The old Norse calendar

Where the month names come from

The oldest list of month names is in Snorri's Skáldskaparmál, in a passage found in only some manuscripts: Haustmánuðr heitir inn næsti fyrir vetr, fyrstr í vetri heitir gormánuðr, þá er frermánuðr, þá er hrútmánuðr, þá er þorri, þá gói, þá einmánuðr, þá gaukmánuðr ok sáðtíð, þá eggtíð ok stekktíð, þá er sólmánuðr ok selmánuðr, þá eru heyannir, þá er kornskurðarmánuðr. In English: the month before winter is autumn month; the first in winter slaughter month, then frost month, then ram month, then Þorri, then Gói, then single month, then cuckoo month and sowing time, then egg time and lamb-fold time, then sun month and shieling month, then hay work, then grain-cutting month. Brodeur's translation (1916) prints the passage in brackets for that reason.

The names used in Iceland today are partly different. Only a few are found in medieval writing: þorri, gói (now Góa), einmánuðr, tvímánuðr and heyannir, besides gormánuðr; the Icelandic almanac thinks they were names of older seasons that did not span exactly thirty days. Ýlir and Mörsugur are known from the twelfth-century computus text Bókarbót (according to Icelandic secondary sources; we have not seen the manuscript edition), and Harpa and Skerpla appear only in seventeenth-century calendar manuscripts. The meanings of most are uncertain, and we say so in the table.

Þorri and Gói were also people. In Fundinn Noregr, the legendary opening of Orkneyinga saga, and in Hversu Noregr byggðist, both preserved in the fourteenth-century Flateyjarbók, Þorri is a king descended from the giant Fornjótr whose midwinter sacrifice, the þorrablót, gave the month its name; when his daughter Gói vanished he held another sacrifice a month later, the góiblót. These are learned origin stories, not evidence for real heathen feasts; the þorrablót that Icelanders hold today was revived in the nineteenth century (the first recorded in Reykjavík in 1867). Þorri's first day is still bóndadagur, the farmers' day, and Góa's konudagur, the women's day.

The leap week has an origin story of its own. Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók (c. 1125) tells how, in the mid-tenth century, people noticed that summer was creeping back into spring, and a man called Þorsteinn surtr proposed adding a week to every seventh summer. The rule was refined in the twelfth century and is still followed by the Icelandic almanac.

The Moon and the old calendar

Unlike many calendars, the Icelandic one ignores the Moon: its months are fixed blocks of thirty days. The Moon still had its place in the myths, where Máni determines its waxing and waning, and in Völuspá the gods name the waning moon so that years can be numbered. For this month's phases see the Moon calendar for October.