Why do your people have seasons?

[channlluv]

And by "your people," I mean regionally and ethnically. I'm working on a book proposal about why we have seasons and I'm looking for myths and legends about why the weather changes seasonally, like from Persephone eating those six pomegranate seeds.

I'm looking for any story about changing seasons. I am hopeful that because our members here are from all over the world, you all might have some really good stories. Norway? Australia? Singapore? Canada?

If you have an academic reference for the story, too, all the better.

And yes, I've got the scientific explanation okay.

Thank you!

Roxy

[zoom-zoom]

Hmm...because I live in the upper midwest where there really are 4 well-defined seasons. Winter is pretty much the longest (from measurable snow to measurable snow it's generally a solid 5 months...this past Winter was easily a 6 month season. I was about ready to start shooting) and very VERY gray, here (Lake MI gives us near constant lake-effect clouds). Spring is wet and cool, Summer is sunny, warm and humid, Fall is cool and colorful. Our temperature spread from coldest to warmest is easily 100º.

I think if I lived in an area without snowfall or months of cloud cover (FL and the Southwest come to mind) that seasons might seem a bit less dramatically defined.

[tangentgirl]

Cool, Roxy! I don't have any season stories from you, but your post got me thinking...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

[KnottedYet]

"My people" haven't had myths nor legends about what causes seasons for hundreds of years.

The earth has a tilt, the sun shines more directly or less depending on orientation = seasons.

[Trek420]

...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

My people don't have stories either.

But of course there are stories from the CA Native Americans Not just stories but a lot of knowledge.

I'm reading "The Ohlone Way" and "The Way We Lived" for an drawing I'm working on. We don't have seasons in terms of extreme weather in the coastal part of sunny CA but we sure have seasons of differences in weather, when plants bloom and seed. If you do some research you will find the Ohlone (who are not one tribe but a group of them more or less) lived in such great harmony with the earth and each other in abundance that they knew exactly when to harvest this or that.

There's a lot of variation through the year, not just if it snows or not. Seasons also meant knowing exactly when to harvest wild grains, acorns, a host of plants and food.

An incredible culture until certain people (us ahem) arrived and just ruined it all.

[Crankin]

I would tend to answer like Knotted Yet... we have seasons here in New England because of the tilt of the sun. It has nothing to do with myths or legends. I'm pretty un-myth like when it comes to thinking about these things, so...
I know some cultures have traditions that have to do with the change of seasons, but I have never heard of anything about something that causes the seasons.

[lph]

Hmm, I'd be hard put to give you any good stories that a book on norse mythology wouldn't give you. But I'll bet the Sami people have some interesting myths, they are the native people of Scandinavia.

But we most certainly have seasons, and very distinct ones. I live near the Gulf Stream and far south in Norway, so winters aren't by far as harsh as some of you might imagine, but further inland they have truly brutal winter cold. Likewise the inland areas can have very hot summers, they just don't last very long. Oslo has snaps of hot weather (which we define as around 30 deg C) but they last at most for two weeks at a time. We have lots and lots of water, though. Not really that it rains that much, but when I travel abroad it always strikes me how dry so many other places are. The landscape here just about never runs out of water, so vegetation is soft, not spiky, and almost always green. We get loads of snow in winter, and it can last until May.

That was a digression. Only myth I can think of connected to the weather at the moment is "kakelinna", the "cake mildness". (Mild weather here means temperate winter weather, like just below or around freezing). Kakelinna denotes the mild, foggy weather we often get between Christmas and New Year's, and supposed to be caused by all the housewives baking the traditional 7 types of Christmas cookies.

We have a gazillion words for snow, though. :D

[lph]

Not regular seasons, but still: in Norse mythology the world will end (the gods will die, the earth will burn, the sun will be swallowed, the Fenris wolf and Midgard serpent will run around being obnoxious) with Ragnarok, the final great battle. Ragnarok is heralded by the fimbul winter (or great winter), three harsh winters in a row with no summer between.

But then it all starts over again.

[channlluv]

Cool, Roxy! I don't have any season stories from you, but your post got me thinking...are there any Native American season stories from California, where we don't have seasons to the degree that other places do? Is the perception of four seasons the same around the world?

Exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about and why I'm writing this book proposal. I think it would be interesting to juxtapose the actual science against the regional mythology about seasons.

:)

Roxy

[channlluv]

Only myth I can think of connected to the weather at the moment is "kakelinna", the "cake mildness". (Mild weather here means temperate winter weather, like just below or around freezing). Kakelinna denotes the mild, foggy weather we often get between Christmas and New Year's, and supposed to be caused by all the housewives baking the traditional 7 types of Christmas cookies.

We have a gazillion words for snow, though. :D

This is the exact kind of thing I'm looking for, lph, thank you! And your story about the "cake mildness" -- that's excellent. Thank you!

Trek, are there any stories in that book about what or who the Ohlone thought caused the different harvesting seasons, and what did they call the seasons?

My purpose here is to explore the cultural narrative behind a scientific phenomena everyone on the planet experiences to one degree or another. The science will be explained, too. No worries.

I got this idea when the science teacher at the elementary school walked into the library one day continuing a conversation she'd just been having with someone else about the seasons and asked me, "You know why we have seasons, right?" And without missing a beat, I said, "Because Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds in Hades." It threw her off for a moment and we all had a laugh, but it made me wonder about the season myths from around the world. (And yes, I knew it was because the earth tilts. I didn't know it was at 23.5 degrees, though.)

I write children's books. I don't know if you all knew that. To make a book of weather myths, though, I need a lot of them, which is why I turned to you all. TE is a part of my personal narrative.

Thank you for sharing your stories!

Roxy

[Trek420]

Trek, are there any stories in that book about what or who the Ohlone thought caused the different harvesting seasons, and what did they call the seasons?

Both books are here, find them at your local indy book store :)

http://heydaybooks.com/book/the-ohlone-way-indian-life-in/

[tytbody]

i'm not sure about your title. Kinda bothers me. I think because I worked in a place where there was this woman that would always say *your people*. I'm like, *what is... Your People.*. You may not have intended this to cause riffling of feathers, but I'm just saying. I don't like it. I'm not of the main races and when I see words like that, it doesn't feel so good.

So, I believe we all have seasons. I believe people have seasons also even if they don't live where the seasons change. We as women, have seasons, every month.

[redrhodie]

I wish I could remember some related Russian Folklore.

Baba Yaga would eat small children. I remember that! I feel like there was a story where someone's tears became rain or snow, but it's so vague. It could also be something from Grimm or Aesop, if I'm not just making it up.

Oh, and I think Roxy is referring to your culture or heritage in an anthropological way. We all have people.

[alexis_the_tiny]

Interesting. In Singapore, we have seasons because...well, there are the monsoons and then our neighboring countries burn forests and give us hot weather and the haze or its the other way around, I'm never sure.

Nonsense aside, we have two seasons: blazingly hot or storms. I remember my grandmother singing a song in our dialect to me, it was about the rain and someone's grandparents running into the house and somehow, the rain, thunder and lightning were all the work of some gods. I can remember two lines of it, but no one else seems to remember the song. It'll be really interesting to ask some of the older folks here and see if there are any good stories, though.

[Trek420]

I see words like that, it doesn't feel so good.

+1. I hope that's not the title of the book :rolleyes: I've learned in my work that any conversation that begins "You people ...." is going to get real bad real fast :o It hints some huge generalization is going to follow.

Plus who are "my people"? Many of us are blended somehow. I'm Jewish and that is very important to me. Also I'm both Russian and Polish. My sister's Norwegian, one niece lives in Wales now, another lives here with her partner and two amazing beautiful "toddlers of color" :D

So when I'm in the supermarket "ethnic food" aisle exactly what is the food of "my people" :p? For many of us it's a mix.

[Biciclista]

I can only imagine what it was like for the ancestors who watched the sun slowly set further and further south until one day it turned around and came back north... once more, the days would get longer and warmer.

