Winter Nights, the Norse Start of Winter: Sources and Corrections

The Norse year had two halves, winter and summer, and people counted their age in winters. The Icelandic historian Ari, writing around 1125, says he came to his foster-home "seven winters old". The sagas call the start of winter the Winter Nights, a time to "welcome the winter" with feasts. Iceland's almanac still marks the first day of winter: in 2026 it is Saturday 24 October. This page gives the source for every slide.

Every factual claim in our carousel on the Norse start of winter and in its caption, with its source. Section numbers 01 to 05 match the number at the top of each slide; 07 to 10 are the later slides' places in the carousel. The cover and slides 01 to 04 and 07 are modern illustrations made for this post, not pictures of any find or place. Slide 05 is a real manuscript leaf, credited below.

How we cite. We read the Old Icelandic texts themselves: Heimskringla and Ari's Íslendingabók on heimskringla.no, the family sagas on snerpa.is, with chapter numbers as those editions give them. Sigvatr's verses are in R. D. Fulk's edition (2012) for the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project, whose site sits behind a browser check, so we link the Internet Archive's copies. The modern calendar comes from the University of Iceland's almanac and its Vísindavefurinn answers. Translations are ours unless we name Fulk. The sagas were written in the 1200s about people of the 900s and 1000s; Ari wrote around 1122 to 1133, still some 250 years after the settlement.

Slide by slide

Cover. "How many winters old are you?"

The question is the old way of asking someone's age; the sources are in 01 and 02. The picture is a modern illustration of a farm in late October, people driving sheep down to the fold under the first snow. The first winter month in the Icelandic calendar is Gormánuður, which Vísindavefurinn says takes its name from the slaughtering season that began then.

01. The old Icelandic year had two seasons

The source is Íslendingabók, chapter 4, which Ari titles Frá misseristali, "On the reckoning of the half-years". The wisest men in the land höfðu talit í tveim misserum fjóra daga ins fjórða hundraðs, had counted in the two misseri four days into the fourth hundred, that is 364, counting a hundred as 120, and Ari does the sum for the reader: 52 weeks. Then merkðu þeir at sólargangi, at sumar munaði aftr til vársins, they noticed by the sun's course that summer was slipping back toward spring. A man named Þorsteinn surtr proposed at the Law Rock at it sjaunda hvert sumar skyldi auka viku, that every seventh summer a week be added, and it became law.

"Around 1125" rounds Ari's dates. He is describing a reform of the 900s, so the two half-years are older than his book. The line "The halves were winter and summer" follows the Icelandic Met Office's text on Vísindavefurinn, which says the old calendar divides the year "into two nearly equal halves, a summer half and a winter half". The same text adds that the Icelandic calendar "became fully developed in the 12th century".

Sources: Ari Þorgilsson, Íslendingabók ch. 4, Old Norse text on heimskringla.no; Vísindavefurinn 65157. Illustration: modern, made for this post.

02. Ari gave his own age in winters

Íslendingabók chapter 9, in Ari's own voice: Ek kom ok til Halls sjau vetra gamall, vetri eftir þat, er Gellir Þorkelssonr, föðurfaðir minn ok fóstri, andaðist, ok vark þar fjórtán vetr. "I came to Hallr seven winters old, a winter after Gellir Þorkelsson, my grandfather and foster-father, died, and I was there fourteen winters." Hallr lived at Haukadalr. The slide leaves out the middle clause.

The boy is Óláfr the Peacock, in Laxdæla saga, chapter 16: Þá er hann var tólf vetra gamall reið hann til þings og þótti mönnum það mikið erindi úr öðrum sveitum að undrast hversu hann var ágætlega skapaður. "When he was twelve winters old he rode to the Assembly, and people from other districts thought it well worth the trip to marvel at how finely made he was." The Althing met in summer, so the illustration on the slide shows no snow.

Twelve winters old means twelve years old. The sagas count this way throughout: Egill in Egils saga is þrevetur, three winters old, and Grettir goes to the ball games fjórtán vetra gamall.

