thoughts on Narnian calendars

[edenfalling]

We know very little about Narnian timekeeping, mostly because Lewis didn't care and therefore didn't write anything about it. There's strong implicit evidence that a Narnian year is roughly the same length as an Earth year. Neither the characters nor Lewis-as-narrator ever say anything to hint otherwise, and in fact VDT casually establishes that one year has gone by for Lucy and Edmund while three years have passed for Caspian, which suggests the Pevensies (who are the only ones in a position to make the comparison) think Narnian and Earth years are equivalent in length.

But the only explicit textual reference to Narnian timekeeping is the letter Peter dictates in Prince Caspian, where he gives the date as the 12th of Greenroof. From this, we can conclude that Narnians don't use the standard English month names. We can also conclude that Greenroof is a summer month, given the other time mentions in Prince Caspian. (In summary, Caspian flees the castle in early summer, meets with a bunch of Old Narnians on a nice summer day, holds a gathering at the Dancing Lawn three days later, and then retreats to Aslan's How and spends an unspecified time there battling Miraz -- judging by Lewis's descriptions, I'd say a minimum of two or three weeks -- before blowing Susan's horn and yanking the Pevensies into the story.)

The other temporal anchor we have for Greenroof is that the Pevensies find ripe apples in the Cair Paravel orchard. Cursory internet research tells me that apples ripen anywhere from late summer to winter, depending on the variety, which is annoyingly unspecific but does support my reading that Caspian et al spent a fair amount of time besieged at the How.

If Narnian months are direct correlates to Earth months, Greenroof must be equivalent to either July or August. July fits a little better with the name itself (August tends to be drier), but August fits somewhat better with the ripe apples. Length of time from 'early' summer is not a useful metric, both because early summer could be said to start anywhere from late May (judging by weather) to late June (solstice), and because Lewis is so damnably vague about how long the Old Narnians were holed up in Aslan's Howe before they decided to use the horn.

If, however, Narnian months are not direct correlates to Earth months -- that is, if they are roughly the same length, but start and end at different points, perhaps based on a different designated new year's day -- then I'd split the difference and make Greenroof run roughly from July 20 to August 20, which would place Peter's letter right about the start of August. (This assumes a New Year starting around the spring equinox, which is or has been common in many eras and cultures.)

This is not hugely relevant to anything, but I have been attempting to stick textual dates on a bunch of letters in "The Courting Dance." Since I'd previously established that story as taking place during the summer, I started wondering exactly where in the summer Greenroof fell, and what to call the months before and after it. I am tentatively going with the offset months, and calling the prior one (June 20-July 20, give or take) Sunhigh, because solstice. heliopausa has used the name Fruitswell for the month after Greenroof (in The Atrementus Collection, a lovely meta-heavy series about the publication of the books on Tumnus's shelf in LWW), which I may adopt as my own headcanon.

I have no idea what the other nine months should be called, though. Any suggestions?

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ETA: autumnia reminds me that VDT also contains reference to named months... which are, annoyingly, January, February, and March, and January is referenced as the start of a new year. *headdesk* Oh, Lewis. He couldn't maintain inter-volume continuity if his life depended on it, could he?

So we have, I think, five options: one, ignore the named months in VDT; two, ignore the named month in PC; three, assume that some months got renamed over the years while others retained the names Frank and Helen brought from England; four, assume that a thirteenth month got jammed in at some point (lunar influences, perhaps?); or five, assume that the Telmarines and the Old Narnians use slightly different calendars, and the Telmarine one is a closer match to the English one.

Comments

[autumnia]

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out the Narnian calendar last year when I was working on my own fics, trying to figure out the schedule of stops that the Dawn Treader made while using Eustace's diary as a guide.

My personal head canon puts Greenroof right in the middle of July and August, so something similar to what you had in mind. I do think the calendar is mostly a direct correlation of ours, but with an added month in the middle of summer.

In VDT, there's mention of the New Year and they do speak of months using our names:

"That's landsman's talk," said Drinian. "There's always a prevailing west wind in these seas all through the late summer, and it always changes after the New Year. We'll have plenty of wind for sailing westward; more than we shall like from all accounts."

