There is a quaint way of numbering the month-days by the knuckles of the closed fist, which denote the longer, while the intervals represent the shorter divisions, a memoria technica, thus taking the place of our mnemonic lines, “Thirty days hath September,” etc. This “Dactylismus Ecclesiasticus,”[107] concerning which Bishop Jón Arnason wrote, is possibly what Uno Von Troil means (p. 118), “They make use of an art to discover the sun by their fingers.”
The heathen week consisted of “Fimts” (pentads), whence, probably, the sacred pentagonal star of Odinism; and six of these formed the month. Thus the year was composed of seventy-two weeks, a holy number (= 2 × 36, or 6 × 12). This old style lingered long after the introduction of the planetary heptad, and lasts in such expressions as “There are many turns of the weather in five days (a fimt), but more in a month.” Yet the week (vika) was already in use about the middle of the tenth century. Bishop John, who died in A.D. 1121, induced Iceland to adopt the hebdomadal division, and the ecclesiastical names of the days, as they survive in Spanish and Portuguese, e.g., Feria secunda, etc. Here we recognise, with the exception of the two first, the familiar Quaker custom:
Sunday is Sunnu-dagr, or Drottins-dagr, “the Lord’s day.”
Monday—Mána-dagr, modern Icel. Mánu-dagr.
Tuesday—Thriði, or Thriðju-dagr, “third day.”
Wednesday—Miðviku, contracted to Miðku-dagr, the Germ. Mittwoch.
Thursday—Fimti-dagr, or “fifth day.”
Friday—Föstu-dagr, “fast-day,” the O. Swed. Vor Frudag, “le jour de Nôtre Dame,” who took the place of Freya.
Saturday—Laugar-dagr, “bath day,” as in the times of England before “tubbing.”
The old Icelandic names of the week days were: Sunnudagr, Mánadagr, Týsdagr (from Týr, Tuisco, the one-armed god of war), Óðinsdagr, Thórsdagr, Frjádagr, and Laugar or Thvátt dagr (“washing-day,” i.e., Saturday).