The summer solstice is the longest day of the year – and was one of the great feasts of pagan Europe. Germanic peoples, Celts and Slavs celebrated it with fire, water and herbs. We look honestly: what is attested, and what is modern reconstruction?
First: precisely for the solstice the sources are thin. An early hint comes from Saint Eligius (Belgium, 7th c.), who forbids Christians to indulge on St John’s day (24 June) in pagan „solstitial" rites, dances or songs – which presupposes such customs. The closeness of St John’s day and the solstice is no accident.
In the North a Midsumarsblót is attested (Óláfs saga, Ágrip). Honour is paid above all to the sun Sunna/Sól and the light-god Baldr, and to the gods of fertility – Freyr, Freyja, Nerthus, Idun, Sif. Customs live on to this day: the decorated maypole, the midsummer fire, the sun-wheels rolled down the hillside, the gathering of healing herbs (above all St John’s wort, now in full bloom).
Among the Celts the sources are thinner still. From the Gaelic world the midsummer night Oíche Fhéile Eoin is known; on Knockainey hill fires were lit in honour of the goddess Áine. Roman sources report a feast of the eastern Celts at which the sky-mediatrix Rigani was wedded to the tribal and war god Teutates. Here too: on this night the doors to the Otherworld stand open.
Among the Slavs, Kupala is the most important holiday of all: the union of fire and water, man and woman, heaven and earth. Honour is paid to the sun-god Dazhbog, the thunder-god Perun and the earth-mother Mokosh. Young women set candle-lit flower wreaths adrift on rivers and read the future from them; people leap over the fire and gather magic herbs. Christianised, it became St John (Ivan Kupala) day.
Across all three cultures the same motifs recur: fire (the sun’s power), water (cleansing, divination), herbs (healing power in the magic time) and fertility. It is the turning point of the sun – from now the days shorten again, and the border to the Otherworld seems permeable.
Sunna / Sól · Ostara, Várblót & Sigrblót · Nerthus · The Norse pantheon.
St Eligius (Vita); Snorri, Heimskringla (Óláfs saga), Ágrip. A. E. Zautner, Der gebundene Mondkalender der Germanen. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; Bernhard Maier on Celtic religion; Aleksander Gieysztor, Mitologia Słowian; Zdeněk Váňa on Slavic mythology.