Talk:Fimbulwinter

Norse history and culture C‑class Mid‑importance

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Ice Age

No possibility of a folk memory of the last ice age then?

Not of the Ice Age. The distance in time from the last Ice Age until the Viking Age when this mythology came about is about 10.000 years! The climate change during the Nordic Bronze Age is "just" 1000 years away. During the Weichsel Glaciation all of scandinavia was under ice and water and nothing could live there, so there was noone to remember these great winters. See this timeline of Swedish prehistory:

Timeline of Swedish history

I wouldn't really bet on it,human memory is one of the strongest things that ever were and ever will be.Recent archeological finds also show,that a modern(or at least capable of metalurgy) peoples have existed long long before the "official" dates (although theese materials are being hidden in old depositaries or made to disapear,as not to ratle the curent theories). New Babylon.

Personally I think you're absolutely right. This is no different than the myths of great floods in Christian and Babylonian mythology - and if they are based on actual natural disasters, which they very well might be, we are talking about a considerable timespan (i.e. millenia).

Until we find some "non-original research" (weird term, but that's what the Wiki-gods demand) to back it up, let's just keep it here in the talk page, though. --dllu 19:19, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My usual rant - it is a ludicrous practice to use a term like Fimbulvetr in English, when it is not English, and every dictionary and encyclopedia will use the term Fimbul Winter. This is nothing but pedantic fundamentalism. Why then do we not use the term Eboracum or Jorvik for the City of York? It is more historically correct, equally Norse, and well documented in sources.

Anyway - it is unlikely that the Fimbul Winter refers to the Ice Ages. For two reasons: The concept of the Fimbul Winter is eschatological, but the Norse creation story may contain a faint memory of the receding ice sheet. Second, an important part of the Fimbul Winter is the disappearance, or blotting out, of the sun, a phenomenon that did not occur during the Ice Ages.

--Sparviere (talk) 14:44, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Etymological Speculation

How plausible is this? I wouldn't immediately edit it away, but cites are definitely needed. Also, is wikipedia really the place for speculation like this?

This idea is even present in a textbook of norse religion used in university courses. I will put in the reference. Nixdorf 19:53, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I thought you meant the thing about a memory of the climate change. The etymological stuff I cannot talk for... Nixdorf 19:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK I have cut this out of the main page, it was too speculative, too unreferenced, and if referenced would be original research:

The Old English cognate is fifel meaning "Giant, (Sea) Monster", thereby retaining the root sense of "Large, Vast in Extent". Thus, in both the Old Norse fimbul and Old English fifel we see the root word for the number "five". Now, in Greek, the word for five is "penta", and it gives us the Greek prefix "pan-" meaning "All Encompassing", from the sense of "All Five Fingers on One Hand" being a metaphor for "everything" (The Teaching Company lecture series on Linguistics). Therefore, it seems likely that the Germanic "fimbul-" is the exact cognate of the Greek "pan-", both meaning "Everything, All Inclusive". The fimbulwinter, then, was a winter that encompassed everything -- to wit, all lands in Scandinavia and Finland and, perhaps, the British Isles, all the lands the folk of the Nordic Bronze Age knew of.

German Wetter (weather) sounds a lot like vetr. Let's see... Wiktionary says this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ve%C3%B0r#Old_Norse --Anonyma (talk) 19:39, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Usage as a spoken term

I can attest that my maternal grandmother, who was a simple Swedish country girl with no higher degree of education, would use the expression "fimbulvinter" to describe an unnaturally cold winter. Being a Swede myself, I can also attest that many of my peers understand the term with that meaning. jkl 11:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The key question, to me at least, is whether the term survived in this meaning since heathen times (which would be very interesting) or whether it entered use as a romantic antiquarian expression sometime in the 19th century (which I don't find interesting at all). I'll assume the latter unless someone can demonstrate the former. Haukur 12:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While there are many parts of the old mythology that survived in folklore (stories about Balder, Thor, Odin, Freyja, etc), I think the name Fimbulvinter reveals that Haukur is right. An authentic Swedish tradition would probably have called it something like Fimmelvinter.--Berig 18:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"In Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other Nordic countries, the term fimbulvinter is still used to refer to an unusually cold and harsh winter." While this term may be in use in Scandinavia, it is definitely not used in Finland. So at least "and other Nordic countries" is incorrect. Metukkalihis (talk) 20:55, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The wording is still quite weird and inaccurate:

In Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other Nordic countries, the term Fimbulvetr has been borrowed from Old Norse to refer to an unusually cold and harsh winter.

First of all it certainly isn't a term, it is a saying, and Danes, Norwegians and Swedes never say "Fimbulvetr" but "Fimbulvinter". Thirdly it seems a little bit odd to say that it has been borrowed from Old Norse, since all those languages are descendant from Old Norse. It perhaps have been reintroduced to those languages from Old Norse. As for other other Nordic countries where this saying is used, I can only think of Icelandic, which have retained it instead of reintroduced it, since they saved the Eddas, or Ålandian (that speak Swedish) or Faroeyar (that speak Faroese). Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 19:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Modern fictional usage

Note that The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, a very well known (in Britain and Ireland) 1960 children's fantasy novel that draws heavily on British myths (themselves derived from Norse and Celtic myths), uses the word, with the English spelling "Fimbulwinter", and I'd guess it is the major force in propagating the term with that spelling in the English-speaking world (yeah yeah, citation needed...).

A Nuclear Winter was referred to as "fimbulwinter" in some sci-fi story I read (probably due to its use in the Weirdstone book), but I don't recall the name of the story and can't find it online either, sigh... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.43.167.47 (talk) 02:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]