Today is the First Day of Summer in Iceland. Known in Icelandic as ‘Sumardagurinn fyrsti’, this holiday is an Icelandic flag day and marks the arrival of the first day of summer.
Given the climate in Iceland, it might seem strange that summer comes so early to Iceland. However, in Iceland, the old Norse calendar was in use by the first settlers to Iceland in the 9th century and it divided the year into only two seasons, vetur (winter) and (sumar) summer.
On Sumardagurinn Fyrsti, children in Iceland receive summer gifts (“sumargjafir.”) A tradition of gift-giving to children on the first day of summer predating the similar Christmas practice by hundreds of years.
Traditionally children were given food as a gift. They might receive bread or other treats as the need to ration food over the winter was ending. The gift was seen as a way of rewarding the children for having had to endure the long winter.
How to get there:
Today is the birthday, in 1945, of Doug Clifford, drummer with Creedence Clearwater Revival who scored the 1969 US No.2 & UK No.1 single ‘Bad Moon Rising’, and the 1970 US & UK No.1 album Cosmo’s Factory. The band has sold 26 million albums in the United States alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWijx_AgPiA
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