The Old Norse Calendar – Today

The Icelanders kept their own calendar for centuries: a year of two halves, winter and summer, with twelve months of thirty days each. Here you can see which Old Norse month it is today, which week of summer or winter we are in, and when the next special day falls – Þorri, Góa or the first day of summer.

The months of this half-year cycle

Calculated in your browser according to the rules of the modern Icelandic almanac (first day of summer: Thursday 19–25 April; first day of winter: Saturday 21–27 October). Historical practice varied.

How the old Icelandic calendar works

The reckoning, in Icelandic misseristal ("half-year count"), divides the year into two misseri: winter and summer. Each half has six months of thirty days. Twelve times thirty makes 360 days, so four extra nights, the aukanætur, are added in midsummer, giving a year of 364 days – exactly 52 weeks. Because that is still shorter than the solar year, an extra week, the sumarauki ("summer addition"), is inserted every few years.

That such a correction was necessary is something the Icelanders noticed early. Ari Þorgilsson reports in his Íslendingabók (early 12th century) that a man named Þorsteinn surtr proposed adding a week every seventh summer, because people had noticed that summer was creeping back into spring. Whether the details happened exactly like that we cannot check; that the problem and the solution are old is clear.

The calculation on this page follows the rules of the modern Icelandic almanac: summer begins on the Thursday between 19 and 25 April, winter on the Saturday between 21 and 27 October. The months begin on fixed weekdays – Þorri always on a Friday, Góa always on a Sunday. The month names are those in use today; older sources sometimes give different names, and for several of them the meaning is no longer certain. We say so in the list.

Special days

Bóndadagur ("farmer's day") is the first day of Þorri, Konudagur ("women's day") the first day of Góa – both are still celebrated in Iceland. Sumardagurinn fyrsti, the first day of summer, is a public holiday in Iceland to this day. Fyrsti vetrardagur, the first day of winter, marks the start of the dark half of the year. Our article on Þorrablót explains what the Icelanders eat and drink in Þorri – and what is old about it and what is not.

For the moon-based calendar of the Germanic peoples see our Germanic moon calendar, and for the feasts of the year the blót calendar. How the Vikings counted time in general is told in the article on Viking time-reckoning.

The twelve months

• Gormánuður – 'slaughter month' – the usual reading, from gor (the stomach contents of slaughtered animals)
• Ýlir – meaning uncertain; often linked with Yule
• Mörsugur – meaning uncertain ('fat-sucker' is a popular reading)
• Þorri – meaning uncertain; gives its name to today's Þorrablót
• Góa – meaning uncertain; personified as a woman in folk tradition
• Einmánuður – 'single month' – reading uncertain
• Harpa – meaning uncertain; begins with the first day of summer
• Skerpla – meaning uncertain
• Sólmánuður – 'sun month'
• Heyannir – 'hay work', the haymaking season
• Tvímánuður – 'second month' – usually read as the second month before winter
• Haustmánuður – 'autumn month'

Sources

• Ari Þorgilsson: Íslendingabók, ch. 4 (Þorsteinn surtr und der sumarauki).
• Almanak Háskóla Íslands (Icelandic almanac of the University of Iceland).
• Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson / Árni Björnsson: research on Icelandic time-reckoning; overview: Icelandic calendar (Wikipedia).