Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year

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This is a lyrical and wide-ranging exploration of the Anglo-Saxon world through its literature, using the framing device of the cycle of the traditional year. A someone who has read most of the Old English poetry and other works Parker draws on, some of it in the original language, it was a pleasure to revisit it via this perspective. She highlights both the elements which are timeless and have not changed and the ways in which this world was very alien. Spring and summer are welcomed and celebrated, but a world in which winter was hard and sometimes fatal didn't go in much for Keatsian wistfulness about autumn, for example. Most of all I felt a deep appreciation with the sacred cycle of time both then and now. I really love the Catholic liturgical cycles and how they connect with the natural world. This book brings that to the fore since the Anglo-Saxons were so much more in tune with nature and the seasons. Dragon Lords: Dr Eleanor Parker on England's Viking Myths and Ragnar Lothbrok | All About History". www.historyanswers.co.uk. 4 June 2018 . Retrieved 5 February 2020. Eleanor Parker only mentions Tolkien in passing in this book, though she has written and spoken about him in detail elsewhere. However, her book incidentally provides all sorts of insights for anyone who enjoys Tolkien’s fiction.

Explore the festivals, customs and traditions linked to the different seasons, and discover how Anglo-Saxons felt about the annual passing of the seasons and the profound relationship they saw between human life and the rhythms of nature. All this combines to make a work of rare value. It will be interesting to the history or literature buff. For me, I found my prayer life took on new focus and depth. As I went my day and the recent liturgical seasons, I thought of those long-ago Catholic Anglo-Saxons doing the same thing, taking it seriously, knowing that prayer matters, that saints will rush to your aid, that God gives us all that is good in life beginning with the riches of the natural world around us. I have just finished reading Eleanor Parker’s excellent new book, Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year . Rather than write a traditional review, I thought I’d offer an article that is part review and part reflection with a Tolkienian twist. Today it’s become a popular myth that that symbols linked in modern Britain with Easter, especially eggs, hares or rabbits, derive from the worship of Eostre, but there’s no Anglo-Saxon evidence to support that. None of these symbols were linked to Easter in the Anglo-Saxon period; eggs weren’t associated with Easter in Britain until the later Middle Ages, hares and rabbits not until much later still. There’s nothing to suggest any continuity of customs between the pre-conversion festival and the Anglo-Saxon Christian Easter, and the modern observance of Easter owes nothing to Anglo-Saxon paganism, with the sole exception of its English name.There isn’t space to explore the implications of all this here - though I am attempting to do so more thoroughly in my PhD - but even this brief survey suggests that, in some respects, the action in The Lord of Rings shadows, or fore-shadows, salvation history itself. BBC World Service – The Forum, Cnut: England's Viking king, The Viking's bloodthirsty Skaldic poetry". BBC . Retrieved 5 February 2020. I expected this book to be interesting. I didn't expect to fall in love with it. Eleanor Parker weaves a tapestry of poetry, literature, history, religion, and language to go through the seasons and practices of the Anglo-Saxon year. The result is a masterpiece that gave me a real sense of connection with the people of long ago. She also writes beautifully about many Anglo-Saxon poems. Time and time again, she models how to read literature closely and sensitively. Winters in the World isn’t simply a book about the Anglo-Saxon calendar and world view, it’s a great example of what literary criticism can be when it’s done well. In that sense, it reminds me of Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth , another book which opens works of literature as you would unwrap a gift rather than dissecting them as you might a cadaver. This sense of relationship between nature and humanity is something the Anglo-Saxon poets drew upon. They used it as a metaphor for emotion, and as a way to understand the processes of the world that their Christian god had created. The church calendar, and its method of dating, does, then, determine the course of the book. However, there is some effort to trace festivals, where appropriate, to their pagan past and, equally, to rubbish a few myths that have sprung up in the twentieth century. The line between myth and fact can be a fine one, and the reader can on occasion sense the extent of Parker’s frustration at modern notions, particularly when there is no textual evidence from the era to support various claims.

There is, of course, a great deal more to be said about both Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon year but that’s probably enough from me for the time being. I’ll finish with another quotation from Eleanor Parker which really sums up the importance of the calendar to the Anglo-Saxons (and not just the Anglo-Saxons). She’s writing about Aelfric and other authors of his time, though her words could equally apply to Tolkien, I think: Eleanor Parker’s Winters in the World is a lyrical journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, witnessing the major festivals and the turning of the seasons through the eyes of the poets. Beginning during the darkest days of winter, when writers read desolation and dread in the world, we are introduced to the hopefulness of the festivals of returning light; the promise of better (and less hungry) times ahead as the days lengthen and the plants bud; the fruitfulness of the harvest; and the calm reflection of the autumn. We feel the thrumming in our souls as we recognize on some primaeval level the connectedness of humanity, the environment, and the cycles of nature and life, even if other aspects – the marking of the seasons, the religiosity, the extremes of feast and famine – are alien to us. And we approach an appreciation of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors as we dive into the rhythms of their lives and language, their turns of phrase, and the force of their habits.

