“The scorching rays of the sun, like the tongues of a blazing ritual fire, wither both the bodies and souls of the peacocks, forcing them to bury their heads in their feathered wheels to find some coolness.” “Simple is summer in the mountains ; The meadow is blooming, the old farmhouse is smiling and the soft murmur of the stream speaks of happiness found. The first verse belongs to a Sanskrit poem about summer, usually attributed to Kālidāsa, a 6th-century Hindu poet. The second is by Edith Södergran, an early 20th-century Finnish-Swedish poet. The contrast between the two fragments serves as a prelude to this brief reflection on summer and its different meanings in different parts of the world.
In most cultures, the seasons were originally conceived according to the agricultural cycle; from seed to harvest, followed by the rest of the country. This is how, in the Greco-Roman tradition, the seasons from the legend of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, were explained. At some point Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld. Enraged, Demeter asks the other Olympian gods for help and manages to negotiate with Hades that her daughter may meet her on the surface of the earth for at least half a year, i.e. in spring and summer. So the return of Persephone coincides with the time of germination and maturation of plants.
However, our planet’s climate and its cycles are not homogeneous, which is reflected, for example, in a different number of seasons depending on which region we are in, and in turn in the associated cultural meanings of each of them. When we speak of the four seasons in Europe, there are six in India. When summer arrives in Europe, the dry and oppressive heat of Grishma Ritu ends there and the monsoon season begins. A similar thing happens in Mexico, where May is the hottest month of the year. Though formally considered part of spring due to European influence, in the Aztec calendar it corresponded to the fifth month of the year, Tóxcatl, or “dry thing,” the period of drought that preceded the long-awaited rains. A similar gap between the home climate and the European calendar we found in relation to the Australian summer Christmas celebrations in the southern hemisphere: a performance a far cry from the cold, snow and Santa Claus sleighs we currently associate it with in the northern Hemisphere where it coincides with the boreal winter.
If global temperatures continue to rise, we could leave the beaches and seek refuge from the heat in more northerly latitudes.
The closer we get to the poles, the longer the summer days and shorter in winter. Around the summer solstice, above the Arctic Circle, the sun never sets. This phenomenon may make the contrast between the two halves of the year—winter and summer—even more striking for cultures living in regions near the Arctic and Antarctic. In these latitudes, summer is not only the time for crops to germinate and mature, but also for sunlight. A time of hatching when the inhabitants from the time of the first settlers to the present day try to take advantage of the long hibernation and live intensely after waking up from the cold and darkness of winter.
This contrast would perhaps explain the summer cult that we find in northern Europe and that is also manifested in literature and cinema. I am thinking, without going any further, of Ingmar Bergman’s Smile on a Summer Night (1956). The tape condenses the mysticism of the boreal summer particularly well; an intense combination of nonchalance, intoxication, sensuality and “happiness found”, as Södergran put it. At the same time, it is noticeable that the expectations and expectations of the summer in these latitudes do not always correspond to the reality of the local climate and summer temperatures. This is what happens, for example, at the picnics that are enthusiastically planned in the UK and often end up soaked. Or with the very light clothing that Scandinavians buy every summer and that they often can hardly wear or have to hide under layers of sweaters and jackets.
It should therefore come as no surprise that many northern Europeans nowadays seek their blue summer in Nerja or Almuñécar, communication permitting. To some extent, this worship of summer and the sun by the peoples of the north has spread to the peoples of the south as well. Not so long ago, these people sought refuge from the light and heat in their homes, considering the beach as the place where, early in the morning, they could buy the day’s catch from the just-returned fishermen’s ships. But it’s possible that in the coming decades, as global temperatures continue to rise, the concept of summer in our environment will change again, leaving the beaches and seeking refuge from the heat in more northerly latitudes.
Olivia Muñoz-Rojas is a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and an independent researcher.
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