Hærfest - Autumn & Celebration in Anglo Saxon England 

Videos by Simon somehow feel like I’m having an unexpectedly deep conversation with a stranger I just met on a rainy day- every time.

It's Autumn in Norway now, I'm foraging for mushrooms and drying them to use during winter and I'm sitting inside knitting a bunch of warm socks.

you look like a different version of yourself every week. it's brilliant.

finally someone who knows what a good day looks like! dark, cloudy and windy.

When there are people like this on RU-vid there is still hope for the world

Harvesting wine is called "herbsten" in German. That term developed in parallel to the English "harvesting". I really love to understand my own language more based on your videos. It really shows that Europeans are really somehow connected.

This was really interesting, especially when you consider how the general emotional disposition would have been influenced by that way of life, and how it compares to today.

Until last year I lived on a farm near Mennonites (Ontario) and they still typically have a few summer cows that they slaughter in the fall and then share. I love being around cows and just tried not to think about it too much 😑 Living on a farm made the seasons so much more meaningful. We had a lot of deer/ whatever else activity near our crabapple trees around now and it was so nice to catch a glimpse.

The danish word "høst" (used to also mean autumn and still does in Sweden) means "harvest". The closest sounds to an "ø" I can think of in the english language, is if you mix the vowel sounds of the words "burn" and "brew"..probably not very relevant to this video, but my mind "rambles through associations" easily!😁😜 Greetings from Denmark🇩🇰 Ps love your work❤️ Oh, and "Hærfest" or "hær-fest" would be "army-party"...rambling again...what can I say, I have ADHD and a touch of the ol' Aspergers😬😀

Simon, you are a born communicator. I wish you well.

So lovely! The opening scene & sound was so happymaking that I put my phone on the side for a larger screen. Wonderfully rich information (even though it's Spring, here.) I'd love to see & hear more of these seasonal & cultural celebrations. Thanks Simon ! 👍

Your voice is so relaxing. I came to watch an interesting video and almost fell asleep from the ASMR effect. 😆

I liked the photography of the leaf litter. Here in New England, mid October is clear, bright skies and autumn foliage. By mid November, gray lowering clouds will scud across damp skies, above a world largely drained of color.

Love your atmospheric and pastoral lead-ins to your stories. Experienced same weather today here in coastal South Carolina.

Down here in the New Forest we still have a pannage or Common of the mast as it also called locally each Autumn which as you mentioned is it the practice of releasing livestock (pigs) to eat the fallen acorns, beech nuts and chestnuts.etc. It is a privilege right granted to the commoners of the New Forest

Simon your videos are wonderfully reflective, meditative and instructive all at once, delivered in a reassuring and utterly convincing way. Kudos. And by the way that opening shot really sets the tone for this episode!

You probably know this already but... Letting the pigs go into the woods to root for nuts and so on ('pannage') was a right granted to the local people by the land owner - one reason for this was that it was good for the woods as well as the pigs. Whilst pigs root, they turn the soil and break it up - improving the plant growth. My Robinson ancestors lived in the Cotswolds near the Wychwood - they were given the privileges of "lopping, topping and pannage".

Thanks again. Your videos are like listening to a fireside chat with an old friend.

I adore you Simon Roper. Thank you for the content

The Harvest/Fall/Autumn scenery was nice. This was a fun and relaxing video.

And a nice Autumn to you, as well, young sir. Another excellent video and thank you for the additional links.

It is always great to listen to you, greetings from Argentina.

The main autumnal miseries comes from the increasingly damp air. The moisture, even at moderate temperatures makes every thing feel colder.

My grandmother always called me an elf child because I was born in September - September birthdays were regarded as special to her something her family had taught her

I love love LOVE your channel!! Thank you for these videos.

Thank you, and a pleasant autumn to you.

love learning about the history of seasons and seasonal celebrations. thanks so much

I've loved every one of your videos that I've watched.

Love your videos and this time period. Your videos always contain lots of information but also make you think about it all alot too. Thank you for your work.

These videos help with the bouts of anxiety I've been having lately. Partly the nature intros and partly the way Simon explains the topic

Very evocative observations at the end there, I quite liked that!

