Solar festivals, accordingly, are in general of a calendrical nature, cele-
brating significant dates such as the first day of spring/summer, or the longest
or shortest day. They are characterized by activities that in some way imitate
the behaviour of the sun. Solar symbols are displayed, fires lit on hilltops, fiery
wheels rolled down slopes.
The oldest palpable evidence comes from Scandinavia, from those Bronze
Age rock drawings found especially in western Sweden but also in parts of
Norway and Denmark.^62 Some of them show a large solar disc being set upon
a stand, held aloft by men, adored, mounted on two wheels and drawn along
by a horse or a pair of horses, or conveyed in a ship. One has the impression
of rites in which the emblem of the sun was carried in procession or taken on
a symbolic journey. The Trundholm sun-disc perhaps belongs in this context.
It seems too small to have played a role in a public festival, but it might be
seen as a model imitating a larger disc that was set on wheels and pulled by a
real horse. One of the rock drawings shows a large wheel mounted on two
smaller wheels with a shaft attached to its right-hand side, ready for a horse to
pull it in that direction, and in Gotland a bronze disc was found together with
bridle-pieces of two horses.^63
In certain Indian rituals the sun was represented by a wheel, a gold plate,
or a round white skin. At the winter solstice festival (Maha ̄vrata) there was a
struggle for the skin between an Aryan and a S ́u ̄ dra, who had to surrender it.
A priest sat on a swing, facing east, and measured with his hand the small gap
between its seat and the ground. Amid other mantras and ritual actions he
whispered to the swing-seat ‘you are the Sun!’ The swing clearly symbolized
the sun’s seasonal change of declination, and the measuring indicated that it
had reached its lowest point.^64
Swinging is a recurrent feature of Indo-European springtime and mid-
summer festivities. In India, besides the Maha ̄vrata, it had a role in the spring-
time Dolaya ̄tra ̄ festival, at which an image of Krishna was swung to and fro
on a swing three times a day. In Europe we find it in ancient Athens (the
Aiorai, incorporated as part of the spring Anthesteria), Latium (the Feriae
Latinae, April), modern Greece (around Easter), Russia and the Balkans
(Easter), and Latvia (Easter and midsummer). A South Slavonic myth
relates that as Grosdanka was swinging on Easter Day the Sun came down on
his own invisible swing and carried her away up to heaven to make her his
(^62) de Vries (1956), i. 101–15; Gelling–Davidson (1969), 9–14; M. Green (1991), 43, 74–83;
F. Kaul and C. Sommerfeld in Meller (2004), 58–63, 66–9, 82.
(^63) de Vries (1956), i. 111 fig. 5d, 113.
(^64) Oldenberg (1917), 85 f., 443 f.; von Schroeder (1914–16), ii. 137–40; Oberlies (1998), 395,
423 n. 130. The sun is Varuna’s ‘golden swing’ in RV 7. 87. 5.
- Sun and Daughter 213