This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join a couple of days before the event and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout. It is a book that does what its subtitle suggests. It takes us on a journey through the Anglo-Saxon year. Starting with winter and ending with autumn. Parker admits that what the Anglo-Saxon year looked like before Christianity is hard to piece together. Some of the evidence is there, some educated guesses can be made via Bede and other sources but a lot is lost. But the important dates in the Christian calendar give a structure to the year which is familiar to people even now. We still celebrate Easter and Christmas, but with - most of us - having lost our links to agriculture a lot has slipped into the cultural archives. Known perhaps by name, but not marked or celebrated by the majority of us. Are Harvest Festivals still a thing? Now, this is very curious because, as Eleanor Parker points out, autumn is very much not the time for journeying (not even the Anglo-Saxon autumn which began on 7th August!). Spring is the journeying season and, of course, that is when Bilbo sets off at the start of The Hobbit . He leaves in April, a month forever associated with pilgrimage since Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales . But the key date at the start of The Lord of the Rings is not April 28th (when Bilbo first leaves Bag End) but September 22nd, Bilbo’s birthday and Frodo’s too. Rather than leave Bag End in spring, they leave on or about the autumn solstice. In other words, they leave the Shire at precisely the wrong time of year.

I also was surprised to see how integral the Catholic faith was in the Anglo-Saxon world. I'd expected to read a fair amount about pagan rituals but the author made it clear that this was a Christian world with only a glancing relationship with pagan religions. The way the faith was practiced then was, of course, different than now but there was enough in common to make me feel a connection with those times. In fact, I now am interested in getting my hands on some of Aelfric's homilies, many excerpts of which were featured in this book.It is, however, literary analysis with aplomb. The selection of texts is as diverse as possible, covering poetry, sermons, scientific texts, and more. The quotations are well chosen, expertly illustrating not just Parker's argument, but the feelings of the Anglo-Saxon writers. In addition, many of these quotations are provided both in translation (usually by Parker herself) and in the original Old English. For the geek, this can provide hours of amusement and a useful way of attempting to learn the language. There can be few better ways of showing the connections between now and then than by showing the similarity in vocabulary. To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start, now that it had come to the point. Bag End seemed a more desirable residence than it had for years, and he wanted to savour as much as he could of his last summer in the Shire. When autumn came, he knew that part at least of his heart would think more kindly of journeying, as it always did at that season. Connelly, Charlie (15 December 2022). "Tales from a lush life: the non-fiction books of the year". The New European . Retrieved 23 December 2022. Thurber, Bev (18 January 2019). "19.08.10 Parker, Dragon Lords". The Medieval Review. ISSN 1096-746X.

The importance of the cycle of the seasons and the way key dates marked agricultural activity and the maintenance of social structure is consistently emphasised. Parker also has little time for popular but largely erroneous ideas about pagan origins to festivals like Easter, noting that it took its name (indirectly) from a almost forgotten pagan goddess, but that is about all. This was a Christian world, though it's often a form of Christianity that is weird to any modern person even if they are themselves Christians. Saints were powerful beings that were "only a prayer away" in a world where otherworldly help would often be useful. We get insights into everyday life through a line or two in a poem and a sense of the endless cycle of sacred time even as it is punctuated by the coming of battles and the rise and fall of kings. I found this a fascinating read. Not just for its insight's into how the Anglo-Saxon year ran, but for the literature it introduces you to. I've read Beowulf but there were quotes from many other poems and works that made me want to take a deep dive into Anglo-Saxon literature.* Winters in the World' is a lyrical journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, witnessing the major festivals and the turning of the seasons through the eyes of the poets. It is a beautiful, charming, and descriptive voyage into what, to many of us, seems a very distant past. But in venturing forth, the early Middle Ages are shown to be, if not entirely familiar, then at least recognizable. Through Parker's writing, almost everything in this strange land, from the roots of our language to the sense of community - and the appreciation for drink - becomes closer, more relatable. This is no more so than in the appreciation for nature. As Parker points out, while on the surface our lives bear no relation to those of our distant ancestors, we still witness and mark the changing of the seasons; we still marvel at the stark beauty of a wintry landscape; we still enjoy the summer sun while snoozing under the branches of a spreading tree. The reliance on nature might be less pronounced now than a thousand years ago, but our responses to it are not so different. Over these descriptions Parker lays a historical account of how the pagan, chilly Anglo-Saxons gradually came to accommodate the feast days of a religion that had its roots in the sweltering eastern Mediterranean. Not until the early decades of the 11th century did the Anglo-Saxon festival of middewinter start to cede to Cristesmæsse, while in the north of England and Scotland, where Scandinavian influence remained strong, the old Norse Jol or “Yule” lasted longer. The time-markers and calendar-makers were kept busy making sure that this patchworked world still hung together. they wanted to read and interpret the natural world, to learn to recognize the meaning God had planted in it. They saw time and seasons, from the very first day of the world, as carefully arranged by God with method and purpose - so they believed it should be possible to organize the calendar not according to the randomness of custom and inherited tradition, but in a way that reflected that divine plan.Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including poetry, histories and religious literature, medievalist Eleanor Parker of the University of Oxford takes you on a journey through the cycle of the year in Anglo-Saxon England. Eleanor Parker’s book also got me thinking about the passing of the seasons in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (for The Lord of the Rings , in particular, is a very seasonal book) . Let’s look at these parallel passages, for example. This sense of relationship between nature and humanity is something these poets drew upon. They used it as a metaphor for emotion, and for the processes of the world that their Christian god had created. Of course, as these poets and other writers were almost without exception learned men of the church, it is hardly surprising that the focus of their writing, and therefore the focus of this book, is very much Christian. Yet there is some effort to trace festivals, where appropriate, to their pagan past and, equally, to rubbish a few myths that have sprung up in the twentieth century. In some ways, then, 'Winters in the World' is an Anglo-Saxon, early-Christian version of Ronald Hutton's 'Stations of the Sun'. Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.