p, and the use of *-ulaz on an adjectival (rather than verbal) form are the main issues I can see from such a derivation, but the semantics and phonology seem pretty solid

[alabaster]

Much to reflect on. As a great lakes lady.. this is definitely slightly closer to home. 3 years ... zoinks. The poles are shifting and the weather is getting crazy. El Nino is known to dump loads of snow.
Great pick for reading from!!

[EgonSupreme]

Could a translation for "fimbul" be "brute?" Or perhaps "simple" in the "they've gone blood simple" sense of the word.

[jj]

Can this be related to the Swedish word "Fiffla" aswell or is that completely unrelated?

[rykloog]

I do think it’s possible that Ragnarok wasn’t told of at the time of the eddas as part of pre christian tradition in the same way we know it. Maybe as a traditional end times myth, but i think most of it might be inspired by a real disaster which then we used as justification for why the old gos were dead. I think there was a pre existing idea of what the end of the world might be, then christianity arrives, a natural disaster happens, and then this specific volcanic eruption and volcanic winter is used as the setting of ragnarok as an explanation on why christianity was now the only valid religion