Yule (, ; , ) is a winter festival and time of the year historically observed by pagan Germanic peoples that was later merged with the festival of Christmas during the process of Christianisation. The oldest accounts describe two Yule-months around the winter solstice in early Germanic calendars.
Later, and more extensive, Old Norse sources also describe a Yule festival occurring during this period, which possibly began on Hǫkunótt and continued for several days. During it, feasting, ceremonial drinking and oath swearing was central, and plays and games likely took place. Tales set at this time frequently feature supernatural beings visiting halls and farms, such as trolls and undead draugar. Such traditions closely resemble folk practices and beliefs from the modern period such as julebukking and the Wild Hunt, which may have partly heathen roots.
Because of the blending of the festival period and Christmas, Yule and its cognates are still used to refer to Christmas and the season of Christmastide in English and some other Northern European languages, including Swedish and Finnish. In addition to this, adherents of some new religious movements, such as Modern Germanic paganism, celebrate Yule as an independent festival to Christmas.
Etymology and derived terms The modern English noun 'Yule' descends from (alternative forms include and ), in turn from , earlier , , and , sometimes pluralised. The Old English term is thought to derive from a Proto-Germanic word such as or . Other Old English forms of the word 'Yule' were and .
Various theories have been put forward on the meaning and origin of the Proto-Germanic root of 'Yule'. Scholars including Jacob Grimm have proposed a now widespread, but largely rejected, idea, that it is related to 'wheel', in reference to the completing of a solar cycle at the winter solstice. In support of this, it has been noted that runic calendars often represent the Christmas celebration with a wheel. It has been noted, however, that this in Old English is , and there is no clear reason to connect it to ('Yule'). A more plausible etymology is to link it to , the ancestor of . In the ancient period and Middle Ages, 'joke' referred to "entertainment" or "festivity". 'Yule' could therefore be interpreted as having originally meant a "period of joy and public celebration". Despite these efforts, the ultimate origin of , and related terms, remains unclear.
'Yule' is cognate with (), Old Norse: , and its descendants Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian Nynorsk , and Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian Bokmål . The Proto-Germanic root was also loaned into the Finnic languages, giving rise to . Later, a North Germanic word for Yule (such as ) was loaned again, giving . This possibly occurred through as an intermediate with the same Germanic root. 'Yule' and its modern cognates typically denote Christmas and the period around it, with a slight exception being , which can have that meaning but normally carries the more general sense of "celebration". It remains uncertain if there are any Indo-European cognates that are not derived from Proto-Germanic, though numerous speculative attempts have been made. It has been suggested that (later, ), which was borrowed into English in the 14th century as 'jolly', may itself borrowed from (with the Old French suffix ; compare Old French "easy", Modern French = "feast" + ). But the Oxford English Dictionary sees this explanation for as unlikely. The French word is first attested in the Anglo-Norman ("History of the English People"), written by Geoffrey Gaimar between 1136 and 1140.
In addition to denoting Christmas and the period around it, 'Yule' is also used for a heathen midwinter festival celebrated by Scandinavians, and likely other Germanic peoples, before their Christianisation. In scholarly usage, the same English term is also applied as an umbrella label for pre-Christian Germanic midwinter observances, including Old Norse , which can denote the midwinter season itself. This association with Old Norse religion is reflected in terms derived from such as , used in the poetry of Eyvindr skáldaspillir to refer to the gods. The singular form ("Yule man") is also one of the many names of Odin. While the 12th century Old Norse describes as coming from , the opposite is true. Other Old Norse terms derived from include ("Yule ale"), ("Yule gift"), ("Yule-eve") and ("Yule drinking"). Some compound nouns derived from "Yule" in English are first attested long after Christianisation, including Yuletide ("Yule-time"; c. 1475), yule-candle (1808), yule-game (1611) and yule-log (1725).
Yule months
Yule is attested early in the history of the Germanic peoples, and over a wide geographical range; the earliest of such records is a Gothic calendar, found in the Codex Ambrosianus, that mentions the month ("the month before the Yule-month"), implying a subsequent unrecorded ("Yule month").
Two adjacent months named after Yule are recorded by the English historian Bede in The Reckoning of Time, dated to . Bede writes that before his time, the heathen Anglo-Saxons had reckoned their months based on the phases of the moon, and that they had called both December and January Giuli (the months of Yule). A 10th-century English text refers to these two months as and , "the earlier" and "the latter Yule month". Bede further writes that the heathen English started their year on 25 December, when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, and says that they called this ("Mothers' night"). This day likely fell between the two months of . Bede further says the night got its name from the ceremonies he believed they performed then; the mothers are typically interpreted as goddesses, possibly the .
