Halo Phenomena in Olaus Magnus’s Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Part 3)

Halo phenomena in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Bk. 1, Ch, 16. Image from www.avrosys.nu

“And no wonder: since we are so constituted, that everyday things, even if they deserve our amazement, pass us by; on the other hand the slightest things if they spring up in an unfamiliar way, become a pleasant spectacle. (…) when anything varies from normality, everyone’s face is turned to the sky.” (Ch. 15.) No one who is interested in halos would say that Olaus Magnus, the 16^th century Swedish theologian was not right when he wrote this. Even nowadays, most people rarely look up, and they take the sky for granted. If however, there is a comet, eclipse or halo phenomenon which becomes hyped by the media, people’s head immediately turn up for at least a day or two. But why not longer? I’m always surprised.

We have arrived at the final post of our three-part series introducing Olaus Magnus’s description of halos in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (part 1, part 2). This 16th century work dedicates several chapters to halo phenomena and illustrates the descriptions with fine woodcuts. According to Olaus, halos tend to appear mostly on spring mornings, especially when the surface of the earth is covered by deep snow and they usually don’t last more than one and a half or two hours. As he states in Chapter 15, this is due to the fact that clouds tend to change very quickly: they either thin or thicken too much for these phenomena to be observed.

This latter statement is indeed a realistic one, but scientific accuracy is not a characteristic feature of Olaus’s work. Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus was printed just around the advent of the scientific revolution, in 1555, when interest in natural phenomena was growing. Olaus is a Renaissance author, who lays much emphasis on collecting and recovering the scientific knowledge of ancient writers. However – although he tries to explain the formation of halos – he does not venture into looking further than the sources of the Antiquity and contemporary superstitions. This becomes evident when he continues his argumentation about clouds: ‟(…) since they are caused by the reflection of the black clouds and the whiteness of the very thick snow which wholly covers the face of the earth, [halos] are chiefly seen in February and March, because of the distant, slanting position of the sun”

As for contemporary beliefs, in Chapter 15 he treats halos together with comets and talks about them as bad omen, signalling “change of existing order” and meaning “grievous prognostications”. He, however, does not elaborate on halos affecting social order; in these two chapters he mostly mentions them as signals of unfavourable weather. “The blacker clouds in the lower circle foretell that savager tempests are on their way” (Ch. 16).

Halo phenomena in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Bk. 1, Ch, 15. Image from www.avrosys.nu

From the strange description that Olaus gives, and also from the woodcuts, it becomes evident that personally he never witnessed the appearance of such phenomena. ‟(…) one circle, spacious and entirely white forms in the clouds over the horizon, but with another on its inner edge, which is black from being more compressed in size. On their surface these very large circles have four lines, or round openings distinguished by their saffron colour; between these towards the south among white clouds that are filled with snow, appear two circles set opposite each other, one of which is black on its outer rim, and on the inner, white. The other, lower circle, in the centre of which the disk of the sun is seen (this is intersected by the upper circle, which has a different centre) is white on the outer rim and dark on the inner, though the nearer the sun it lies, the whiter it is. Moreover, opposite the sun, round about the centre of the very large circle which spreads, as I said, over the horizon, there appears a bow lying diagonally, with colours like those of a rainbow, amid thick clouds, reddish on the outside, purple or saffron-yellow in the middle, and green below.” (Ch. 15)

Olaus’s Historia was written several decades before the three famous historical displays that marked a milestone in halo-science. It was the Rome displays of 1629 and 1630 which aroused the interest of Descartes so much that he decided to turn to halos. His publication of Les Météores in 1637 meant the first step towards a modern explanation of halo formation. Mathematical and physical approach to halos only started with his work and (after the 1661 Danzig display) it was further elaborated by the Dutch Christiaan Huygens. When reading Olaus Magnus’s Historia, we should not forget that at the time of its publication, the real scientific revolution was yet to come.

By Ágnes Kiricsi

English translation by Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens from: Olaus Magnus, A Description of the Northern Peoples, 1555, Vol. 1. Ed.: Peter Foote, Hakluyt Society, 1996.