Sources: Íslendingabók ch. 9; Laxdæla saga ch. 16; Egils saga ch. 31; Grettis saga. Illustration: modern, made for this post.

03. "It was many men's custom to welcome the winter"

The headline is Gísla saga, chapter 10: Og líður nú svo sumarið og kemur að veturnóttum. Það var þá margra manna siður að fagna vetri í þann tíma og hafa þá veislur og veturnáttablót. "And so the summer passed and the Winter Nights came. It was then many men's custom to welcome the winter at that time, and to hold feasts and a Winter Nights sacrifice." Gísli had given up sacrificing, the saga adds, en hann hélt þó sem áður veislum, but he still held his feasts.

The chieftain is Þorgrímr, in chapter 15: Þorgrímur ætlaði að hafa haustboð að veturnóttum og fagna vetri og blóta Frey, "Þorgrímr meant to hold an autumn feast at the Winter Nights, and welcome the winter and sacrifice to Freyr." Then: var stráð gólf á Sæbóli af sefinu af Seftjörn, "the floor at Sæból was strewn with sedge from Seftjörn", the pond by the farm.

The last line rests on three sagas. In Vatnsdæla saga, chapter 32, a wedding skyldi vera að veturnóttum, was to be held at the Winter Nights. In Grettis saga the shepherd Glámr is hired to koma að veturnóttum, to start at the Winter Nights. And in Eyrbyggja saga, chapter 43, it was the custom of the Breiðavík people to hold ball games um veturnáttaskeið, around the Winter Nights. Our sources page on knattleikr, the Norse ball game, quotes that passage in full. In Víga-Glúms saga, chapter 6, a feast að veturnóttum comes with a dísablót, a sacrifice to the female guardian spirits.

Sources: Gísla saga ch. 10 and 15; Vatnsdæla saga ch. 32; Grettis saga; Eyrbyggja saga ch. 43; Víga-Glúms saga ch. 6; all on snerpa.is. Illustration: modern, made for this post.

04. Sigvatr was ordered out four times in one evening

Sigvatr Þórðarson was King Óláfr Haraldsson's court poet, and his Austrfararvísur, "Verses on a journey east", tell of his mission to Jarl Rögnvaldr in Götaland. In Fulk's edition of the poem, stanza 1 gives the season, svafk fátt í hausti, "I slept little after that in the autumn". Stanza 3 gives the feet: "a wound landed on each sole." Stanza 8 gives the headline: "I was ordered out four times in one evening."

The door is stanza 5. Fulk's translation: "'Do not come any farther in, wretched fellow', said the woman; 'I fear the wrath of Óðinn; we are heathen.' The disagreeable female, who drove me away like a wolf without hesitation, said they were holding a sacrifice to the elves inside her farmhouse." The stanza before it, at a farm called Hof, has the door barred and the people inside saying the house was heilagt, holy.

"About 1019" is the usual date for the journey, made while King Óláfr sought peace with Sweden. Óláfs saga helga in Heimskringla, chapter 92, tells the same trip in prose and quotes these verses. It says Sigvatr set out öndurðan vetr, at the very start of winter, and that the housewife bað hann eigi þar inn koma, segir, at þau œtti álfa blót, told him not to come in, saying they were holding an elf-sacrifice.

So the slide says autumn, and adds the small print: Sigvatr is the only witness here who was alive at the time, but his verses survive only because 13th-century saga writers copied them.

Sources: Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur st. 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, ed. R. D. Fulk, in Poetry from the Kings' Sagas 1 (2012), p. 590 for st. 5, read on skaldic.org via the Internet Archive; Óláfs saga helga ch. 92, heimskringla.no. Illustration: modern, made for this post.

05. The feast outlived the old gods

Óláfs saga helga, chapter 123. Sigurðr Þórisson, brother of Þórir the Hound, var því vanr, meðan heiðni var, at hafa þrenn blót hvern vetr: eitt at vetrnóttum, en annat at miðjum vetri, þriðja at sumri. "While heathendom lasted, he was used to holding three sacrifices every winter: one at the Winter Nights, another at midwinter, a third at summer." Here vetr means the whole year, the way Ari counts his years. Then: En er hann tók við kristni, þá hélt hann þó teknum hætti um veizlurnar. "But when he took Christianity, he still kept his custom with the feasts." A great friends' feast in autumn, a Yule feast in winter, a third feast at Easter.

