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

Product Information

So one day, although autumn was now getting far on, and winds were cold, and leaves were falling fast, three large boats left Lake-town, laden with rowers, dwarves, Mr Baggins, and many provisions… The only person thoroughly unhappy was Bilbo.

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. 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:

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. Many of the festivals we celebrate in Britain today have their roots in the Anglo-Saxon period - come along to learn about their surprising history, as well as unearthing traditions now long forgotten. 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.

On a side note this book makes Tolkien's use of Anglo-Saxon literature as one of his main influence so obvious. Even if you already know it. Not just names and stories but how he adapts their culture in more general terms. 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.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. 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. 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.

These beliefs weren’t unique to the English, of course. St Augustine of Hippo once wrote that Christ “is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since.”) 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.The process was evolutionary in the sense that, not only did Christian feasts and rituals come to make use of Pagan traditions but that the common peasant would have seen Christianity in some ways as merely a fuller version of what he already believed.

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. 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. 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.* 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. There are many things I love about this book. As readers of her blog , History Today columns , Patreon articles , and books will already know, Eleanor Parker writes with great clarity and a deep knowledge of British history. On this occasion, she takes us, season by season, through the Anglo-Saxon year, teaching us a surprising amount about our own age as well as a great deal about the ways the Anglo-Saxons saw the world. On the way she also scuppers some deep-rooted myths. For example, she writes:

Reference

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.