Winter Solstice Celebrations in Denmark: A Growing Non-Religious Ritualisation

Astrid Krabbe Trolle

doi:10.3390/rel12020074

Abstract

During the last decade, local celebrations of winter solstice on the 21st of December have increased all over Denmark. These events refer to the Old Norse ritual of celebrating the return of the light, and their appeal is very broad on a local community level. By presenting two cases of Danish winter solstice celebrations, I aim to unfold how we can understand these new ritualisations as non-religious rituals simultaneously contesting and supplementing the overarching seasonal celebration of Christmas. My material for this study is local newspaper sources that convey the public sphere on a municipality level. I analyse the development in solstice ritualisations over time from 1990 to 2020. Although different in location and content, similarities unite the new solstice celebrations: they emphasise the local community and the natural surroundings. My argument is that the winter solstice celebrations have grown out of a religiously diversified public sphere and should be understood as non-religious rituals in a secular context.

Highlights

Denmark: A Growing Non-ReligiousDuring the last two decades, Denmark has seen a growing diversification of the public sphere in terms of religious and non-religious presences (Christensen et al 2019, see Furseth 2018)
I first tested if including the national media platforms would show different results, but as the national media did not add substantial information to the events in the local newspapers, I chose to focus on the news platforms at the municipality and regional level
To the far east in Denmark, in the Baltic Sea, we find a local winter solstice celebration in the small fishing village of Snogebæk on the island of Bornholm

Summary

Introduction

During the last two decades, Denmark has seen a growing diversification of the public sphere in terms of religious and non-religious presences In the European Values Survey from 2017, 39 % of the Danish population either consider themselves non-religious or atheist (EVS 2017).. Taking the cue from Lee, this article explores novel and local winter solstice rituals as non-religious events that have grown out of the religiously complex layers of late modern Danish society. In a Danish context, official non-religious rituals in relation to life cycle events primarily take place in civil rites at the municipality level or through the Danish Humanist Society. Until 2010, when the solstice rituals started slipping into majority community events, solstice celebrations primarily spoke to social groups with particular profiles such as artists, Viking milieus, radical nationalists as well as winter swimmers

Material and Methods

Localising the Sun in Snogebæk

Illuminating the Lake in Herning

Conclusions