Halo Phenomena in Olaus Magnus’s Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Part 2)

Halo phenomena in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Bk. 1, Ch, 14. Image from www.avrosys.nu

The Swedish Olaus Magnus’s 16^th century Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of the Nordic Peoples) has several chapters and woodcuts dedicated to halos. The first part of our series introduced this medieval best-selling work, and concentrated on parhelia and paraselenae as described by Olaus. This time the halos of Book 1, Chapter 14 are to be introduced, which is the very first section of his work where he deals with halo phenomena. 

We don’t  know whether Olaus saw any halos in his life, though in Chapter 17, he notes that there were three suns and moons in the sky at the time of his birth. Besides classical natural historical authorities like Pliny the Elder, his information comes most probably from accounts collected during his journeys, which he later recorded according to his own understanding and imagination. He introduces halos as seasonal phenomena, which are connected to early spring and hardly last longer than two and a half hours. He does not even start the list of halo forms with the most frequent ones: the first halos that he describes are the parhelic circle and three patches on it which could be interpreted as the 120° parhelia and the anthelion.

“Up in the north when deep snow covers the earth round about the vernal equinox, circles sometimes appear with the following formation and position. The most spacious circle, spread over the horizon is entirely white, as also are three small circles, each hanging separately from its circumference; towards the east, however, these are distinguished by their yellow colour, as if they are trying to resemble the sun (…)”

Olaus then continues his presentation with the more frequent forms. The 22° halo, the parhelia and the upper tangent arc are easily recognizable, and so is the circumzenith arc. But what comes afterwards (a blackish rainbow and a dusky but colourful one) is more difficult to interpret. We could deduce from their position in the woodcut that he may be talking about supra- and infralateral arcs, but since the depiction and the description are not obvious and they contradict to what such arcs look like in reality, we should not draw further conclusions from them. Olaus’s description is typical of similar accounts: he presents events which took place over a longer stretch of time, disregarding the changes in halo forms as time passes, what is more, he probably never witnessed such halos in the sky.

“(…) and even the body of the sun can be surrounded by a corona or halo of rainbow hues, and has reddish likenesses of itself attached on either side. From these likenesses, or if you wish, from these two suns,  two semicircles, like bows, rise to intersect each other; eventually, after expanding as halos do, they vanish. Around the navel or centre of the most spacious of these circles can be seen an inverted rainbow, which gleams in a cloud of fine vapour. Next there appears another blackish rainbow, opposite to the first in colour and position. Afterwards this bow, dusky but ever varying in colour, as is customary with the celestial arc or rainbow, extends towards the south, crossing through the most spacious of the circles.” 

Vädersolstavlan by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas. Image from Wikipedia

The woodcut illustrating his chapter might look familiar to people interested in historical displays. It bears resemblance to Vädersolstavlan, an oil-on-panel painting by another Swedish man, Jacob Heinrich Elbfas. The painting is the 17^th century copy of the now lost original ordered by the Swedish reformer Olaus Petri, and created by Urban Målare. It shows the halos that appeared over Stockholm on 20 April 1535, 20 years before Olaus Magnus’s book was published. The country at this time was turning to the Lutheran faith, and religious reformation fuelled serious conflicts and controversies between the ruthless reformer king Gustav Vasa, and more moderate Protestants like Olaus Petri. Both parties saw a celestial sign in the appearance of this halo phenomenon, and we can easily deduce that the Catholic Church was also prone to interpreting the halo as a divine premonition. Olaus Magnus himself was the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala, who had to live in exile for the rest of his life after Sweden had turned to the new religion. Although he does not mention the ominous 1535 Stockholm halo and its contemporary reception, but the striking similarity between the woodcut and Vädersolstavlan might indicate a conscious choice for deciding to start his description of halos in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus with this very emblematic appearance.

Either influenced by his own fate, or due to contemporary superstitions, Olaus attributes bad omens to such halos. Much of his chapter elaborates on what misery they may bring. As he claims, they “always cause, either by their own nature or for some other, hidden reason, the worst consequences in the time immediately following them: for example, ominous thunderings and thunderbolts which throw houses and animals to the ground; capturing and killing of nobles and common folk, and pillaging of the people in that region, not to speak of enemy fleets, pirate raids, and acts of arson; and when the circles disappear at the end of spring, grains of suphur commonly rain down in a stinking mist.”

By Ágnes Kiricsi


English translation by Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens from: Olaus Magnus, A Description of the Northern Peoples, 1555, Vol. 1. Ed.: Peter Foote, Hakluyt Society, 1996.