"That's true, Master," said an old sailor who was a Galmian by birth. "You get some ugly weather rolling up from the east in January and February. And by your leave, Sire, if I was in command of this ship, I'd say to winter here and begin the voyage home in March."

- Chapter 14: "The Beginning of the End of the World," VDT

[edenfalling]

Argh, Lewis. I swear, the man had no concept of continuity whatsoever. *beats head against desk*

I edited the post to take that into account, and I think there are five basic options: one, ignore the named months in VDT; two, ignore the named month in PC; three, assume that some months got renamed over the years while others retained the names Frank and Helen brought from England; four, assume that a thirteenth month got jammed in at some point (lunar influences, perhaps?); or five, assume that the Telmarines and the Old Narnians use slightly different calendars, and the Telmarine one is a closer match to the English one.

My personal preference is for options one, three, or five, mostly because I like fictional calendrical systems, but I think all are justifiable.

[autumnia]

I do prefer option four though I had to check about lunar influences -- I wrote stories that mention the Moon but had to double check that it actually existed in the Narnia world. And from your preferred possibilities, I'd like to think the Telmarines had a different naming system that may had been adopted some time in the 1300 years between LWW and PC, and that everywhere else still used the old (Gregorian) names. Peter would have had to ask someone (Trumpkin? Cornelius? Caspian?) when was it they had arrived in Narnia at some point in order to dictate the challenge correctly.

"I see," said Scrubb. "Well now, let's get on. Tell us all about the lost Prince." Then an old owl, not Glimfeather, related the story.

About ten years ago, it appeared, when Rilian, the son of Caspian, was a very young knight, he rode with the Queen his mother on a May morning in the north parts of Narnia.

- Chapter 4, A Parliament of Owls, SC

With the inclusion of May by the Owls, I still think Greenroof as an additional month in the calendar probably makes the most sense. Who knows, the summer season in Narnia might be longer than our world.. especially after the Long Winter finally thawed out.

[edenfalling]

Argh, LEWIS. Okay, on that basis, I am going to assume either that the Telmarines brought standard English month nomenclature with them (and the Galmian sailor was using that in order to be intelligible to his crewmates), or that each month has a standard and a formal/poetic name, and Peter was obviously using the latter in his almost overly formal letter.

[autumnia]

I like the idea of having a common and poetic name for each month. I can see the Narnians using Greenroof, etc. normally within their borders but using the standard January, May, etc when dealing with other countries (especially with things like paperwork and formal international agreements).

[the_rck]

I'd go with the idea of the Telmarines and the Old Narnians using different calendars. The Telmarines are supposed to be from Earth. I'm not sure that canon nails down the timing of their departure from Earth, but it has to be after The Magician's Nephew, so them using some version of the Gregorian calendar would make sense.

[edenfalling]

The Telmarines are a serious problem! The extra-canonical timelines I've seen generally have them arriving about 450 years after the creation of the Narnian world, which is fine as far as it goes. They also came in a group (minimum twelve people: six pirates, their 'wives' (aka the women whose husbands and possibly children they killed, and whom they then raped and enslaved), and potentially a few children) which would make it easier to hang onto parts of their culture, whereas Frank and Helen's contributions may well have been overwritten by the native Narnians, especially if the two humans were trying not to be too authoritarian.

However, the Telmarines are stated to come directly from Earth -- specifically from a small and presumably isolated island in the South Seas (ie, Polynesia) -- and they have a noticeable Spanish influence in their names. They also, logically, had to come from after 1900 since that's the approximate date of MN. This is, frankly, weird. It's possible they were Spanish and/or Filipino sailors who turned to piracy after the US conquered the Philippines, but then why would they bring specifically English month-names instead of Spanish or Tagalog month-names? (I assume that proper names and similar things do not get auto-translated into English by the Deep Magic, with Calormene noble titles as my primary evidence.) Additionally, the description of the pirates sounds much more Golden Age of Piracy than early 20th-century, but that would mean they left our world before MN, yet arrive in the Narnian world several centuries later, which is just not on. (While I will buy that time in one dimension has nothing to do with time in another dimension, I will not accept that time can go backwards; the laws of thermodynamics continue to apply.)

