Midwinter

Last updated November 11, 2024

Midwinter is the middle of the winter. The term is attested in the early Germanic calendars where it was a period or a day which may have been determined by a lunisolar calendar before it was adapted into the Gregorian calendar. It appears with several meanings in later sources, including the Christmas season, the first day of Þorri and the period from the middle of January to the middle of February. Since the 18th century, it has sometimes been misunderstood as synonymous with the astronomical winter solstice, which the word also can refer to in contemporary English.

Attestations

Midwinter is attested in the early Germanic calendars, where it appears to have been a specific day or a number of days during the winter half of the year. Before Christianisation and the adoption of the Julian calendar, the date of midwinter may have varied due to the use of a lunisolar calendar, or it may have been based on a week system tied to the astronomical winter solstice.^[1]

In Old English, midwinter could mean the entire Christmas season or specifically Christmas Day (25 December), which was also called middes wintres mæssedæg (midwinter's mass-day).^[2] Old English midwinter could indirectly also mean the winter solstice, which was regarded as 25 December in Anglo-Saxon England, following the Julian calendar and the localisation of Jesus' birth to this date.^[3]

In the medieval Icelandic calendar, midwinter day was the first day of Þorri, the fourth winter month, which corresponds to the middle of January in the Gregorian calendar.^[4] The entire month of Þorri was sometimes referred to as midwinter (Old Norse : miðvetr).^[5] According to Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (c. 1230), the pre-Christian holiday Yule was originally celebrated at midwinter, but in the 10th century, the king Haakon the Good moved it to the same day as Christmas, about three weeks earlier.^[6]

If Candlemas day be dry and fair,
The half o' winter's to come and mair;
If Candlemas day be wet and foul,
The half o' winter gane at Yule.

Scottish variation of a proverb about
when the middle of winter occurs^[7]

In Scandinavia, in popular language since the medieval period, midwinter can refer to the period from the middle of January to the middle of February, which usually is the coldest part of the year in northern Europe, sometimes with Candlemas as winter's midpoint.^[5] In British verses and proverbs attested since the early modern period, fair weather on Candlemas indicates that at least half of winter remains, whereas foul weather means that winter is over.^[8] In the Sámi week system, 5–11 February is known as the midwinter week.^[5]

Association with the winter solstice

Beginning in the 18th century, the term midwinter, and associated terms such as the Icelandic hǫkunótt [ sv ] and Old English modranect , has sometimes been misunderstood by scholars as synonymous with the astronomical winter solstice.^[9] Olof von Dahlin wrote in 1747 that the hǫkunótt had been at the winter solstice. The word hǫkunótt is only attested from Snorri who located it to midwinter—the first day of Þorri.^[10]Modranect, attested from Bede, has been interpreted as the "mother of nights", and thereby the longest night of the year, but the word is more correctly translated as "mothers' night".^[11] The association between midwinter and the winter solstice is related to the idea that the pre-Christian Yule was a celebration of the sun, a theory that first emerged in the 17th century and still had a few supporters among scholars in the early 20th century, but since then has been refuted and abandoned.^[11]

The Cambridge Dictionary says that "midwinter" can mean the winter solstice in modern English.^[12]

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References

Citations

↑ Nordberg 2006, pp. 43–44.
↑ Karasawa 2015, pp. 36–37; Parker 2022, pp. 70–71.
↑ Karasawa 2015, pp. 36–37, 86.
↑ Jansson 2011, p. 59.
1 2 3 Nordberg 2006, p. 111.
↑ Hollander 2007, p. 106; Nordberg 2006, p. 35.
↑ Kernan 1980.
↑ Apperson 2006, pp. 81–82.
↑ Nordberg 2006, pp. 120–121.
↑ Nordberg 2006, p. 120.
1 2 Nordberg 2006, p. 121.
↑ Cambridge Dictionary.

Sources

Apperson, George Latimer (2006) [1929]. Dictionary of Proverbs (revised ed.). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 1-84022-311-1.
"midwinter". Cambridge Dictionary . Cambridge University Press . Retrieved 14 November 2023.
Jansson, Svante (2011). "The Icelandic calendar" (PDF). In Óskarsson, Veturliði (ed.). Scripta islandica. Vol. 62. ISSN 0582-3234.
Karasawa, Kazutomo (2015). The Old English Metrical Calendar (Menologium). Anglo-Saxon Texts. Vol. 12. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-1-84384-409-9.
Kernan, Michael (2 February 1980). "Today's Furcast". The Washington Post . Retrieved 17 November 2023.
Nordberg, Andreas (2006). Jul, disting och förkyrklig tideräkning: Kalendrar och kalendariska riter i det förkristna Norden [Yule, Disthing and pre-ecclesiastical time-reckoning: Calendars and calendric rites in pre-Christian Scandinavia]. Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi (in Swedish). Vol. 91. Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur. ISBN 91-85352-62-4. ISSN 0065-0897.
Parker, Eleanor (2022). Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78914-672-1.
Snorri Sturluson (2007). Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway. Translated by Hollander, M. Lee. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73061-8.