Truly my favourite RU-vidr.Keep up the great work Simon

I live in southeast Kentucky and used to talk to my grand parents often abot when they were young 1910s thru 30s b4 the chestnut blight hit. They said hogs were turned loose in fall and stayed fat on the huge chestnut mast all winter. They would take mule sleds of chestnuts to feed other live stock and themselves.

very interesting. Your channel is amazing, so instructive. thanks

Very informative video, Simon!

Thanks Simon!

I’m 49. When I was a kid in rural North Yorkshire trick or treat was an American thing. Our version of door to door begging was making a guy ( falkes) a knocking door to door asking “penny fut guy”. More often we’d get nothing except enough to buy some chips to share.

I have seen two of your videos and I’m hooked. Chicago, IL, USA 🇺🇸

Thank you Simon for your measured and meditative information. I like that you reference things for us too.

Simon, very good, as per usual.

Nice topics! (g)Haerfest is the fest of ghaer (gathering). Ghae(d)er is the Flemish/Dutch stem word for "to gather". See "vergaren" and "vergaderen". To bring "together", which in its turn comes from Flemish/Dutch "te-gader".

Really enjoying these videos. I shared a couple in a Facebook prehistory group I support and a member knows you from Butser. Vivian. She said she was teaching how to make the shingles

It would be fun to have a one on one to talk about linguistics and history, traditions, and beer.

A major reason for the slaughter being done in autumn is that it is the beginning of the cold part of the year, cold enough that you need not worry about the meat that you started to brine going rotten. The climate being different at that time, they may have even smoked and dried it, i actually have no idea if winters were dry enough then, but hey why not put it out there, maybe someone corrects me or just has something to say about early medieval times climate in Britain. Anyway, whatever your method of preserving meats, it takes time, you don't just throw it into brine and have it safe from bacteria and whatever would harm it, it needs to soak up all that salt and have it spread throughout before it gets to the point where it can stand summer temperatures and not spoil. As there was no refrigeration, they had to do it during later autumn and then they'd eat the preserved meat througout the year. if you slaughter a pig when it's warm, you better eat it immediately, and that is why regular people back then generally were not doing it, unless in case they needed to throw some celebration and even then they might be more inclined to go for younger and smaller pigs.

Love this content sm

A thing I feel is valuable to note - linguistic and cultural perception of months can change, especially if it is something tied to natural world. The traditional Slavic month names, all named after aspects of nature of one or other kind, can shift up 1 month forward or backwards depending on language (and *studènъ, "chiller", is usually December but in some cases is November or January; there is more terms than months so languages don't all have the same ones). I expect that harvest rituals with same roots will happen later in England than in Scandinavia, and lent rituals will happen earlier than in England than in Scandinavia.

I was pleased that you mentioned Bonfire Night in passing Simon. I've always felt that a lot of the folk-inspired Christian (and pre-Christian) festivities that had centred around Halloween and All Saints Day in England shifted along a few days to the Fifth of November (which we were exhorted to "Remember, Remember" as "The Gunpowder Treason and Plot") after 1605. So that celebrations that were once Pagan and then Christian, then morphed yet again into something with political, or at least sectarian, overtones. Certainly, in my childhood in the 50s Guy Fawkes night was the big thing - and more or less community based at that. Halloween was rarely, if ever, on the radar. I suspect it has become less significant in recent years partly through a recognition of its fundamentally anti-Catholic basis (not that most people were aware of that, except in those few places where they actually burnt an effigy of the Pope!), but more because of the transatlantic and commercialised influence of Halloween taking over and, even more, because of "Elfin Safety" issues. In my day, any primary school kid could go into the local newsagents and buy as many fireworks as they wanted, or could afford - hence the "Penny for the Guy" tradition, which would not have been tolerated by the grown-up world if it had already been subjected to Trick or Treating. I suspect that if Guido Fawkes and the other plotters had been arrested at some other time of year, then the event would have been celebrated, if at all, in some other way, without the bonfires, the effifigies, the gingerbread and all the rest of it. ( I'd also add that the specifically religious celebrations at that time of year were confined to All Saints Day in ordinary church services and to annual Harvest Festivals, which were indeed community events, but were celebrated if I recall correctly earlier in October.) I have looked, in a desultory way, for confirmation of this theory but without a lot of success, because I've yet to find out how people in England did celebrate All Hallows Eve in, say, the Tudor period.