The Yule feast on that list is the midwinter one. Our article on how the Vikings kept Yule covers its date and King Hákon's law moving it to Christmas.

Chapter 113 shows the older feast: the farmers of Trøndelag held veizlur fjölmennar at vetrnóttum, crowded feasts at the Winter Nights, where all the toasts were blessed to the Æsir in the old way.

The image on this slide is real. It is the Kringla leaf, Lbs fragm 82, the only leaf to survive of the Heimskringla manuscript called Kringla, written around 1260. The rest burned in the Copenhagen fire of 1728. The leaf's text is from Óláfs saga helga, the saga this slide quotes, and it is now in the National and University Library of Iceland.

Sources: Óláfs saga helga ch. 113 and 123, heimskringla.no. Image: Lbs fragm 82, fol. 1r, the Kringla leaf, National and University Library of Iceland, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Cropped by us, with text added.

07. How many winters old are you? Comment below

The date comes from the almanac's rule, on its page "Fingrarím: Að finna tímamót í misseristali": Samkvæmt núgildandi reglum byrjar veturinn á laugardegi 21. - 28. október, "under the rules now in force, winter begins on a Saturday between 21 and 28 October". In 2026 the only Saturday in that span is the 24th; we worked it out from the rule. Vísindavefurinn gives the same span and calls the day fyrsti vetrardagur, the first day of winter.

The Saturday is modern. The same almanac page: Að minnsta kosti frá 1500 og allt fram á 19. öld mun vetur hafa talist byrja á föstudegi í stað laugardags, "at least from 1500 until the 19th century, winter was reckoned to begin on a Friday instead of a Saturday". The caption says so.

"A life was counted in winters" is the count in 02. Ari counts his own years in winters. He counts the lawspeakers' terms in summers, so the old count used both halves.

Illustration: modern, made for this post.

08. The Norse named people too

A byname was given by other people, not chosen by the one who carried it, and the sagas use them to tell people apart. Our free Viking name generator draws on given names and bynames attested in medieval sources.

09. Early shall he rise

The line is Hávamál, stanza 58: Ár skal rísa, sá er annars vill fé eða fjör hafa; sjaldan liggjandi ulfr lær of getr né sofandi maðr sigr. "Early shall he rise who wants another man's wealth or life; seldom does a lying wolf get the ham, or a sleeping man victory." The translation is ours.

AR SKAL RISA is the stanza's first three words in capitals, without the accents. Any blade in our personalized Viking blades collection can carry these words, a name or a date, laser-engraved letter for letter, exactly as you approve it, in Roman capitals or in runes. The knife on the slide has a patterned steel blade with a fuller, a dark banded bolster and a pale grip, with its leather sheath beside it.

Sources: Hávamál, st. 58, Old Norse text on heimskringla.no.

10. A toast to your kin

The toast is in Hákonar saga góða in Heimskringla, chapter 16, Frá blótum, "On sacrifices". After the toasts to Óðinn, Njörðr, Freyr and Bragi: Menn drukku ok full frænda sinna, þeirra er göfgir höfðu verit, ok váru þat minni kölluð. "Men also drank toasts to their kinsmen who had been great, and those were called minni."

Editions differ on one word. The heimskringla.no text reads göfgir, great or noble. The modern-spelling text on snerpa.is reads heygðir, "who had been laid in mounds", that is, buried. The slide follows heimskringla.no. Either way the toast is to kinsmen, and the word is minni, remembrance. Our guide to celebrating Yule from the sources uses the same chapter for a modern toast.

