The Arboretet Primstav: carving out seasonal markers

These are reference points they use to orient and coordinate their activities in the gardens, which they will carve into a modern-day "primstav."

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from working at the Arboretet, it’s that no one seasonal calendar captures the diverse cycles moving the gardens around the year. I have seen each gardener and scientist working to their own unique seasonal patterns - defined by their focus - and the way that these patterns overlay each other; sometimes synchronising, other times clashing. For example, the beginning of the spring is signalled by as many different markers as people I talk to; from the flowering crocus, to increasing daylight, the passage of the grey geese, or the task at hand.

Notwithstanding this diversity, I was interested to see if the Arboretet team shared any common coordinates or reference points that they kept in focus in considering and organising their year and coordinating their activities. With CALENDARS project colleague Elisabeth Schøyen Jensen, we organised a workshop at Litteraturhuset with eleven members of the Arboretet team in November, with the goal of making a modern-day primstav calendar tailored to the specific seasonal markers at the gardens.

The primstav is a traditional Norwegian plank calendar used around the 15th to 19th centuries, symbolising important dates in the Christian calendar and some pre-Christian dates. With time, these traditional calendars came to be appropriated by agricultural communities and symbols tailored to act as markers for timing agrarian communities activities over the year (for more on the primstav, see here.) Building on this tradition, CALENDARS has been developing methods for revising primstavs for today’s seasonal experience.

The workshop began primstav-building by splitting into two groups to fill out circular calendar templates with points and periods of the year of shared importance. Afterwards, when the two groups discussed what they wrote down, we were surprised that there was quite some congruence. Sitting together, and going month by month, we distilled reference points - or symbols - that we agreed were most important for orienting the Arboretet team over the seasonal year (see below). We also agreed on the form and organisation of the primstav, adhering to the traditional rectangular templat and traditional days for the start of summer (14 April) and winter (14 October).

The workshop raised 25 reference points of different types, from natural signs such as the flowering of certain species or the lengthening daylight hours, to social markers of events like Arboretet Day or tasks such as pruning or weeding. Most markers were internal to Arboretet operations, but some wider societal rhythms also made it onto their calendar, such as school summer holidays and kids snow sledging in the winter months. Some markers were fixed, for example Mushroom Day on the first Sunday of September, while other markers varied from year to year, like the flowering of the crocus.

The next steps, over winter, will be to settle on some icons that represent these symbols and to find some wood from which to cut the primstavs. We will try and mill some wood sourced from the Arboretet and aim to cut out the primstavs at a collaborating art atelier in the first quarter of 2023.