The part where you talk about celebrations migrating and adapting to the cultural climate reminds me of a Spanish guitarist who said that not many people know that parts of Spain celebrated Samhain even though it’s an autumn holiday originating in Ireland and Britain.

Love this videos, started watching the Baldric skits, but holy shit this type of videos are WAY more entertaining

There may be a Germanic / Anglo Saxon tradition to light a beacon on the autumn solstice (a wheel on a pool with burning straw ) The place looks like a large, but lower and flat grave mound. In Dutch the place is called a bikberg. Look for places called beacon hill or mound?

I love autumn 🍂🐿💛🌧🔥💨

Yes Samain to Celts. I think I read speculation that Silbury Hill may have at it's heart a kind of Harvest mound. But I'm probably imagining it.. thanks anyway Simon, fascinating and informative as always.

Could you potentially do one about winter festivals/customs aswell please? Maybe even a separate video for each season aswel, to round out the bunch to four? Thanks for a fascinating video!

Seriously enjoyed this session. The way you evoked the change the lack of light and so on was great. Living in the subtropics, I often don't get the associations people more naturally make in old writing, cultural references and the lie.

No Knitting before 14/1500s Narlbinding though. Using a bowl of water to reflect a rush light one can work quite well spinning can be done by touch and both sexes span yarn. I recall reading years ago that the US forces stationed in Gloucestershire during WW2 picked up Trick or Treat and took it home. A little late but Calan Gaeaf Hapus, happy start to winter to you. We call both Autumn and October Hydref yn Gymraig

Happy Samhain one and all! Now go light a turnip. :-D

Favorite part of this entire video = Jackson Crawford reference 😆💜

Congrats on 80k

Love the witchy vibes

Must be nice to have a real Autumn. Here in Florida,we just have a less severe Summer. A cold front came through on Friday. Whoopdee Doo. Good vid,man.

Absolutely fascinating as usual Simon, thank you... Autumn sure is lacklustre here in Brisbane Australia and also back to front of yours too lol..

I'd really love to see your take on Winter and Summer in the Anglo-Saxon period.

My friend told me that the Saxons called November “Bloodmonth” because that’s when most of their sacrifices happened before Winter.

Thanks, Simon and oíche Shamhna bheannaigh from a misplaced Viking in the land of the Celts.

I would be very interested in such a more reflective video on differences in the experience of autumn!

Another lovely day in England I see

Glad you said 'turnip'. Swedes in the north are those tiny white things. My dad got the job of carving the turnip every year; it must have been incredibly hard work.

Hi Simon. Love your videos. One factor you should consider when talking about months, is when the start of the calendar year was in the time period under consideration. In the UK the beginning of the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1 in 1752. Prior to that, September would have been the 7th month, October the 8th, and November the 9th, etc. Even the names of these months reflect that - "Sept", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec" (seven, eight, nine, ten). BTW if you want to get a good feel of English rural life in the 17th century, check out the BBC documentary series "Tales from the Green Valley". Although there is a long time gap between the 17th century and Anglo-Saxon times, I suspect that much of rural life remained relatively static for many centuries. Rural life in the 17th century was probably closer to Anglo-Saxon times than ours.

ooh i'm early. good to see you again

Hey Simon! Something I was wondering as I watched this video: how does your knowledge of history and language impact the way you live in today's world. Just curious! Thanks for the video and happy autumn!

Yep that weather sums up the north of England right now 😂

When I'm reading or hearing some of these cognates for the first time, I sometimes ask myself why I've been that dense all my english-speaking life. Herbst harvest. Hngh.

As a Swedish speaker I am baffled by the word autumn, which is Etruscan in origin I believe. Our own word is Höst which means the same as harvest. What would it take for you in England to go back to harvest, by the way?

