Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

calendar (also Rune staff or Runic Almanac) is a

perpetual calendar A perpetual calendar is a calendar valid for many years, usually designed to look up the day of the week for a given date in the past or future. For the Gregorian and Julian calendars, a perpetual calendar typically consists of one of three ...

, variants of which were used in Northern Europe until the 19th century. A typical runic calendar consisted of several horizontal lines of symbols, one above the other. Special days like

solstices A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countri ...

equinoxes A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and set ...

, and celebrations (including

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

holidays and

feasts A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival con ...

) were marked with additional lines of symbols. Runic calendars were written on

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of ...

or carved onto staves of wood, bone, or horn. The oldest one known, and the only one from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, is a staff from

Nyköping Nyköping () is a locality and the seat of Nyköping Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden with 32,759 inhabitants as of 2017. The city is also the capital of Södermanland County. Including Arnö, the locality on the southern shore of th ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

, believed to date from the 13th century. Most of the several thousand which survive are wooden calendars dating from the 16th and the 17th centuries. During the 18th century, Runic calendars had a renaissance, and calendars dating from around 1800 were made in the form of brass tobacco boxes. The calendar is based on the 19 year-long

Metonic cycle The Metonic cycle or enneadecaeteris (from grc, ἐννεακαιδεκαετηρίς, from ἐννεακαίδεκα, "nineteen") is a period of almost exactly 19 years after which the lunar phases recur at the same time of the year. The recu ...

, correlating the Sun and the Moon, but the calendar does not prove knowledge of the length of the

tropical year A tropical year or solar year (or tropical period) is the time that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the sky of a celestial body of the Solar System such as the Earth, completing a full cycle of seasons; for example, the time f ...

or of the occurrence of

leap year A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year that contains an additional day (or, in the case of a lunisolar calendar, a month) added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year or s ...

s. The two sliding halves are aligned and set at the beginning of each year by observing the first

full moon The full moon is the lunar phase when the Moon appears fully illuminated from Earth's perspective. This occurs when Earth is located between the Sun and the Moon (when the ecliptic coordinate system, ecliptic longitudes of the Sun and Moon opp ...

after the first new moon after the

winter solstice The winter solstice, also called the hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter ...

. The first full moon also marked the date of ''

Disting The Disting () is an annual market which has been held in Uppsala, Sweden, since pre-historic times. The name (Old Swedish: ''Disæþing''

'', a

pagan Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. ...

feast and a

fair A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Types Variations of fairs incl ...

day also known as

Thing of all Swedes The Thing of all Swedes (''allra Svía þing'', ''Þing allra Svía'', ''Disaþing'',The article ''Distingen'', in the encyclopedia ''Nationalencyklopedin''. or ''Kyndilþing''

Marks

On one line, 52 weeks of 7 days were laid out using 52 repetitions of the first seven runes of the

Younger Futhark The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The ...

. The runes corresponding to each

weekday The weekdays and weekend are the complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest, respectively. The legal weekdays (British English), or workweek (American English), is the part of the seven-day week devoted to working. In most of t ...

varied from year to year. On another line, many of the days were marked with one of 19 symbols representing the 19

Golden numbers Golden means made of, or relating to gold. Golden may also refer to: Places United Kingdom *Golden, in the parish of Probus, Cornwall *Golden Cap, Dorset *Golden Square, Soho, London *Golden Valley, a valley on the River Frome in Gloucestershir ...

, for the years of the

. In early calendars, each of the 19 years in the cycle was represented by a rune; the first 16 were the 16 runes of the

, plus three special runes improvised for the remaining three years. The new moon would fall on that day during that year of the cycle. For example, in the 18th year of the cycle, the new moons would fall on all the dates marked with ''tvimadur'', the symbol for year 18. Later calendars used Pentadic numerals for the values 1–19. Because this system needed 19

runes Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

to represent the 19

golden numbers Golden means made of, or relating to gold. Golden may also refer to: Places United Kingdom *Golden, in the parish of Probus, Cornwall *Golden Cap, Dorset *Golden Square, Soho, London *Golden Valley, a valley on the River Frome in Gloucestershir ...

which stood for the 19 years of the perpetual calendar's cycle, the

was insufficient, having only 16 characters. The solution devised was to add three special runes to represent the remaining numbers: (''arlaug''; Golden Number 17), (''tvimadur'' or ''tvímaður''; Golden Number 18), and (''belgthor''; Golden Number 19). In 1636,

Ole Worm Ole Worm (13 May 1588 – 31 August 1654), who often went by the Latinized form of his name Olaus Wormius, was a Danish physician, natural historian and antiquary. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen where he taught Greek, Lati ...

documented the Younger Futhark numeral system, including these three characters, in his ''Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima'' (''Runes: the oldest Danish literature''). A version using the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

for weekdays and

Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...

for the golden numbers was printed in 1498 as part of the ''Breviarium Scarense''.

Primstav

A primstav is the ancient

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

calendar stick. These were engraved with images instead of runes. The images depicted the different nonmoving religious holidays. The oldest primstav still in existence is from 1457 and is exhibited at

Norsk Folkemuseum Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Museum of Cultural History), at Bygdøy, Oslo, Norway, is a museum of cultural history with extensive collections of artifacts from all social groups and all regions of the country. It also incorporates a large open- ...

Modern use

Adherents of the

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

n ethnic religion ('' Maausk'') have published Runic calendars ( et, sirvilauad) every year since 1978. Until 1991, the calendar was an illegal ''

samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...

'' publication under the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

government.

References

External links

* * {{Germanic peoples Obsolete calendars Specific calendars

Calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

Medieval runes Modern runic writing

Marks

Primstav

Modern use

See also

References

Further reading

External links