Why do your people have seasons?

[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.

[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]

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.

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-ohlo...ndian-life-in/