N-calendars-art - 8/12/97

"Runic Clog and Stave Calendars" by Gunnora Hallakarva. (The Viking Lady)

NOTE: See also the files: Norse-msg, calendars-msg, time-art, med-calend-art, sundials-msg, bells-msg, clocks-msg, Sandglass-art, V-Arts-and-A-art.

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Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 01:22:54 -0500
From: gunnora at bga.com (Gunnora Hallakarva)
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: Runic Clog and Stave Calendars

Heilsa, All!

I have put together some information in response to a question to The Viking
Answer lady about runic calendars (my answer thus far appears below), also
known as clog almanacs, primstaves, or rune staves.  However, I am lacking a
source for good, clear illustrations of these artifacts.  Ideally, I'd like
access to either books with photos or graphics files online with the images
I need. My dream is to locate a source which carefully discusses the runes
and other symbols used, their meanings etc.   Has anyone any good leads?
----------

Viking Answer Lady Response on Clog Almanacs

In response to your question about clog almanacs, I have only one good
source of information on this topic, and alas, I have found some
questionable information in this source.  Nonetheless, it can be useful as
long as you double-check the information:

Pennick, Nigel.  Runic Astrology: Starcraft and Timekeeping in the Northern
Tradition.  Wellingborough: Aquarian Press.  1990.  ISBN 0-85030-871-2.
$12.95 softcover edition.

Pennick has a few illustrations.  I have actually seen people making modern
reconstructions of these, for example at some of the viking heritage
festivals in Minnesota.  An organization such as the Sons of Norway may be
able to lead you to additional information and possibly modern practicioners
of the art.

Apparently these staves were used from antiquity until the nineteenth
century.  There were two types of staves:  four-sided (square in
cross-section) and two-sided (like a ruler).  Four-sided staves were usually
divided by the quarters or seasons of the year, while the two-sided
varieties followed the more common Norse timekeeping practice of dividing
the year into summer and winter.  An uncommon variant on these is a "book"
of runestaves with seven flat staves tied together, so that thirteen of the
fourteen sides could each represent a week of the year.

In England, these calendar staves were known as Clogs or Clog almanacs: "clog"
being a word for a worked piece of wood, which we still have today in use
for a wooden shoe, and which is in some way related to "log" in its
connotation of a record of events.

The Danish term is Rimstock, from ON "rimur", a calendar.  Other
Scandinavian names include: Prim, Primestaves, and Messe-dag staves.

Primestaves provide the means for relating the lunar calendar to the solar
calendar.

Swedish and Norwegian staves utilize a seven rune repeat to indicate weeks:
feoh, uruz, thorn, as, raido, kenaz, and hagal.  These runes do not map to the
named days of the week, but rather are used as a counting system (i.e., feoh is
not always Sunday, but varies based on what day the year begins with).

Over time, variations of the runes came to be used to denote more complex
numbers.  Since there were only 16 runes, compound or bind-runes were used
for numeric concepts above 16.

Pennick provides nice line drawings of six or seven calendric staves, as
well as diagrams of several runic notation systems in use on these staves.

A more useful source for understanding how the pagan Nordic peoples
 understood time and the wheel of the year is the excellent scholarly work:

Hastrup, Kirsten.  Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An
Anthropoligical Analysis of Structure and Change.  Oxford: Clarendon. 1985.
ISBN 0-19-823250-0.

Hastrup gives in-depth information on the months, days, their names, how they
related to actual changes in climate and festivals etc.  Her work is based
on the manuscripts in icelandic such as Rimtol and Misseristal which are devoted to calendaric reckoning.

Below I list some other references you may want to investigate.  I have not
personally examined any of these, so I do not know how useful they may or
may not be.  The best source for obtaining most of these would be through
Inter Library Loan.  Check with your local librarian and ask how you can get
started using the ILL system.

Harland, John.  "On Clog Almanacs, or Runestocks."  The Reliquary.  London,
1865.

Jones, Prudence.  Sundial and Compass Rose:  Eight-fold Time Division in
Northern Europe.  Bar Hill, 1982.

Wassail,

Gunnora Hallakarva
Herskerinde

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