The chapter gives no date for this feast, which is why the slide says "the sacrifice feasts". Hákonar saga has its own Winter Nights feast two chapters later: Um haustit at vetrnóttum var blótveizla á Hlöðum, "In autumn, at the Winter Nights, there was a sacrifice feast at Hlaðir". There the Christian king made the sign of the cross over the horn, and Jarl Sigurðr told the farmers it was the sign of Thor's hammer.

The ring is our stainless steel Fenrir wolf arm ring: a twisted bangle of 316L stainless steel with two facing wolf-head ends, adjustable from 18 to 26 cm so it sits on the wrist or higher on the arm. It is water-safe and will not tarnish.

Sources: Hákonar saga góða ch. 16 and 18, heimskringla.no and snerpa.is.

Caption. The Friday, the feasts and the poet

"One chieftain strewed his floor with sedge to do it." See 03: Þorgrímr at Sæból, Gísla saga ch. 15.

"Around 1019 the poet Sigvatr, crossing Sweden in autumn, was turned away from farm after farm." See 04. Stanza 8 has him ordered out four times in one evening, and stanza 6 has three farmers, all named Ölvir, drive him off.

"A Norwegian chieftain who became Christian kept all three of his yearly feasts: one for friends in autumn, Yule in winter, and Easter." See 05. "Yearly" renders the saga's hvern vetr, literally "every winter", which here means every year. Sacrifices at the Winter Nights, midwinter and summer became a friends' feast in autumn, Yule and Easter.

"The Saturday is modern; for centuries it was a Friday." See 07, and the almanac: Friday from at least 1500 into the 19th century.

The rest of the caption repeats the cover and 01 to 07. The image line credits the Kringla leaf; the file and its status are linked under 05.

What we do not claim

• That the Winter Nights were a "Viking Halloween". No saga we read links them to Halloween or to the Gaelic Samhain.
• A fixed Viking Age date. No Viking Age text gives a day of the month for the Winter Nights. The 14 October found online is a later Norwegian and Swedish calendar convention; Vísindavefurinn gives 14 April and 14 October as the old Norwegian and Swedish reckoning.
• That the Vikings started winter on a Saturday. The Saturday rule is modern; before it came a Friday.
• That the Winter Nights were the Norse new year. None of the texts we read says so.
• That Iceland's first day of winter is a public holiday. The working-hours act of 1971, Lög um 40 stunda vinnuviku nr. 88/1971, article 6, lists the first day of summer, sumardagurinn fyrsti, among the days off, and not the first day of winter.
• That Sigvatr's elf-sacrifice was held at the Winter Nights. His verse says autumn; only the prose says the start of winter; neither says Winter Nights.
• That the elf-sacrifice was secret. The verses say the door was barred and a stranger kept out.
• That the minni toasts of Hákonar saga ch. 16 were drunk at the Winter Nights. That chapter gives no date.
• That Iceland has kept the same calendar since 874. Ari attests the two half-years; the full calendar matured in the 12th century.

Corrections

None yet. If you find an error, tell us, with a citation.

Frequently asked questions

What were the Winter Nights?

The Winter Nights, in Old Norse vetrnætr, were the start of the winter half of the year. Gísla saga says it was many men's custom to welcome the winter then with feasts and a sacrifice, and other sagas set weddings, hirings and ball games for the same days. The sagas give no fixed day of the month.

When does winter start in Iceland in 2026?

On Saturday 24 October 2026. The University of Iceland's almanac says that under the rules now in force winter begins on a Saturday between 21 and 28 October. The Saturday is modern: from at least 1500 until the 19th century, the first day of winter fell on a Friday.

Did the Norse count age in winters?

Yes. The Icelandic historian Ari Þorgilsson, writing around 1125, says he came to Haukadalr seven winters old and stayed fourteen winters. The sagas do the same: in Laxdæla saga Óláfr rides to the Althing at twelve winters old, and Grettir goes to the ball games at fourteen.

Were the Winter Nights a Viking Halloween?

No source we read says so. The sagas describe the Winter Nights as feasts to welcome the winter, with sacrifices to Freyr or to the dísir in some households. No saga links them to Halloween or to the Gaelic Samhain, and no Viking Age text gives the Winter Nights a fixed date.