As one who measures the year by more than one calendar, I often find my attention piqued when presented with methods of doing so from the past with which I was previously unfamiliar. Such was recently the case when, whilst listening to the History Extra podcast, I found myself wholly enrapt with Dr. Eleanor Parker‘s presentation of her recently published book Winters in the World; A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year.
Originally published in the U.K. by Reaktion Books, and now also distributed in the U.S. by University of Chicago Press, Winters in the World presents it readers with a guided tour through the Anglo-Saxon perception and measurement of time – a reckoning that was more closely linked to the rhythms of the natural world than our own today yet from which we still retain aspects of which we may not be aware.
As Winter was held as particularly significant to the people of this period, it seems most appropriate that with the coming of Samhain (not an Anglo-Saxon name of course but a Celtic one; the Anglo-Saxons marked the time as the beginning of Blōtmōnaþ, “blood month”) once again in the norther hemisphere and the return of the annual time of darkness it marks that this book should now be taken up for reading as both edification and entertainment during the long, dark evenings to come.