[lph]

Still not directly to do with the why of seasons either, but anyway: the Vikings had a "blót", i.e. sacrifice, several times a year to the gods, one in midsummer, one after the harvest season to thank for a good harvest, and most importantly one around the winter solstice, "jól", for the harvest season to come. Blót is related to blood, which they drank. Christmas is still called "jul" here, from pre-Christian times. You can find details on Wikipedia more than I know :)

But a funny spinoff is the tradition that still exists of putting out a bowl of porridge (thick, creamy rice porridge, good stuff!) to the "nisse" at Christmas. Today Santa Claus is also called a nisse (julenissen), but the original nisse was a small grey-bearded elf living in the barn, the guardian of the household, and the porridge was his traditional sacrifice. If you didn't put out porridge for him he could think up all kinds of mischief on a traditional farm, sour the milk, lame the cows, stuff like that. Nothing large and magical like affecting the seasons though.

[channlluv]

I am completely loving the folklore. Thank you for sharing, Red, Alexis, LPH, and others to come, I hope. Mimi, that very line of wonderment is going into the introduction.

Tytbody, you're right. I didn't mean to riffle feathers. I apologize if my choice of wording rubbed you the wrong way. It absolutely was not intended to do so. My whole point is to share the cultural narratives of the various regions where seasons have contributed to the stories, or where stories have built up around the seasonal changes. I do see your and Trek's point, though. It might have come across differently if we were speaking in person and you could see my face and hear the tone of my voice. But, yes, by "your people" I really do mean your ethnic background. Not in a negative way, though. (Not "You People.")

Red was right -- I meant this in an anthropological way for the purpose of writing a book for children celebrating different regions'/cultures' stories about weather, so I'm asking in the most geographically diverse community of which I'm a participating member for leads to go research. That's all. I'm sorry I didn't make that more clear in my initial post.

I'd still love to hear your weather-related mythology, legends, and folklore if you have any you'd care to share. I'll research all of them and get some authoritative sourcing and credit every story shared with a "special thanks to..." note. I'm looking forward to learning about all these cultures in more detail.

And Trek, no, definitely not the title of the book. Right now the working title is Why Do We Have Seasons?, but that will likely change. It's aimed at kids ages 8 - 12.

I'm also working on a book about animal artists -- animals that paint in zoo and sanctuary settings, and another about ghost hunting, and my next one is on the history of mermaids. If anyone has any cool mermaid mythology for your region...that's next. Seriously.

Roxy

[channlluv]

Still not directly to do with the why of seasons either, but anyway: the Vikings had a "blót", i.e. sacrifice, several times a year to the gods, one in midsummer, one after the harvest season to thank for a good harvest, and most importantly one around the winter solstice, "jól", for the harvest season to come. Blót is related to blood, which they drank. Christmas is still called "jul" here, from pre-Christian times. You can find details on Wikipedia more than I know :)

But a funny spinoff is the tradition that still exists of putting out a bowl of porridge (thick, creamy rice porridge, good stuff!) to the "nisse" at Christmas. Today Santa Claus is also called a nisse (julenissen), but the original nisse was a small grey-bearded elf living in the barn, the guardian of the household, and the porridge was his traditional sacrifice. If you didn't put out porridge for him he could think up all kinds of mischief on a traditional farm, sour the milk, lame the cows, stuff like that. Nothing large and magical like affecting the seasons though.


LPH, did each house have an individual guardian or was the nisse part of something larger, like my Catholic neighbor two doors down who had an icon of Mary in the flower bed by her front door, but Mary is Mary regardless of which house's garden her statue is standing in...the same being watching over different households.

What if the house didn't have a barn? Are there different guardians for townspeople? How was this nisse related to the family? Like, in Thailand some families have spirit houses outside the main house for the spirits of their ancestors, and in China, some families keep shrines to their ancestors inside their homes. Are the nisse attached to the family or the place? If the family moves, does the nisse move with them?

I can go read all of this on Wikipedia, I'm sure, but it's more interesting coming from someone who actually lives in the culture. :)

Roxy

[KnottedYet]

How are you planning to make your books stand out from the myriad of others on the same topics? Ya gotta have something unique. I'd narrow the focus down to something local (San Diego old-timers' weather myths. San Diego mermiad stories. San Diego ghost hunters. Animals painting in zoos in Southern California.)

It's a bunny eat bunny world.

Oh, and do give Mimi full credit for the lovely sentence she wrote.