This problem, of course, arises because Lewis had not yet written MN when he wrote PC, and -- sing it with me -- he couldn't maintain inter-volume continuity if his life depended on it. *sigh*

At one point, speakr2customrs suggested that the Telmarines were a mixed Spanish/English crew who fled the Caribbean around 1720 after Woodes Rogers went pirate hunting, which makes as much sense as any other explanation I can kludge together and does fit the Golden Age of Piracy feel to Aslan's tale of Telmarine origins. The trouble then is how to account for the time travel... but I can handwave that their dimensional-gateway cave actually ran through at least one intermediate world between Earth and Telmar (they never noticed because they were still underground), which removes the problem. (I have a similar handwave for the Calormenes, which involves their ancestors leaving the general vicinity of the Punjab sometime after the Mongol invasions, spending a thousand years or so in an intermediary world, and then stumbling into the Narnian world.)

The other problem, of course, is that Caspian and Professor Cornelius don't blink twice about the use of 'Greenroof,' though if it's part of a different calendar you might expect them to be a little surprised and/or to comment that Miraz won't know what date Peter means. One could probably handwave even that by saying that Archenland keeps to the old Narnian calendar, but really, the whole thing is just a mess. *beats head repeatedly against laptop*

[transposable_element]

FWIW, the story of the Telmarines to me recalls the story of the Bounty mutineers, so I think of it as taking place in the late 18th century. I like your solution for the timeline, with travel via an intermediary world. To the degree that I've thought of it before this, I'm inclined to be even looser, suggesting that if the timelines of the worlds are completely separate, then it could be possible to travel from this world to Narnia after another traveler leaves this world and arrive in Narnia before they do, or vice versa. But that would open up even more of cans of worms.

[edenfalling]

Hmm. But were there a lot of Spanish pirates in Southeast Asia from 1750 to 1800? I'd think people preying on the Spanish might be more common... unless they were Spanish pirates preying on the Dutch and the English...?

Well, in any case it's fairly obvious that piracy in the Pacific was not Lewis's area of expertise. *sigh*

As for the timeline business! I tend to think that, since all worlds are nominally connected through the pools in the Wood, their timelines have just enough connection that if Person A leaves Universe 1 on Monday and Person B leaves Universe 1 on Friday, Person B cannot arrive in Universe 2 before Person A, though the exact interval between their arrivals is completely arbitrary. This only holds for direct journeys, of course. Once you interpose one or more intermediate worlds, everything except the basic direction of time goes out the window.

You are correct that this is not strictly required by canon, but if it's not required, we get into time travel territory (without the sort of divine fucking-about Aslan does to de-age the Pevensies at the end of LWW), and that is a can of worms I would prefer to leave closed. I remain convinced that even the supposed 'instantaneous' nature of trips to Narnia is an illusion; they do, in fact, have measurable duration. It's just that the duration is only a second or two.

[transposable_element]

Honestly, I had never really given the Spanish-sounding names much thought. But I don't know enough about piracy in the Pacific to have a useful opinion.

I agree that the trips to Narnia have to have some duration. One thing that always bothered me as a kid is that time seems to stand still in our world as long as someone from our world is in Narnia, but then continues at an unpredictable rate relative to Narnian time as soon as they come back. Of course, if people from our world travel permanently to Narnia this doesn't hold -- so time starts again in our world as soon as the person doesn't come back? How exactly does that work? When Polly makes her first trip to the Wood Between the Worlds, time keeps going in our world until Digory goes to get her back (because until he decides to go, she's there permanently). But then as soon as they have the means to come back, time pauses in our world. So basically, people's intentions (to come back or not) or more likely their fates (since the Pevensies don't deliberately try to come back) affect time. Or something. Eeek!!!!

