Runic Calendar.
The explanatory engraving of the Calendar shows the year begins on the 23rd December. That this date is correctly given for the first day of the year is proved by the agreement between the Saints days and the days of the month on which they fall and the Christian Sunday Letters.
In thus beginning the year this Calendar exhibits a rare peculiarity. No other Runic Calendar begins the year in the same manner, while numbers could be shown which begin the year at Yuletide, commencing on the 25th December.
Of the two modes of beginning it there is no question that the one here exhibited is the genuine heathen while the other is genuine Christian. It is worth noticing that as Winter takes precedence of Summer in the sense of a year: so night takes precedence of day generally in the sense of a civil day of 24 hours in old Icelandic writers, a manner of speech which to this day is far from having gone out of use.
Considering the heathen tradition preserved in this Calendar in the number of days given to the year and in the date given to the commencement of the year, in which it stands unique, in the fact that the interval between 1230 and 1300, i.e., out of 160 years rich in famous local and famous general Saints, not one should be recorded here: that Saints of universal adoration in the Catholic Church, such as St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Benedict, and others, should not have a place here: we cannot escape referring it to an age when it may be fairly supposed that these heathen traditions were still believed in by at least a considerable number of the community.
Anterior to 1230 it cannot be, long posterior to that date it can scarcely be. That it must be a layman's Calendar, is shown because it exhibits no golden numbers, and gives consequently no clue to the Paschal cycle or movable feasts. It is a very valuable piece of antiquity and ought to be well taken care of.
On 2nd February were anciently observed all over the Pagan north certain rites connected with the worship of fire. In some places the toast or bumper of the fire was drunk by the whole family kneeling round the fire, who at the same time offered grain or beer to the flames on the hearth. This was the so-called Eldborgs-skäl, the toast of fire salvage, a toast which was meant to avert disaster by fire for the coming year.
Fire and Sun worship mingled together, no doubt in observance of this feast: for where it was most religiously observed amongst the Swedes it was called Freysblôt and was a great event. In early Christian times only wax candles which had received the blessing of the priest, were burnt in the houses of the people, in the evening. Hence Candlemas,—see illustration in Stephens' Scandinavian Monuments. From a remarkable treatise by Eirikr Magnusson, M.A., on a Runic Calendar found in Lapland in 1866, bearing English Runes. (Cambridge Antiq. Soc. Communications, Vol. X., No. 1, 1877.)
