Islay Winter Solstice

This year’s winter solstice is on 21st December at 12:03 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), and is the day when the Sun spends more time below the horizon than on any other day of the year. In terms of daylight hours it’s the shortest, darkest day of the year with sunrise at 08.04 and sunset at 15.54 GMT. Depending on our viewpoint, if there are hills on the horizon to the southeast (sunrise) or southwest (sunset) the times may seem later. If the weather is stormy, it can seem a very short and dark day indeed.

The summer and winter solstices mark the two extreme points in the Earth’s orbit round the Sun. The extreme points are where the Earth’s axis, like an imaginary rod stuck through the earth joining the north and south poles, is tilted farthest away from or closest to the Sun. On the winter solstice day, which falls each year between 20th and 23rd December, the northern hemisphere is at maximum tilt away from the Sun, and the southern hemisphere is at maximum tilt towards the Sun. Then it is midwinter in the north, and midsummer in the south.

Even in prehistory, Mankind expended enormous effort to create structures which would help calculate when the winter solstice had arrived. In Scotland, it has been found that some stone circles and large, elaborate structures such as Maes Howe in Orkney are in alignment with the midwinter sunrise or sunset, leading many archaeologists to believe that these were purposely constructed as huge instruments for keeping track of the cycle of the year. It would be interesting to learn whether any of the Islay standing stone groups are so aligned. Continue reading....
Our neighbours in Ireland have an enormous Neolithic passage grave at Newgrange, by the River Boyne in County Meath. There, at the time of the winter solstice a specially build roof-box, a 'window; in the outer wall above the entrance, directs rays of light from the midwinter sunrise down the full length of the stone-lined passage within the tomb. This beam of sunlight enters the 19m long passage only during the sunrises of the five days around the winter solstice, and the light only illuminates the passage for seventeen minutes on these five mornings of the year. It's incredible to think that such accuracy was achieved, considering that the Newgrange tomb was built in 3200BC; five hundred years before the Great Pyramid in Egypt and more than a thousand years before the trilithons were erected at Stonehenge. Construction of Newgrange would have taken an estimated work force of three hundred people at least twenty years to complete.

In recent years, fifty names have been drawn by lottery from thousands of applicants, allowing some fortunate people to enter Newgrange tomb’s chamber to view the entry of the dawn light at the winter solstice. If the skies are overcast there may not be much to see. Yet all of the lucky few who have gazed through this lighted window into an ancient world agree that it is an extraordinary feeling to wait in the passage chamber in the darkness, as people must have done long ago, watching for the yearís longest night to end. With thanks to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and www.knowth.com for information.

This story was written by Susan Campbell and published with kind permission of the Ileach local newspaper.

Tag: winter solstice