[332] Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, Hanover, 1878, maintains that the quadripartite division was developed alongside of the tripartite, and bases his statement on a study of the principal festivals.
[333] Om en nordisk årstredelning, p. 248. I cannot however agree with the author in the direction indicated by the sub-title of his essay: “Is a trace of an old Germanic tripartite division of the year to be observed in our popular festivals?”
[335] For exceptions see Bilfinger, I, 8 ff.
[336] Bilfinger has brought forward his opinion with great penetration and wide learning, but his reasoning cannot stand before a searching criticism such as that amassed by Ginzel, III, 58 ff., and Brate, Nordens äldre tideräkning, Program of the Södermalm College, Stockholm, 1908, pp. 17 ff., and in particular developed and more profoundly based by Beckman, Alfræði, Intro. pp. 1 ff.; cp. an article by the same author in the Norwegian periodical Maal og Minne, 1915, p. 198. I might content myself with a simple reference to Beckman, since I agree with him on all important points, but as his article is written in Swedish and is therefore probably inaccessible to many, I add the following note which in the main was written long before it now appears, originally in connexion with my studies in the primitive history of the Christmas festival, worked out in the year 1914.
In point of fact it seems as though the objection which Bilfinger in his study of the Yule-tide festival, II, 120, note, makes against the criticism of Finnur Jonsson has not been answered (before Beckman): the objection is that no notice is taken of the fundamental idea of Bilfinger’s work on the Old Icelandic year—the cardinal point around which his whole demonstration revolves—viz. the relation of the Old Icelandic calendar to the calculation of Easter. Granting that the still heathen Icelanders or Norwegians knew the week (the Germanic peoples took over the week while yet in their heathen period, see my Studien zur Vorgeschichte des Weihnachtsfestes, Archiv f. Religionswiss., 19, 1918, p. 118) and made use of it in counting time, and that they later learnt approximately to know the length of the year—which is very easily conceivable in view of their lively intercourse with other nations—we have the elements out of which their calendar was developed, viz. the week and the year. To these must be added the old-established divisions of the year, summer and winter, which, on account of their importance for civil life, were introduced as fixed periods of time into the calendar. As a result of the adjusting of the reckoning in weeks to the year of 365, in leapyear 366, days, there arose a week-year with periodic interpolations of an embolimic week. This of necessity agrees with Bilfinger’s so-called ‘mean Easter year’, since both are constructed out of the same elements, it being assumed only that the week-days of the one calendar correspond to those of the other, and this is the case, since the week came to Iceland from the south. Bilfinger is not correct in calling (I, 71) the shifting Easter period a fragment of a week-year: in so doing he shuts his eyes to what he himself terms the quinary factor, i. e. that Easter Sunday falls varyingly on one of the five Sundays between March 22 and April 25 (the other days of the Paschal term being fixed accordingly). This fact, as has long ago been observed, makes the Easter period a fragment of a lunisolar year. A further development would lead to a lunisolar year that also took into account the reckoning in weeks. Bilfinger’s view of the matter is that the Icelanders for the sake of convenience eliminated the quinary factor from the Easter reckoning by taking the mean Easter Thursday as a fixed point of departure instead of letting the calendar follow the actual variation of this day: this roundabout method is unnecessary since the same result is arrived at by basing a system of time-reckoning on the year and the week. The aim of the Icelandic calendar, according to Bilfinger, was to fix the beginning of summer, a legally very important term. If this was the object in view it was, as Brate remarks (p. 21), not attained, for this day, Thursday of the week April 9–15, may fall in the Passion week so that it becomes useless for all business purposes. This proves on the contrary that the fixing of the beginning of summer is pre-Christian.
The last objection to Are’s account of the introduction of the Icelandic calendar, which Finnur Jonsson and Brate have allowed to stand, must also fall. According to Are the cyclical interpolation of a week was introduced by Torsten Surt about 960 A. D., while previously the year had 52 weeks, i. e. 1¼ days too few. Bilfinger objects that such a year is unthinkable, since in the course of 40 years it must anticipate itself by 50 days, and therefore in 292 years must have run through the whole circle of the seasons: the mid-winter festival must therefore for one generation have fallen in summer. Theoretically the objection is valid, but in practice not so (cp. the Egyptian shifting year), and the old calendars are administered practically. In the effort to arrive at an embolimic cycle mistakes are at first made, and the agreement with the solar year is once more brought about by means of intercalations irregularly introduced for practical reasons. How the ancient Roman calendar was treated we know: by the end of the Republic it had become thoroughly disorganised as a result of intercalations made for political purposes. Moreover the Roman year with its average length of 366¼ days was from the beginning not a whit better than the year of 364 days ascribed by Are to the Icelanders before Torsten Surt. We learn from inscriptions that in Athens still more irregular intercalations were made during the last decades of the 5th century. Such intercalations are the ruin of any system, but chronology must work with a system, and this fact often blinds the eye of the chronological student to the irregularity in the practical treatment of the calendar. Irregular intercalations of this kind are not indeed attested for Iceland, but it is evident that they must always appear of themselves in a defective calendar. The possibility of a treatment of this kind existed, since the spokesman of the laws had to proclaim publicly every year to the assembled people in the Althing notices about the calendar for the following year, among which the announcement of the intercalation held a special place. In these arguments I find myself in agreement with Beckman: I also agree with his statement as to the gradual increase in accuracy in the formation of the Icelandic week-calendar under the influence of the ecclesiastical calendar.
We conclude then that the cardinal points of the Icelandic calendar, which recur throughout Scandinavia and fall about three weeks behind the equinoxes or the solstices, are not of Christian origin: the agreement with what Bilfinger terms the ‘mean Easter Thursday’ is accidental. The date is due to climatic conditions. A contributory factor may have been the circumstance that mid-winter and midsummer fall just at the places where a shortening or lengthening of the day becomes observable.
[337] Småland and neighbouring provinces. Communicated by Dr. von Sydow.
[338] This practice has passed into the Lapp language: kess idja = week of the summer nights, talvidja = the winter nights. Wiklund, pp. 16 and 20.