[tangentgirl]

My people don't have stories either.
I'm reading "The Ohlone Way" and "The Way We Lived" for an drawing I'm working on. We don't have seasons in terms of extreme weather in the coastal part of sunny CA but we sure have seasons of differences in weather, when plants bloom and seed. If you do some research you will find the Ohlone (who are not one tribe but a group of them more or less) lived in such great harmony with the earth and each other in abundance that they knew exactly when to harvest this or that.


Neato, sounds like good reading.


So when I'm in the supermarket "ethnic food" aisle exactly what is the food of "my people" ? For many of us it's a mix.

For my people, it's the section with canned cream of mushroom soup over hamburger and frozen peas. Sacred food of my ancestors.

[Trek420]

Oh, and do give Mimi full credit for the lovely sentence she wrote.

Yes do. I hope she copyright it. :)

I'm lucky to have a Mom who's gardened/farmed the same region since the 40's. She's very aware of changes in the seasons. Sometimes this is with concern such as noticing certain wild flowers would always bloom in a field at this time before, now they are late. Often it's just knowing that now is the time to plant or sow or that crops are doing better this year.

I can imagine long ago as days got shorter and shorter that the children of "my people" may have been puzzled, or even alarmed. But a grandparent knowing that the seasons will change again might have explained why.

That's kind of the thought bubble that occurs :rolleyes:


For my people, it's the section with canned cream of mushroom soup over hamburger and frozen peas. Sacred food of my ancestors.

Since I bat for the other team it's the aisle with Perrier and Greek yogurt. :p but from an ancestry point of view the kosher food aisle. :)

[lph]

Are the nisse attached to the family or the place? If the family moves, does the nisse move with them?


Oh, every house had it's own nisse. This dates from a time where every house had a barn. Or at least a woodshed, or some other kind of outhouse. Norwegians have traditionally lived on each their own farm, preferably on each their own hilltop, at best within waving distance of neighbours... ;) I wasn't sure, but my dh is certain - the nisse was "stedfast", i.e. place-fast, i.e. attached to the place. Unrelated to the family. The guardian thing was only when he was in a good mood, he could be quite grumpy, but could be placated with small gifts.

In the 18th century many people truly believed in the nisse (no, I didn't know that, I looked it up), and that they were warding off bad luck by giving him porridge. I found a story about a servant girl who played a trick on the nisse by hiding the butter "eye", the pat of butter supposed to be on the top, at the bottom of the bowl and the porridge on top. The nisse was infuriated and struck down the farm's best milk cow. He then ate the porridge and found the butter at the bottom. He regretted what he'd done, and replaced the cow with the best milk cow from the neighbouring farm...

And there's a wellknown expression about "nissen på lasset", the "nisse in your belongings", which means not being able to escape from a vexing problem. It comes from a story about a farmer with a particularly mean nisse who tried to pack up and move from his farm, but the nisse hid in his belongings and just turned up at the next farm he moved to.

Actually I've used that when I'm having trouble with my bike and just can't figure out what it is. I have a nisse in my wheel...

btw: I'm blended too. To me it just means I have more "people" to choose from :)

[channlluv]

Well, now I'm bristling. Ha! Thanks for the writing advice, Knot, but this isn't for a local San Diego publisher. My seasons book is for the broader school library market, so including only San Diego-specific stories won't sell it, or any of the others. A broader scope is needed, but I'm looking for regional stories that haven't already been told a bazillion times. And I realize I don't talk about this part of my life here, so you wouldn't know, but I've been involved in children's publishing in one capacity or another for a couple of decades now and have co-authored an award-winning book about cryptids. I've run an award-winning professional resource site for children's writers and illustrators and administered an international writing competition over several years that helped launch over forty children's writers' and illustrators' careers. I've been a contributing editor on other books that have been published and one of my freelance gigs now is publishing consultant. I've just finished six years as a school librarian, although I am just getting into the writing side full-time. All quotes, stories, etc. will be duly attributed, I promise. And legally, Mimi's line was copyrighted as soon as she wrote it. There's no need for her to go copyright anything. It's already done.

So, now that I've come off as all good and defensive...

LPH, I love the nisse stories, weather-related or not. Thank you for sharing!

