In an organic economy at higher latitudes, the seasonal cycle is an unavoidable interface between planetary physics and the indispensable fruits of agriculture. This dynamic is a powerful factor in the creation of origin myths of the seasons. By the same token, it explains ritual traditions that acknowledge the seasons’ yields and petition for their cooperation.

Rather than perpetuate the misleading nomenclature of Christian and pagan, I will discuss the medieval literature of north-western Europe along an axis from orthodox (Bede, Ælfric) to heterodox (Genesis B), with suspected non-Christian religious elements (the eddic material) at the furthest extreme. As the chosen examples suggest, these categories often coincide with corpus and genre boundaries. Most notably, only the Scandinavian material contains extensive creation and origin myths squarely at odds with the official Church narrative. Accordingly, the discussion that follows divides quite naturally into Christian and Scandinavian ritual and myth.

Accounting for the Seasons

SEASONALITY AS PUNISHMENT

Prior to the popularization of purgatory, a concept that became especially authoritative in the twelfth century, Western Christian theology knew two blessed realms: Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem, and two lesser spiritual environments: hell and the postlapsarian earth. Taking its cue from biblical accounts, literature from this sphere of influence commonly juxtaposes these desirable and undesirable environments through depictions of physical contrast. The Book of Genesis describes the terrestrial paradise as a ‘garden of pleasure’ (paradisus voluptatis), filled with ‘every tree that is beautiful of appearance and sweet for eating’ (Gn 2:8–9). The beauty of this world is complete and self-contained: the production of crops requires no labour, and even the disturbance of rain does not enter into paradise (Gn 2:5–6). At mankind's expulsion from Eden, God pronounces a curse over the earth to the effect that its yield will now depend on human toil, while the natural world is no longer limited to pleasant and beneficial flora but comes to include thorns and thistles (Gn 3:18).

By implication, the expulsion introduces seasonality. Although some prelapsarian horticulture is implied in the stipulation that Adam ‘should cultivate and govern’ the garden of pleasure (Gn 2:15), toil and sweat are understood to have no part in the process until after the fall (Gn 3:17–19).