I wonder if saint Martin's day also comes from Samhain.. my (Dutch) mom used to hollow out sugar beets and go from door to door as a child

So I'm writing a series of books and it's sort of time travely, faerie tree, and one place we end up is anglo saxon england. Books on this period are SO EXPENSIVE. I bought one but if you could point me to research that would be helpful I'd deeply appreciate it. Or how to find the research myself. Not so much the language, we do a bit of magic to solve that, but more the time period and daily life.

Wonderful start of the video. You could have ended with it as well. This element of connecting with nature in a metaphysical way, is something nobody does and makes your videos very attractive.

"The Anglo-Saxon word for autumn was ..." Still so in modern (Low) Saxon :)

Hi Simon, I hope this is the right place to ask this question. I'm reading the Gesta Herewardi (again), and it occurs to me that the English frequently communicate with the french and vice versa- what language were they speaking? When Hereward and his mates confound an ambush laid by de Warrenne, and de Warrenne's man asks them if they are forces of Hereward, and would they like to defect, what language is he speaking? Of course Hereward understands french (old Norman?) because he's a well-traveled mercenary. But what about the knights and archers he has with him? Is the Norman speaking a sort of pidgin? What do you reckon is going on there, then?

I love Harvest, but Winter is where its at for me--Christmas and Thanksgiving are the best holidays to me

It's such a shame most of the native month names in most European countries were replaced by the Latin/Romance month names.

What do you think about Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory?

So a note on driving pigs into forests. You mentioned that one wouldn't have to engineer forests in order to have plentiful food for pigs, and I agree. Isn't it true, tho, that there were abundant engineered forests in ancient England, leading up to the Industrial Revolution? Or does that practice only became common after the time period you're discussing? A bit of a tangent, but I've long been interested in the English Commons systems, of coppiced and pollarded forests.

Holy month is most probably the month Jesus was born (he is our first fruits in Sukkot, hebrew celebration of harvest in September) . I'll keep bombing your comments section 'cause this Christian ontology is awesome. No coincidences. Great info as always.

will you do a piece on gēol?

Never thought of harvest being some type of fest. In my mind it is the work of gathering in and not the celebration and ritual that attends it. But of course. You help me see things and experience things that I have overlooked. Thanks. Makes me think of my favorite Rilke poem. Herbsttag. I'll dig out my translation of it and post it for you. Also, if you are collecting more questions for a Q & A, would you please help me understand the pronunciation of "r" by someone like this? Again, I just keep thinking it is a speech impediment but the more RU-vid videos from the UK I watch, the more I realize that this is just normal. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XCEkOo5yVK8.html

Haerfest is Herfst in Dutch, is it connected to harvest?

Slightly colder and slightly wetter than now. Damn. That's slightly cold and slightly wet, alright...

❤️❤️❤️

What was pog in old english (2)

Bonjour

An Old Gaelic Poem - News for you Hear stags bell Winter snows Summer’s gone Wind, strong, cold Sun is low Short his course Heavy sea Fern rust-red Lost its shape Wild-goose cries Usual cry Cold takes hold Of birds’ wings Time of ice That’s my news Every autumn it comes to my mind.

-20? In England? I wouldn’t think I’d get _that_ cold with the Gulf Stream keeping you guys warm!

The new video game Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set in Anglo Saxon England. When you speak directly to Anglo Saxon NPCs they speak modern English, but if you're walking through a village and hear them talking in the background they are speaking something else, which I assume must be Old English! I'm dying to know if this is the case, and whether or not the voice actors are doing a good job of pronunciation.

Minus 20 in winter? is that definitely right?

Minor quibble. Knitting did not exist in Anglo Saxon times. The nearest equivalent is nalbinding which continues to be practiced worldwide.

«Hærfest» in modern Norwegian means «army-party»..

Is the hurricane affecting you weather over there in England already?

I'd've thought that there would be beer making in the Autumn, followed by, ermm, beer drinking.

Altenglisch ist sehr interessant

3:34 looks like a 7-leaf clover