Roxy

[KnottedYet]

Whoa there, tiger!

;)

[salsabike]

btw: I'm blended too. To me it just means I have more "people" to choose from :)

Love it. And all the info on Norwegian and Viking traditions you provided. Was just in Oslo for all of three days! Had it been longer, I would've tried to meet you. :)

Channlluv, sounds like a lovely book idea.

[tytbody]

Tytbody, you're right. I didn't mean to riffle feathers. I apologize if my choice of wording rubbed you the wrong way. It absolutely was not intended to do so. My whole point is to share the cultural narratives of the various regions where seasons have contributed to the stories, or where stories have built up around the seasonal changes. I do see your and Trek's point, though. It might have come across differently if we were speaking in person and you could see my face and hear the tone of my voice. But, yes, by "your people" I really do mean your ethnic background. Not in a negative way, though. (Not "You People.")


Roxy

Very good explaination. I understand now.
I don't think we have a special *season* cause if we did, I guess I would have understood where you were coming from in the get.

Now you see, you'll have to make sure you make that title so all of us adults and grandparents will want to pick it up.

LPH - loved your story/information.

Do you think a Nisson came from Nisse?

On the food aisle, I thikn they should just put a spice witha spice and a juice with a juice. Why keep segregating. If the grocery store is for all then put all the food togethter.

Now I can see them putting organics with organics but just because there is Goya beans and some other beans, it should just be the bean aisle.

:)

[Sardine]

channlluv, I'm from Southeast Asia originally. This discussion reminded me of the 'Mooncake' festival or mid-autumn festival celebrated in many countries in that region. By the way, it's about to take place soon. The stories behind it are not about why seasons change but it is a celebration that takes place when the moon is supposed to be at its brightest and most beautiful, and some of the myths seek to explain this. The other main story explains the tradition of marking the festival by exchanging 'mooncakes'. Hanging up and carrying lanterns also form part of the celebrations.

These are the two stories that I recall very vaguely from childhood about this festival, which to be honest, was not of significance to us but an excuse for a celebration. The first relates to a moon goddess of fairy. All I can remember is my grandmother telling me stories about this but I don't recall the stories themselves. The second one was about people wanting to overthrow the ruler of China and hiding messages in cakes during the moon festival. That was about as much as I could remember so I did a Google search to check my memories. Here are some links that will give you more information if this is of interest:

http://www.journeymalaysia.com/MCUL_midautumn.htm (There are also useful Singaporean sites but the stories related in this one are closer to my own memories)
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/mooncake/a/moonfestival.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

[Crankin]

I guess I was taking this prompt much too literally, like beliefs in what causes the seasons, not traditions surrounding the seasons.
There are a few cultural/religious traditions in Judaism, related to seasons. The whole Jewish New Year season is at the beginning of harvest (apples and honey for a sweet new year), the beginning of school (maybe not 5,000 years ago), and kind of a season of "starting over," hence the forgiveness of sins on Yom Kippor. The end of the holiday season, Sukkot, is the Feast of the Tabernacles, which celebrates the harvest. Our American Thanksgiving is supposedly modeled on this holiday.

[channlluv]

Crankin, I am looking for what-causes-the-seasons stories if you have any.

The seasonal traditions are nice, too. I was just reading the link Sardine posted about the Mooncake Festival - thank you, Sardine! - about how it originated as a celebration of gratitude to the Moon Goddess for a bountiful growing season, celebrated on the autumn moon because this is when the moon is its largest and most beautiful...lovely! And then later the festival tradition of baking mooncakes was used by rebels to overthrow the former government and establish the Ming dynasty. (They baked the map of their attack into the cake tops. Clever.)

From that story, the Moon Goddess didn't cause the season change, but she did bless the growing season, allowing for the bountiful harvest.

Sardine, where in SE Asia? I'm just curious as to variations on the folktale. I have a sister-in-law from Bangkok. I'll have to ask her what stories she heard as a little girl. I have a friend here who is first generation Chinese American and she told me a couple of years back about missing the mooncakes her mom made, and that she would, but that they're a lot of work. She gave me a commercially-produced mooncake instead, which was good, but I wondered what her mom's tasted like. Do you know how to make them?