[edenfalling]

The complicating factor here is that all trips to Narnia end not with the travelers returning of their own volition, but with Aslan directly intervening. Either he manages the transport himself (MN, PC, VDT, SC) or he mucks around with a pre-existing transport method (he was clearly trying to get an appropriate set of children into Narnia via the wardrobe, and then de-ages the Pevensies on their way home). So the nearly instantaneous nature of those adventures strikes me as his active choice rather than a hard and fast rule.

Actually, at least one trip to and from Narnia has a slight but undeniable canonical duration. On Lucy's second visit to Tumnus, Edmund sees her enter the wardrobe but doesn't see her immediately step back out; time passes while he walks over to the wardrobe and decides to enter himself, during which interval Lucy remains in Narnia. In fact, that trip could have lasted several minutes altogether, because Lucy and Edmund have to go hunt down Susan and Peter (who are still playing hide-and-seek) to tell them about their adventures. There is no way of telling how much of Peter and Susan's experienced duration happened while their sibling were in Narnia, and how much happened once they returned.

Also, so far as I can tell, Lewis never specifies how long Polly and Digory's trip to Charn takes from an Earth-based perspective. Digory and Uncle Andrew get several minutes to talk after Polly vanishes to the Wood and before Digory uses his own Ring, but the length of Digory's own absence is never specified. When they return with Jadis in tow, all Lewis says is, "In a moment they found themselves in Uncle Andrew's study; and there was Uncle Andrew himself, staring at the wonderful creature that Digory had brought back from beyond the world." Digory could have been gone anywhere from a second to half an hour (but not too much longer, or Polly would have missed her dinner entirely instead of merely being late). We just don't know.

[watersword]

I have no useful suggestions, but am vastly enjoying your attempts to make sense out of the continuity disaster that is these books. This is like 85% of the reason I subscribed to your journal.

[edenfalling]

I am glad my suffering is entertaining for somebody!

(I swear to all the gods that anyone ever held holy, Lewis's worldbuilding is SUCH A MESS.)

[lady_songsmith]

I commented on the tumblr cross-post, but I'll just pop my head in here to join you in the obligatory "Oh, Lewis!" sigh and head-shake.

[edenfalling]

He is a very trying writer, in so very many ways... And yet I'm still here fighting to make sense of his tangles, because dammit, the stuff he got right is worth it. *sigh*

[heliopausa]

Hello! Thanks for the mention of the recent story! :)
I haven't time to comment properly here (yesterday was a national election in australia; much busyness ensues) but just quickly - there are more doors than one between this world and Narnia. It's a man from Galma, not a native-born Narnian, who says January etc. Possibly the people in Galma came long after Frank and Helen, and brought the this-world names with them?
(and I think I have another month-name in a story somewhere; if the location comes to me, I'll indicate it.)

[edenfalling]

Mmmmmaybe, but Autumnia just found another month name (from SC), in which a Narnian Owl places the start of Rilian's troubles in May. So my suspicion is that either the Narnian calendar uses thirteen strictly 28-day months with Greenroof being the interpolation into 'our' calendar, or the Telmarines brought this-world names which have gradually overwritten the old Narnian names, and the Galman (Galmian?) sailor is using those so the rest of the crew will understand him.

(Or, of course, Greenroof could simply be a poetic name for July or August. Perhaps all the months have doubled names!)

[heliopausa]

Owl quashes rationalisation attempt! (via autumnia :) ) I'll have to abandon that one - but back at the onset of Winter, in and around Tenvis's workshop, they'll be using strictly Narnian names (for me, anyway!).

Speaking of interpolations to keep calendars straight, did you see that the world is cramming an extra second into 2016? We'll all have to think how to use it!

[edenfalling]

A whole extra second! Gosh, what riches! ;)

[cat-i-th-adage.livejournal.com]

I vote for the thirteenth month option, because lunar influences are cool.

[edenfalling]

You and Autumnia are in agreement, then. :)

Me, I think I'll stick to a two-calendars explanation, or possibly just handwave it that each month has a 'common' name and a more formal/poetic name, and Peter was using the latter in his letter.