Fyrsti vetrardagur

The first day of winter

The Old Icelandic calendar only knows two seasons - winter and summer. Both seasons last 6 months each.

The first month of winter (gormánuður) begins on the Saturday after the 26th week of summer, usually the Saturday between October 21st and 27th (also October 28th in leap years). The first day of the first winter month is therefore the first day of winter in Iceland (fyrsti vetrardagur).

The first day of winter 2024

So for this year, yesterday, Saturday, October 26, 2024, was the first day of winter in Iceland. It's winter now.

The weather here is currently very changeable, it feels like it changes between sunshine and hailstorms every 10 minutes, and it is still just over 0 °C.

The photo here is from the morning, taken around a quarter to 9. You can see that everything is still wet, the clouds are hanging low, but the dawn is shining on the horizon.

On the other hand, there have been gaps in the clouds in the evenings over the last few days and I was able to enjoy the northern lights, like the view to the north from the study window here. By the way, the moon had just risen at the bottom right.

Seriously - I took the picture here on the right about 20 minutes before midnight last night, then I went to bed. And just before midnight the storm was blowing so hard again and the hail felt like it was sweeping horizontally across the terrace that I got up again and checked to make sure everything was okay because it was rattling so loudly. Really - maybe 15 minutes after this Northern Lights picture here!

Winter month - slaughter month

The first winter month in the Old Icelandic calendar was also known as the "slaughter month" - after the cattle round-up took place at the end of September, the animals that were not to be brought over the winter were slaughtered. Therefore, the first month of winter is the perfect time for a really good meat soup made from freshly slaughtered Icelandic lamb. Accordingly, Kjótsúpadagur was celebrated on the Skólavörðustígur in Reykjavík for several years on the first day of winter; Unfortunately, this beautiful tradition is no longer being continued.

Vetrarboð

There used to be large celebrations and invitations at this time, probably also for very practical reasons: the freshly slaughtered meat had to be consumed quickly, as it used to be difficult - without salt and without modern freezers - to preserve the meat sufficiently. And even though a lot of things were smoked or marinated in whey, a lot of things had to be eaten straight away so that they didn't spoil. So it's the perfect opportunity to invite your neighbors to be generous - and look forward to the return invitation.

Although winter in Iceland was never an easy time - cold, dark, snowy and full of storms. People often feared the winters and in order to perhaps prepare themselves a little better for what was to come, at the beginning of winter it was also necessary to read from various omens about what the coming winter would be like.

Veðurspá fyrir vetri

Some people tried to read from the Milky Way in early November what the winter would be like. The band of the Milky Way stretches across the sky as an irregularly wide stripe - the entire strip then stood for the coming winter and the places where the stripe was particularly thick were intended to indicate at which times the winter would be particularly snowy.

Another method was to read the course of winter from the intestines of the first sheep slaughtered on the farm in the fall. The intestine represented the course of the winter and was "read" from bottom to top - the free areas in the intestine then represented the particularly hard, deprived times in the coming winter.

Alternatively, the sheep's spleen was used for weather forecasting: the spleen was removed, two or three incisions were made blindly and the spleen was then hung on the wall. The spleen gradually turns white as it hangs on the wall and dries, and the parts that turned white first were said to foretell the snowiest phases of the winter.

With that in mind - thank you for the past summer and I wish you and all of us the best possible winter!