Aussie and Kiwi friends, does Santa Claus wear shorts for you?

Roxy -- back to reading about Moon Goddesses and Nisses.

[alexis_the_tiny]

Found the mandarin version of the rhyme and the English explanation behind it.
If you want the rhyme written in Mandarin, I can copy and paste it over. I cannot read Mandarin and have forgotten most of the Hokkien dialect ever since my grandmother passed away but I'll try to give a rough translation of it.

Anyway, the rhyme goes roughly like this: The sky is dark, it is going to rain, something or other about some water way, the sea dragon king is looking for a wife, Some turtle thing is beating a drum. Annd the final two lines completely elude me. But its a beautiful rhyme when sang in Hokkien. There's another version which I must have mushed up with this version. Its almost the same thing, but its about grandparents having a disagreement and some kind of punch and judy type scenario.

This is the explanation I found online,

"Irrigation of the field is always an important operation to the farmer. In the old days, when modern irrigation technology was not available, the farmer depended very much on raining. So when the sky was dark, knowing that it was going to rain, the farmer would bring out his 'changkol' (I think this is a Malay word for 锄头. There is no equivalent word in English because in the west, a spade is used.), the farmer would bring out his changkol to make sure that the water ways are properly cleared so that his field would be properly irrigated by the rain water.

Out of people's imagination, the wedding scene of of the Dragon King, the God who controlled raining, was vividly described in this children's rhyme."

Not my original words, its from this website's forums. http://www.chineselanguage.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1626

[channlluv]

Alexis, thank you so much. This is excellent. I'm looking up phrases like "indigenous weather folktales" but I'm not getting results like this. Is this from one of those areas where it never really gets cold? There's a rainy season and a dry season? Thank you!

Roxy

[crazycanuck]

Roxy, i'm unsure why Western Australia terms it's "seasons' seasons.... There's a coolish time of the year & there's a hot time of the year..not much else...

Verrrrrry good question!

[shootingstar]

How boring...to approach it from a technical, scientific perspective. ;)

I can't imagine channelluv because of different First Nations (as Canadian term for "native Indian) group differences, there might be slightly different stories on what caused each of the 4 seasons to change.

This is not written in story, legend or myth style. It is from the Canadian Encyclopedia (well known in the library world) that summarizes some common beliefs which touches only a little bit on what causes changes for each of the 4 seasons.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0005653

Looks like more on how Earth, Humankind was created, is the stronger focus.

Probably in ancient Chinese belief system, there is also a myth/legend but I don't know what it is without searching around for info. (There is for the creation of the Milky Way, certain constellations...)

I'm sure Hawai'i has a legend...though changes to 4 seasons would be quite different there....

Unfortunately my parents weren't into telling us fairytales, myths and legends.

Even for European stuff, I went to the library and read on my own as a kid.

[lph]

Let me know if you want to know why the sea is salt, why there are earthquakes, or why the fox has a white tip to his tail, though :rolleyes:

[PamNY]

I'm also working on a book about animal artists -- animals that paint in zoo and sanctuary settings, and another about ghost hunting, and my next one is on the history of mermaids. If anyone has any cool mermaid mythology for your region...that's next. Seriously.
Roxy

Oh, do we have cool mermaid -- well, maybe not mythology, but something fun. I'm not sure if the annual Mermaid Parade in Coney Island (http://www.coneyisland.com/mermaid.shtml) is what you are looking for, but I can tell you that traveling on the subway with people dressed like this is a riot.

[channlluv]

Geemonetti, Pam, that is funny. This is an annual event, huh? I would love to come and take my own pictures...these may not be, um, age-appropriate. <g>

Shootingstar, thank you for that link. I have so much good reading to do! I think I'm going to go join the UC San Diego research library, too, but these links are very helpful as I'm putting together the book proposal itself. It's morphing into seasonal myths versus just how the seasons happened myths. If the book doesn't sell, I'll have lots of good material for articles for kids' magazines.

LPH, I think I want to come visit Norway and just spend a season traveling and listening to your local storytellers. I've never heard any of these.

