Winter Solstice Neolithic Style

Winter Solstice – a time for tales and rituals. For me it is the sublime holiday for people of the northern hemisphere. This year it coincides with a lunar eclipse – notable for those who observe the heavens. For me, celebrating the winter solstice connects deeply with the traditions of old world Europe – more ancient than Christian holidays.

Last summer around the time of the summer solstice I visited the neolithic masterpiece Maeshowe (Maes Howe), a chambered cairn unique to the Orkney Islands north of Scotland. Five thousand years old, it is one of a number of neolithic treasures in those islands – Skara Brae, Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness.

The approach to it is through gently rolling hills. And the tomb itself looks like a small mound, easily missed. You walk on a path through the fields and can only enter with a guide.

There is a square stone opening about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide, so you have to stoop to enter a passage that is about 20 feet long. This passage is where the light streams through for three weeks before and three weeks after the winter solstice. Knowing it would be unlikely that I would be there to observe it in the winter, I was intrigued to discover that there is a live web cam http://www.maeshowe.co.uk. (Note: I just had a peek and there are some technical difficulties they hope to resolve soon.)

Enormous stone pieces, some weighing up to 30 tons, are expertly engineered in this passage. It opens into a domed chamber with a few low horizontal stone surfaces. Scratchings on the walls called Viking graffiti – runes and renderings of Loki and other gods came much later.

I can see why the Winter Solstice has been so important to northerners in all parts of the world. Not only does the darkness of shorter days (or longer nights) change the moods and rhythms of people, but it is also cold, damp and misty. A death like quality settles throughout the land inciting fears that the sun, longer days and new growth might not return. No wonder this seasonal turning point was marked as an event critical to both physical and psychic survival.

Orkney poet George Mackay Brown says, “The winter sun just hangs over the ridge of the Coolags. Its setting will seal the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. At this season the sun is a pale wick between two gulfs of darkness. Surely there could be no darker place in the be-wintered world than the interior of Maeshowe.

Who were the people who created these ancient monuments several thousand years ago? I often wonder about the thinking and observation skills they had in linking earth and sky. Why were certain places chosen? How did the design evolve? How did they know that the path of the sun would return to the same place year after year? They didn’t even live many years in those days.

And of course the motivation. Maeshowe is a complicated engineering feat that involved the movement, carving and placement of huge stones. Why? What were the forces that stirred their imaginations and encouraged them to muster strength and concerted effort to create a lasting, memorable place?

My experience with Maeshowe was subtle, yet challenging. I stooped uncomfortably as I walked through the entrance and held one hand above my head for protection. There were about twenty of us inside. The sound and acoustics in the stone chamber were unique yet balanced. The joints between the stone pieces were flawless.

I was struck by its simplicity as much as its antiquity. After a while I started feeling a bit anxious, mostly because I was with many strangers and listening to a guide. I would rather have been alone or with a few companions exploring on our own, singing perhaps or simply breathing in the silence. I wanted to come and go in my own rhythm and feel the depth and mystery of the place in my own way.

Even so, when I emerged I sensed that a subtle metamorphosis had taken place. Some kind of block had freed up and I felt a new life stream emerging.