Old Norse sources also record two Yule months: ("Yule month") and , a term with the same root that is likely pre-Christian. The Icelandic Bókarbót, usually dated to around 1220, places from the middle of November to the middle of December in the Julian calendar, and following afterwards into the middle of January. After the official Christianisation of Scandinavia, the Church gradually introduced the Julian calendar, with it being largely established by the middle of the 1100s. Nonetheless, a lunisolar time-reckoning was practiced in Sweden as late as the early 1900s, where the ("Yule moon") was the moon that was seen during Epiphany and the Dísting market was held on the following full moon.
Given the large geographic area over which there is evidence for moon-based calendars with two Yule months, it has been suggested that they originated substantially earlier than their first attestations, when the relevant Germanic peoples lived closer together. This may be before the migrations of the Goths from the Baltic coast, and possibly the Angles from southern Scandinavia to Britain. An early dating would further support the development of the calendar in a heathen context, before the adoption of Christianity.
Timing of heathen Yule celebrations The exact timing of the pre-Christian Yule celebrations is unclear and debated among scholars. The earliest record of a seasonal celebration in Scandinavia is given by the 6th century historian Procopius of Caesaria who writes of the Heruli who lived in "Thule" (likely around modern day Norway). He describes how the sun is not seen there for 40 nights in winter and that their greatest festival of the year is celebrated 20 days after the winter solstice, when the sun appears again. This would be mid January in the Gregorian calendar. Scholars since the 17th century have suggested this is describing heathen Yule celebrations. The nature of Procopius' account, including the possibility that he is describing Sámi rather than Germanic peoples, complicates interpretations of the source.
Bede in the 8th century says that the two Anglo-Saxon Yule months () are linked to the winter solstice. He writes that they "derive their name from the day when the Sun turns back [and begins] to increase", with one month before the solstice and one following it. In surviving Anglo-Saxon calendars, the winter solstice was generally deemed to be December 25, following the Julian calendar. According to Andreas Nordberg, an issue with this is that the heathen Anglo-Saxons used a lunisolar calendar, which Bede describes, in which each month lasted a full waxing and waning of the moon. The two Anglo-Saxon Yule months would therefore move relative to the winter solstice and it could not always fall in the middle of them.
In Old Norse sources, the only exact timing of the Nordic Yule () is found in Hákonar saga góða. It describes how the Nordic heathen Yule began on , which is equated with ("Midwinter Night"), and continued for three days. Although the English referred to the time of the winter solstice the Scandinavian Midwinter Night was about one month after the winter solstice. Winter in Scandinavia is deemed to last longer than in southern Germanic regions. In Old Norse sources that divided the year into two seasons, winter was deemed to begin with the "Winter Nights" in mid-October and to end in mid-April. only occurs in this passage, and is alternatively spelt in Fríssbók. The etymology of is not clear but various interpretations have been put forward, including relating it to the verb ("to hew", "to slaughter") in reference to the sacrifice of animals at the that took place at that time.
Scholars have argued that the Nordic heathen Yule feast took place at the winter solstice, despite Snorri Sturluson not placing it then. Andreas Nordberg proposes, instead, that the Nordic heathen Yule was celebrated on the full moon of the lunar month following the winter solstice (the lunar month starting on the first new moon after the solstice). This could range from 5 January at the earliest to 2 February at the latest in the Gregorian calendar. Nordberg places the Nordic Midwinter Nights on 19 to 21 January in the Gregorian calendar, falling roughly in the middle of his range of Yule dates. In addition to Snorri's account, Nordberg's dating is consistent with the account of the great blót at Lejre by Thietmar of Merseburg. This interpretation has received scholarly support.
Historical Nordic traditions Blót, feasting and drinking
In medieval Scandinavia, blót often took place during Yule celebrations, whereby animals were sacrificed to the gods and their meat cooked and shared among those present. This was typically accompanied by ceremonial drinking of ale or mead.
Communal eating was central to Yule, which is seen in the use of in skaldic poetry to mean 'feast' in the kenning for 'battle': ('a raven's (Yule) feast'). ("Yule-feasts") are also widely attested in medieval Old Norse accounts of pre-Christian celebrations, including the Yule-feast of King Halfdanr svarti in his eponymous saga, where all the food and ale was made to disappear by a Sámi man. Another notable example is in Hákonar saga góða, where Hákon the Good is forced to take part in blót-feasts in Mære and Lade, including eating meat from the sacrificed horses, as part of his responsibilities as a king. Yule has further been identified by some scholars with the ("elf-blót") recorded in Ólafs saga helga, though this has been rejected by others as were likely held in autumn, not winter.
Drinking ceremonies also likely took place at Yule, consistent with their prominence in Germanic paganism more widely. Early evidence of this is found in Þorbjǫrn hornklofi's Haraldskvæði, written around 900 CE, where Harald Fairhair "drinks Yule", or "drinks to Yule":
Old Norse text TranslationHe wants to drink (to?) Yule outside if he can decide alone, the fame-seeking ruler and perform Frey’s ; the young man was tired of the fireside and sitting indoors in the warm women’s room or down-filled cushions