Crazycanuck, it's like that here in San Diego, too. We have Rainy Season, which is about six days sprinkled across November and December, sometimes January, and Fire Season, which is the rest of the year. Although the last couple of days have been weird. Yesterday and into this morning, it was 60 and a light rain was falling. As I type this, at 2:45 in the afternoon, it's 100 degrees and sunny. Go figure.

Thanks again, everyone, for the stories.

Roxy

[shootingstar]

Consider to extend your research to include the Inuit in the Arctic.

You might have to dig around hard...I went to a bookstore in Iqualuit when I was in the Arctic. And very found little....except for academic stuff written by non-Inuit...etc.

Or think of children's cross-cultural book on myths, legends around the:

Northern lights. :D

(I guess for China you might have to hunt down Mongolian legends...if that's where they appear in that part of the world...)


Ah, one day in life I would like to see the aurora bourealis. Some people have told me of their sightings... including dearie who saw them here in Alberta.

[channlluv]

Shootingstar, I should think you'd be able to see the aurora often in British Columbia. Is there a season for those, too? I thought it was a result of solar flares burning their way across our atmosphere. Electromagnetic energy releasing and all that.

Roxy

[shootingstar]

I don't think it would be in the VAncouver area..too much light pollution/whatever.

It has to be somewhere without alot of trees in the way.... which is why I think north of where I am in Alberta there is a place..several hundred kms. away.

I thought there were the southern lights..but one has to do more reading around that.

[PamNY]

Here's a painting dog in Brooklyn:

http://www.tillamookcheddar.com/

I'm fairly certain I've met this dog and owner -- I think they are friends with someone I know.

[lph]

Light pollution is a problem, but trees aren't, unless you're right under one :) The northern lights are most visible in the north, but when they are visisble they flicker quite high up on the sky. Beautiful :) Awe-inspiring! (Oh, and don't wave to them).

[alexis_the_tiny]

Alexis, thank you so much. This is excellent. I'm looking up phrases like "indigenous weather folktales" but I'm not getting results like this. Is this from one of those areas where it never really gets cold? There's a rainy season and a dry season? Thank you!

Roxy

Roxy,

yep. Hereabouts, we get, well, hot and somewhat dry or hot and wet. The monsoon rains come twice a year. I'm not quite sure where it originated from but the line about the clearing of the waterways with a "changkol" sort of gives it away that it might be from around Malaysia or Singapore because that's a Malay word that's been mished into a Chinese dialect song. That sort of language mixing is quite typical around here.

I'm totally digging the stuff everyone's sharing on this thread, folklore and mythology are one of my favorite things.

Oh in case this is of any interest:
Dragon King of the East Sea - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_King_of_the_East_Sea

Dragons in Chinese mythology, their roles were mainly to do with weather so no surprise the dragon king features in a song about rain - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon

Sorry about the links, I can't seem to get the link thingy to work here. :(

[KnottedYet]

Ah, one day in life I would like to see the aurora bourealis. Some people have told me of their sightings... including dearie who saw them here in Alberta.

Did you see them last night? Looks like you get them nicely in Alberta.
http://www.girlsandbicycles.ca/2011/09/northern-lights.html

[bmccasland]

Let me know if you want to know why the sea is salt, why there are earthquakes, or why the fox has a white tip to his tail, though :rolleyes:

You going to add this to your Viking thread???

Pleeeaassseee. :)

[lph]

:D Sure, will do.

[Susan]

The first tale that came to my mind is "Frau Holle". It's a Grimm's tale, I am not sure if you have it too.
In this tale, it snows because a woman called "Holle" (may be related to "Hel") shakes her bedding and the feathers she shakes out of it land on the earth as snow.

Other than that we have a lot of season related folklore, especially for the darker time of the year, but I can't think of stories WHY there are seasons.

[malkin]

Looking back on my southern California childhood, maybe the change in seasons was because Disneyland couldn't afford the big summertime fireworks display all year long. so it was necessary to have winter.

[Cynedra]

Looking back on my southern California childhood, maybe the change in seasons was because Disneyland couldn't afford the big summertime fireworks display all year long. so it was necessary to have winter.

I was thinking that the seasons change elsewhere so that the tourist will come to Florida. Otherwise, the part time residents wouldn't know when to come.