Halo Phenomena in Olaus Magnus’s Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Part 1)

Parhelia in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Bk. 1, Ch, 17.

This is the first post of a three-part series focusing on the rich material that can be found in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (History of the Nordic Peoples), a popular and influential work of the 16^th century. The work was written by Olaus Magnus and was printed in Rome in 1555. Soon after its publication, it was translated into several languages and thus became a “bestseller” of the age.

The author, Olaus Magnus, was a Swedish theologian, cartographer and writer, and the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala. He maintained good relationship with King Gustav I of Sweden, and partly due to this, he was sent on various diplomatic and ecclesiastical missions around Scandinavia and other parts of Europe. During these travels he recorded his observations and what he had heard from locals, which later gave the basis of his magnum opus. When his country adopted the Lutheran faith, Olaus decided to remain loyal to his Catholic religion, and stayed abroad for the rest of his life. He was issued the title Archbishop during this turbulent period of his life, but the title was only a nominal one, as Olaus had been banned from Lutheran Sweden.

Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus is Olaus’s major work, which consists of 22 books divided into chapters, and is illustrated with 481 woodcuts. In his first book, he deals extensively with halos and dedicates 5 chapters to them. Of these, chapters 17 and 18 deal with parhelia and paraselenae. Olaus seems to have personal interest in these phenomena: when he lists occasions of three suns or moons visible in the sky, he mentions his own birthday at the beginning of October in 1490.

Olaus starts his description of parhelia by saying that in the North, around sunset and sunrise, they frequently appear at any location. They are white or rainbow-coloured, there could be two or even more of them, and are “never above or below the true sun, but at an angle to it” (All English translations by: Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens). As a 16^th century Renaissance scholar, he pays much attention to authenticating his writing, and supports his description by referring to natural historical works of Seneca (Naturales quaestiones), Pliny (Naturalis Historia) and even to the popular 12th century encyclopaedia Speculum Maius, written by the Dominican friar Vincentius Bellovacensis. Thus, in his explanation about the formation of parhelia he relies on earlier sources and theories, most of which would now raise a smile. Although the description is very far from the truth, we must acknowledge that some properties of parhelia are rightly observed. Already in the 16^th century it was realised, for example, that their formation is connected to clouds, more precisely to clouds that have specific thickness and uniform nature. 

Olaus Magnus’s description goes as follows: "(…) a parhelion is a rounded shining cloud, similar to the sun; for at the time of an eclipse we set out basins, which we fill with oil or tar, in order to observe how the moon stations itself before the sun, because a viscous liquid is less easily disturbed and retains the images which it receives. Therefore as the images of the sun and moon are viewed like this on earth, so also it happens in the sky that when the air is condensed and pellucid, it takes upon itself the figure of the sun; other clouds catch this up, too, but pass it on if they are moving or if they are thin or contain impurities. For the moving ones scatter the image, the sparse ones let it escape, while the foul and filthy ones receive no impression of it, just as with us things that are stained give no reflection."

A further interesting detail of the text is the idea that if a second parhelion appears in the sky, it is the mirror image or reflection of the first one; “clouds that present this effect are said to be dense, light, brilliant, flat and composed of compact matter.” He also states that parhelia cannot be seen on clouds very far from the sun because the beams of sunlight cannot be reflected from afar. Paraselenae (Chapter 18) depend on the Sun’s brightness as Olaus says, since the Moon “has no power at all to initiate action on inferior bodies, except for reciprocating and receiving light from the sun”.

Paraselenae in Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, Bk 1. Ch. 18.

At the beginning of  Book 1, chapter 17, Olaus notes that the reason why he finds it important to talk about the phenomena is that locals believe they signify upcoming events. For farmers parhelia indicate rain coming. If the parhelia are visible in the South and they last long, farmers in the hills can sow seed safely. If, however, two parhelia are “contending” with one another on the sides of the real sun and then vanish, sailors must beware of severe storms. In wintertime, when there are three moons in the sky, they foretell snow, frost and cold.

By: Ágnes Kiricsi

Sources:

Olaus Magnus, A Description of the Northern Peoples, 1555, Vol. 1. Ed.: Peter Foote, Hakluyt Society, 1996.
Olaus Magnus, Historia de gentibus deptentrionalibus. http://runeberg.org/olmagnus 
Images: Lars Henriksson http://www.avrosys.nu/