Thus each edge contains three months or one quarter of the year.
Turning the staff over towards the reader who holds the loop or ring in the right hand.
The more ancient almanac called Runic Primitare, so named from the Prima-luna or new moon which gave the appellation of Prime to the Lunar or Golden Number, so called because the Number was marked in gold on the stave. The Rim Stocks of Denmark so called from Rim, a calendar and stock a staff. The marks called Runic characters were supposed to have magical powers and so were regarded with dread by the Christians and were often destroyed by the priests and converts to Christianity.
They were derived from rude imitations of the Greek letters. Two of these staves now in the Museum at Copenhagen are 4 feet 8½ inches and 3 feet 8 inches long respectively. They are hand carved and not in any sense made by machinery. This accounts from them being rarely alike, and often very different from one another.
The Sun in his annual career returns to the same point in the Zodiac in 365 days, 6 hours, nearly. The Moon who is really the month maker, as the Sun is the year maker, does 12 of her monthly revolutions in 354 days. So that a lunar year is 11 days shorter than the solar, supposing both to start from the same date. The actual lunar month contains about 29½ days. Therefore in order to balance the two reckonings, it was agreed at a convention of Scientist Christians of Alexandria in the year A.D. 323, two years previous to the Council of Nice, to make the distances between the new moon alternately 29 and 30 days, and to place the golden number accordingly. Now these Egyptian scholars observed that the new moon nearest the vernal Equinox in 323 was on the 27th day of the Egyptian month Phauranoth, corresponding with our 23rd of March, so the cycle was commenced on this day. This is the reason why the golden number 1 is placed against it, 29 days from this brought them to the 21st April, and 30 days from this to the 21st May, and so on through the year.
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.