Many moons ago (or should I say many suns ago) when I was a student at Bristol University, a group of us had the crazy idea of driving up to Stonehenge on the summer solstice to see the sunrise over the heel stone. Those were the days when you could walk freely around the stones, and there weren't the hordes of tourists and Druids etc. that you get these days. My memories of the trip (like the weather that morning) are pretty hazy. It was very cold I seem to remember and it got quite light, way before the actual sunrise time, the ‘false dawn' I think it is called. There was no dramatic beam of sunlight at the official sunrise time, it just got lighter and lighter, and we got colder and colder, so half an hour after the documented sun rise time, we were back in the car, heading back to the halls of residence. In November the fifth terms, 'a damp squib' !
The summer solstice marks the peak of summer and takes place on the longest day of the year when the sun is at its highest in the sky. Solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). In the northern hemisphere this takes place on 20th or 21st June. The summer solstice has been celebrated since ancient times and is still celebrated around the world today.
At the summer solstice there are many places in the far north, within the arctic circle where the sun never sets. These include parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Iceland. Places known as the Land of the Midnight Sun.
The solstice is marked all over the world. Although there are differences between cultures, there are also some striking similarities. Many different cultures celebrate the solstice with bonfires. And many different places have monuments designed so that during the solstice, they will line up with the Sun.
In Britain the solstice is famously associated with Stonehenge. When the Sun rises on the day of the summer solstice, it lines up with one of the stones, called the heel stone, and its first rays shine through a stone archway in the centre circle. (Well sometimes!) Stonehenge first existed 5,000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than Ancient Egypt or Ancient Rome.
Native Americans made a number of monuments that work in a similar way to Stonehenge. In Chaco Canyon, USA, there are some rocks called the three slabs, put there around 1,000 years ago. They are positioned so that during the summer solstice, the Sun shines in a dagger shape onto a spiral on the wall behind them.
There is a modern day henge in Nebraska, USA, called Carhenge -
People across Europe have marked the solstice since ancient times with bonfires and
celebrations dedicated to different gods. When Europe became mostly Christian the
festivals stayed but turned into a celebration of St John the Baptist. To this day,
Christians in many parts of the world celebrate St John's Day, which takes place
on 24th June. Midsummer traditions are particularly important in geographic Northern
Europe -
The celebration of Midsummer's Eve (St. John's Eve among Christians) was from ancient
times a festival of the summer solstice. Some people believed that golden-
In Latvia, Midsummer is called Jani (Janis being Latvian for John). It is a national
holiday celebrated on a large scale by almost everyone in Latvia and by people of
Latvian origin abroad. Celebrations consist of a lot of traditional and mostly pagan
elements -
In late 15th-
The church fathers decided to put a stop to these practices and ordained that people should fast on the evening before, and thus turned waking into fasting.
Mirk adds that at the time of his writing, "...in worship of St John the Baptist, men stay up at night and make three kinds of fires: one is of clean bone's and no wood and is called a 'bonnefyre'; another is of clean wood and no bones, and is called a 'wakefyre', because men stay awake by it all night; and the third is made of both bones and wood and is called 'St. John's fire' ."
Geoff Quick
Summer Solstice
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