First Light, Solstice Bright

Solstice.

Did you just think, Stonehenge?

Well, you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong. Most people associate the summer solstice with the ring of vertical sarsen stones on Salisbury Plain in the south of England.

But the winter solstice belongs to Newgrange, the 5,000-year-old passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland. A thousand years older than Stonehenge and 600 years older than the Giza pyramids, many astronomers and archeologists consider the monument to be the world’s oldest solar observatory.

Photo by Pat Walsh

Sitting atop a hill, Newgrange glistens with a white quartz façade. Built by Stone Age farmers without mortar or any metal tool, it’s an engineering marvel. Approximately 200,000 tons of material were hauled from nearly 50 miles away. Its corbelled roof continues to keep the acre-sized cairn dry—quite a feat in a country known for perpetual rain. And on the winter solstice—the shortest day of the year—the sun creeps into the passage tomb, illuminating it for 17 minutes.

After all these years, the calculus behind the marvel has lost a few inches and a mere four minutes. In 3200 BC, the sun would have reached a little further into the chamber and risen a tad to the south, making the shortest day a little shorter, just as the longest day would have been a little longer.

While my visit did not coincide with the solstice, the monument lived up to its reputation as the crown jewel of the Brú na Bóinne (the River Boyne Valley). And the reenactment at Newgrange of the magic of the first light of the solstice was, well, magical. 

“Keep your heads down for the first few feet,” the guide said. I was one of 14 seekers who approached the burial passageway with reverence and trepidation. Entrance to the site is strictly controlled. Photography is not allowed. “Hold your belongings in front of you, and hunch over them as you walk forward.”

One by one, we inched uphill through a slab-lined passageway that’s 62 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 5- to 10 feet high. The journey is not for the claustrophobic. Yet the yawning 20-foot-high chamber at the end was worth the discomfort.

Irish Art History Section,
Professional Development Service for Teachers

Though confined, the space was not oppressive; the air was stuffy, but not stifling. With the help of artificial light, we explored the three burial alcoves with their basin stones and the 12-inch triple spiral engraved on the far wall.

RTÉ Philharmonic Choir led by conductor Mark Hindley performed “Ode to Joy” on April 24, 2018.
Photo by The Meath Chronicle

Often referred to as a Celtic design, it isn’t. It was carved at least 2,500 years before the first Celts arrived in Ireland.

Triskele on the kerbstone at the Newgrange passage entry. Photo by Pat Walsh

If not the Celts, then who built this magnificent burial chamber? And why? No one would haul mega-boulders over land and sea just to make a waterproof tomb. And while it is arguably the most elaborate of the known passage tombs, it is one of only hundreds scattered around Ireland and the rest of Europe.

Mythology says that passage tombs are portals to the Otherworld. Irish legend holds that the Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race that ruled Ireland until the Celtic Invasion, built Newgrange as a burial place for its chief, the Dagda, and his three sons.

Our guide, however, offered a scientific perspective. DNA indicates at least one of the men buried at Newgrange came from the Anatolian Peninsula in present-day Turkey.

“The time and effort required to build the monument required a high degree of organization—and coercion,” he said, comparing it to the Egyptians who built the pyramids with slave labor. “Their society was divided into those who would be buried here at the end of their lives, and those who would end their lives building it.”

Seconds after I closed my eyes to absorb the concept of millennia and its unknown mysteries, they were jerked open by what sounded like rocks breathing.

Ahhh.

It was my fellow travelers gasping in total darkness. The guide had turned off the lights to allow a reenactment of the winter solstice. Mimicking the sun coming through the roof-box, a narrow beam of light crept across the floor and illuminated the narrow passage until it hit the inner chamber. By design, it is level with the roof-box.

Cultural anthropologists suggest that passage tombs were aligned with solstices and equinoxes to reflect the peoples’ need to control time on behalf of the gods. By predicting the movements of the Sun, you controlled it. And by controlling it, you guaranteed its return.

Photo by Brian Morrison 

For the aristocracy, the phenomenon of predictable light shining into the darkness of the burial chamber symbolized life over death.

But for the farmers who built the passage tomb, winter itself was death, danger, hunger. Life without light was terrifying. The first light of the winter solstice assured the Stone Age builders that the darkness was ending, days would brighten, and life would return.

When the tour ended, I was all too ready to exit the pinched darkness of the tomb’s womb. Making my way down the narrow passageway, I craved the light. In greeting it, I felt as if I, too, had been reborn in a victory of life over death.