Norse Months and Holidays

Our real surviving medieval sources are frustratingly silent about the calendar and holidays the Norse observed prior to the conversion to Christianity. This video looks at some of the most solid information we do have.

Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus.

Logos by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).

#odin #jacksoncrawford #iceland

[teknobardthewanderer]

I mean....for those of us with an active interest in the norse calendar, it seems like many of us want one so we know when to celebrate the old norse holidays (for various reasons) and the idea that each of us is now encouraged to pick what works for us and eyeball the dates as best we can is probably the most historically accurate practice anyway.

[Mr.Nichan]

13:37 "If you are watching this on YouTube on a laptop in 2020..."

I feel like historians think about these things a lot more than other people do.

[stolman]

When I lived outdoors using minimal artificial light sources, I knew what phase the moon was in subconsciously all the time

[paulaunger]

This is fascinating- it’s a great insight into the priorities of a mainly farming culture. It might not be a calendar like the modern ones but it is still a calendar, marking all the important points in time for people using it.

[faramund]

You have the talent of saying "we don't know" to then proceed explaining we know quite a bit.

[salestravelcalendar]

Just got my Wanderer's Havamal, and I am so excited. It's absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for your hard work, Dr. Crawford.

[Marley-rt]

Watching this video really shows how much they celebrated and loved life and how much they were so grateful for life!! They knew when they had to prepare for the harsh winters! I Absolutely love this video. It’s so beautiful and you speak the language so well. Thank you so much for sharing the knowledge. I absolutely love learning about this! It really wakes me up to really appreciate how good we as humans really have it these days! Sometimes I wish we could go back in a Time Machine to those days so we could realize how good we really do have it!

[kennethjohnston]

Dr. Crawford, don't be alarmed but there appears to be a large T-Rex over your shoulder!

[lughlongarm]

The division of the year into winter and summer is something also found in Celtic cultures. Many Celtic cultures including that of Ireland conceived of the year as having a “dark half” and a “light half”, with the dark half coming first. What is known as Samhain in Irish, the origin of Halloween, is actually the end of the Celtic year/beginning of the new year. Julius Caesar wrote of the continental Celts in The Gallic Wars that they also recorded the days as following nights. I believe the Irish “calendar” had less of an emphasis on lunar aspects and was more solar, but other than these differences I think this is an illustration of how deeply related Celtic and Germanic cultures are.

[eduardonievessr]

The old ways are still alive 😂 today, Thank you

[woof]

9:48: Stekkr - the word stekk, with the same meaning, is still used in some Norwegian dialects today.

[cleryfrey]

I'm here actually to learn about the historical basis for the Norse holidays and this video helped me a lot. Thank you for these valuable insights and information.

[amyjones]

Grimfrost does sell a Norse calendar (sort of), it's informative about traditions and holidays but I do always keep in mind that almost nothing's for sure.

[xiongrey]

To be honest all of this was helpful. I don´t particularly want to know this as a way to call time keeping for old dates and times. I think it's more interesting to see how activities and agriculture shaped and was tracked by the moons.

[MushVPeets]

"Kornskurðarmánuðr"... That's one heck of a word.

[danielkarlsson]

We used "räpparäkning" to count time before the industrial age in Sweden. I don't know if that can be traced back to the viking age or beyond. It consisted of 4 räppar, with 4 "räppardagar" (Yule day, Feast of the Annunciation, midsummer's day and Michaelmas) where every räppe had 13 weeks (ie 52 weeks a year). You counted the weeks backwards from the räppardag. E.g. wednesday the 13th week of Yule-räppe was the first wednesday after Michaelmas and the 1st week of Feast of the Annunciation-räppe was the week of midsummer's day.

[TheOneCalledSloth]

Of note: The Norse used a Lunisolar system based on the phases of the moon, while the Icelanders like Snorri used a purely Solar system of 364 days split into twelve 30 day months (and an extra 4 day period in midsummer).
The Icelandic civil calendar was made in 930AD so everyone would use the same system. But since the true length of a year 365.25 days, in 960 the calendar had moved a whole month forward so an Icelandic astrologist called Þorsteinn surtur added an extra week to midsummer during leap years and to correct the calendar they doubled the length of that year's harvesting month (Kornskurðarmánuðr). That's why it's commonly called Tvímánuðr (doublemonth).

[OThouTheCentralOrb]

As always, exceptionally informative and interesting -- particularly as I love learning how people reckoned time. Thank you. And I particularly love the place you're recording this at -- I am picturing me making my way there and having lunch sitting on that rock.

[beorwinesheathencorner]

There's a lot of information to be taken from neighboring Germanic people's like the Franks who wrote down some of their pre-christian Reckoning of time, and Bede writes the English calendar down in his work, "De Temporum Ratione" both cases are also lunar based months, so likely similar. The Runic calendars, which appear in the 13th century and onward (mostly in Sweden), record lunar months, but more specifically, is metonic, as in a 19 year cycle with leap months, exactly the way Bede describes the Anglo-saxon calendar in "De Temporum Ratione", which indicates that a metonic cycle of reckoning was probably Pan Germanic, especially since the few mentions of the Gothic calendar (Eastern germanic tribes) has some of the same names for months as the Ænglisc, and is therefore, likely very similar. For those wondering, I believe it's roughly 11th day of Hrēðmónað according to Ænglisc reckoning.

[dustinpeterson]

I could obviously be very wrong, but my guess is that most who want some kind of calendar don’t mean some Norse equivalent to our 12 month calendar with names and dates. But instead I’m guessing they want something like a pre-Christian Norse liturgical type calendar.

Though I may be thinking that because that’s what I, and many other Norse pagans, want. Haha! But I’ve also never heard anyone express an interest in something like an equivalent 12 month calendar. 🤷‍♂️