Scottish winter solstice history and traditions

The need to come together and spread light in spite of the longest night is deeply ingrained within us, as is belief in the promise that the sun will once again reclaim its reign and bring new life with it. The winter solstice, Christmas, Hogmanay – all are, to some extent, responses to this primordial need.

Apart from these hallmarks, there are subtler ways in which the challenges of winter once affected how people interacted with the world around them.

For past peoples especially, this was a time for mysteries and for a great drawing in which echoed the lessening of precious daylight hours. This effect is written in the historical record, not least in the way physical monuments responded to the winter landscape.

Modernity has reduced the tracing of movements of the sun, moon and stars to something of a novelty or hobby today. For most of history, however, such knowledge was a centrepiece of life and was widely known to farmers, religious leaders and rulers alike.

Historians and archaeologists may not understand precisely what the shifting of celestial bodies meant to ancient communities but it was undeniably important and worthy of expending great effort to understand and even harness.

Scotland’s most famous winter solstice display is the mathematically miraculous event at Maeshowe, Orkney (above), which began around 3000 BCE. For several weeks before and after the solstice, the sun’s last rays of the day send a beam of light through Maeshowe’s low, narrow passageway to strike the back wall of its inner chamber.

Like the tomb itself, the light amid the darkness embodies the cycle of life and death. It is now possible to watch this wondrous moment from anywhere in the world on a dedicated webcam.

Very few people know that Maeshowe is not alone in this. The subterranean chamber of another Orcadian tomb, Taversoe Tuick in Rousay, also receives a beam of sunlight at the solstice, showing that such veneration was not a one-off thing. The living entered Taversoe Tuick to commune with the dead on a regular basis and the luminous results of their calculations in stone were meant to be witnessed.

Houses of the dead were not the only monuments designed to harness the last light of the darkest day. Standing stone alignments across Scotland are orientated around the rising and setting sun at key points of the year, especially the winter and summer solstices.

So too are the pecked patterns of rock art, many of which date from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of c5000 to 2000 BCE.

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The best conditions for viewing rock art, including abstract motifs like cup-and-ring marks and teardrop-shaped channels, is in low, glancing light. Midwinter is ideal, as the summer sun high above can dampen the contrast of contours and shadows on their stone canvases.

A pattern which is nearly invisible in the light of midday can vividly come to life in the right conditions, which are often present in the depths of winter. In Kilmartin Glen, one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe, 72% of the hundreds of local rock art sites are oriented on a north-east-south-west axis, ideal for viewing in the full brilliance of the setting midwinter sun.

This is a landscape continually used and re-interpreted over several thousand years, and the illumination of rock art at the winter and summer solstices remained an important fixture of ritual life throughout it all.

That’s one way that people responded to the shortest days, but what about within the home?

Winter, whether 2000 or 200 years ago, involved a great drawing in, like the way we hug ourselves when we’re cold – a tactical retreat to the warmth at the centre.

Boats were hauled out of the water or kept in ice-free lochs sheltered from the sea. Animals, mostly black cattle and sheep, were brought inside, contributing their warmth and aromas to the heady mix of home. People, too, drew in and set to mending and tending by the diminishing light.

It was in these darkest times that the ceilidh shone brightest. Far from the organised and standardised affairs held in dedicated halls today, the ceilidh of old was true to its literal meaning – a gathering.

Ceilidhs were held in households, and began spontaneously when a neighbour let themselves in or when a stranger arrived and was expected to tell stories round the fire.

Ceilidhs were essential to the fabric of communities throughout the Highlands and islands. While a tale was told or gossip shared, children would observe their elders’ crafts and be challenged to tests of wit and memory, inculcating the values and rhythms of their future lives.

Tales of the Fianna, of ancient deeds and rivalries, and of the ways of the fairy folk intermingled with the heavy breaths of cattle in the byre and the soothing reek of peat smoke. They lasted long into the night, or at least the best ones did.

Stories about beings like fairies and trows were especially impactful. Such folkloric creatures were regarded to be at their most present and powerful during the solstices and four main festivals of the year – Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain and Imbolc.

Offerings of milk or a bit of bannock were commonly left out for friendlier domestic entities such as brownies, while iron objects or salt were kept near to hand to keep the more malicious ones away.

This would have been at the forefront of the minds of those hardy souls who, on those very same nights, would climb the highest nearby hill and light bonfires.

Each person would light a torch from the bonfire and bring it back to their home, becoming a walking metaphor for a glimmer of light and life amid a sea of darkness and peril. These are just a few of the ways that individuals and communities in Scotland responded to and coped with the long dark of midwinter.

Precisely how we mark the deepest, darkest time of the year may have changed almost beyond recognition but the essential cause remains the same – the promise of longer days and better things ahead, and our ability to find wonder among the shadows.