Neptune's Dolphins

“Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year”

Eleanor Parker

Reaktion, 2022.

 

“Winters in the World” celebrates the turning of seasons by the Anglo-Saxons. Eleanor Parker explains that “Anglo-Saxon poetry is full of winters.” Furthermore, “winters in the world” also refers to a person’s lifespan. Therefore, the title refers to both as Parker goes through the year from winter to winter.

 

By using poetry, Parker explains the mind of the Anglo-Saxons and their culture. She relates their thinking in time and nature with their Christian and Pagan calendar of feast days. As a Polytheist, I could see that although they were Christian, the Anglo-Saxons kept their “Pagan” sensibilities. To the Anglo-Saxons, time was sacred, with the calendar imbued with divine power.

 

Parker presents the following poem for the Anglo-Saxon attitude on the seasons and time.

“Winter is coldest,

Spring frostiest – it is longest cold,

Summer sun-brightest – the sun is hottest,

Harvest – most glory-blessed; it brings to men

The year’s fruits, which God sends them.”

 

Her chapter headings detail in depth these concepts.

 

Winter

 

From Winter to Winter: the frost fetters

Midwinter Light: ‘night shadows deepen, Advent and Apocalypse, Modranith, Midwinter, and Yule

New Year to Candlemas: Year’s Day, waking the crops, winter carried away: Candlemas

 

Spring

 

The Coming of Spring: unwinding the water’s chains, the spring and the sea

Cheese and Ashes: A pure and holy time draws near, gold in the dust, the Birthday of Time

Easter: Eostre and Easter, the silent days, the young warrior awoke

 

Summer

 

Blossoming Summer: trees of life, summer pleasures, eternal summer

Festivals of the Land and Sky: holy and healthy days

The Son Rising: Ascension Day, Whitsun

Midsummer: The Sunstead, the summer-long day, months of gentleness

 

Autumn

 

Harvest: the Feast of Bread, harvest kings, the Season of gift and glory

Fallow and Fall: the holy harvest month, the coming Fall, the tree’s grief.

The Month of Blood: the Helpful Dead, blood and blessing

 

One thing that was invaluable to me was Parker’s explanation of Easter and Eostre. Jacob Grimm, in the 19th Century, invented Ostara, the Goddess of Spring. He speculated that there was a pan-German Goddess of Light or Spring. Ostara could be thought of as a corruption of “Eostre.”

 

Centuries earlier, the Venerable Bede, Anglo-Saxon historian, listed the “months of the English.” He was trying to align the Christian calendar with the Anglo-Saxon Pagan one. Bede recorded for April: “Eastermonth,” explaining that it was “named for a goddess, Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.” Parker says that Bede probably got his sources from Kent and Canterbury, the seat of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In Kent, there was a highly localized cult of a Goddess named Eostre. However, “Eastermonth” itself refers to the Christian Easter. (Associations of eggs and rabbits with Eostre came much later.)

 

“The Winters of the World” opens a window into the sacredness of time and place. Although it focuses on the Anglo-Saxons, all modern Polytheists will gain from reading this book. They can start to resacralize their time as well as their place.