Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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In Iceland there still exists a curious calendar, the ‘week-year’. The year is divided into two halves, misseri; the people reckon in so many misseri, not years; it consists of whole weeks, in the ordinary year 52 (= 364 days), in leapyear 53 (= 371 days). Until midsummer (or mid-winter) they reckon forwards, so many weeks of summer or winter have elapsed, after that backwards, so many weeks of summer (winter) remain[335]. Bilfinger in a penetrating study has tried to shew that this curious calendar is an outcome of the ecclesiastical calendarial science of the Middle Ages. He does not however prove his case: rather, the calendar, as tradition shews, reaches far back into heathen times[336].

The reckoning in weeks was once common to all Scandinavia. The Lapps have special names for every week of the year, borrowed from festivals and saints’ days falling within the weeks; they have therefore taken from the Scandinavians the reckoning in weeks and adapted it to the uses of a primitive time-reckoning. From the same source they have also derived the special significance of the summer night (April 14, Tiburtius) and of the winter night (Oct. 14, Calixtus), from which also two weeks are named. The system is better preserved in certain parts of South Sweden[337]. The people count in räppar, quarter-years—in Öland they are called trettingar, thirteenths, i. e. 13 weeks—beginning with the räppadagar: these are Lady Day, Midsummer Day, Michaelmas Day, and Christmas Day, old style. Just as in Iceland, they reckon backwards, not however in the same quarters as there, but in the quarters before Midsummer and Christmas: in the other two quarters they count forwards. In northern Scania I have met with a relic of the same type of reckoning, the ‘number of weeks’ (ugetalet), which begins on April 6 (Lady Day, old style), and is reckoned backwards as far as the thirteenth week. The duration of both rural occupations and natural phenomena is determined in so many weeks. As the starting-point of this reckoning in weeks the four great festivals which come nearest to the four points of the solstices and equinoxes are chosen. There can be no doubt that these have made their appearance under the influence of the Christian calendar instead of the four Old Scandinavian points of division of the year. The people call Calixtus’ day (Oct. 14) the first day of winter, and Tiburtius’ day (April 14) the first day of summer; many rune-staves have this division of the year, and almost all describe the former by a tree without leaves, the latter by a tree in leaf. They fall in the same weeks as the initial days of winter and summer in Iceland, which vary there on account of the peculiar arrangement of the calendar. In Scandinavia, however, they have been transformed into fixed days under the influence of the Julian calendar.