Midwinter sunrise

The standing stones

The solstice  is just a  moment in time when the maximum height of the sun above the horizon is at its lowest point for the year.  Further north, above the Arctic Circle, it doesn’t rise above the horizon and the dawn doesn’t break.  The winter night is total.
The period of midwinter or Yule has now been subsumed into Christmas  but to the old peoples, it was  the turn of the year.   Although, because of the Earth’s tilt and its elliptical orbit, the days don’t actually get longer for some time after the solstice, it still represented the tipping point, the start of a new cycle.
In our electrically-lit, gas-warmed world it is difficult to imagine just how dark and cold the winter was four thousand years ago, especially how dark it was in the short days of midwinter.  Sunlight would have been precious, a gift to be enjoyed.
I got myself out to the standing stones to experience the sunrise of  midwinter.  The wind from the north seemed to come straight of the polar ice-cap. Walking out in the semi darkness of first light, the rays of the still hidden sun reflected on the  clouds along the horizon, in the bitterly cold wind, I wondered if people had come to the stones at this time thousands of years ago or were they erected for another purpose and I was merely being fanciful.

Sunrise

After waiting and freezing for what seemed like ages, I was rewarded with a spectacular sunrise and, turning round, with an equally evocative moon-set.

Moon-set

What ever the beliefs of the folk who put up the stones, I know that  the feeling of the sun on one’s face in the depth of winter is enough to lift the spirits and dispel the gloom.  The walk back was certainly brisker but the wind was behind me and breakfast beckoned.