Newgrange at a frosty midwinter dawn: the white-fronted mound above the Boyne, its carved entrance stone and standing stones, long blue shadows across gold-lit frost.

Station of the sun · about 21 December

Grianstad an Gheimhridh

The winter solstice

Sunrise inside the mound.

Open it on the full site There the Wheel of the Year starts from today, and counts the nights to the next festival.

At Brú na Bóinne the sun rises at about 8:58 on the mornings around the solstice. Some four minutes later its light enters the roof-box above the entrance and runs up the nineteen-metre passage to the chamber floor, and stays for about seventeen minutes. People built it that way around 3200 BC.

The word

Grianstad means “sun-stop”: the solstice.

Customs

Every year thousands enter a lottery for a place in the chamber on the solstice mornings.

Sources

Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.