Calendars in Worldbuilding.

[Ž.J.]

Hey guys!
I have been gone from Mythic Scribes for quite some time and decided to come back and check on the forums again.

The topic I want to discuss today, is fantasy calendars. More precisely, how do worldbuilders deal with them?
I will give an example with a calendar I created for a specific nation/civilization inside my fantasy world building project.

Here it is

• days in a year: 366
• months: 8 + 1 (there are 8 official months and one last month known as the "forgotten days", which covers the winder season (our months of December, January and February roughly.) and is 90 days long.)
• days in a month: 34 or 35 (there are four 34 day months and four 35 day months)
• leap years: every 17 years (during these leap years all months loose 4 days, except the 2nd one (Hafetan) which looses only 3. The forgotten days, dont change in duration and keep those 90 days.

Oh and it is a lunisolar calendar, so by definition it is flawed since its almost impossible to track both the movements of the moon and sun in a single system. And the planet has the same solar year as earth, so a year is 364.23 days
I know it is quite basic, but at the same time I am terrible with numbers, so I would love to hear your own calendars and how you deal with this topic inside your worlds.

 

[ThinkerX]

I decided to keep mine simple, so as not to distract from the story.

The main world has 12 months of 28 days each, plus a day for each Equinox and Solstice, which are major holidays. The lunar year aligns with the solar year.

 

[pmmg]

I decided to keep it simple. 12 months, 30 days each. 360 in a year.

I also thought the days would be longer, but its never come up in the story. Other than acknowledging the season, the months and days have never been mentioned.

I had a holiday once due to a challenge from ban. Otherwise id have not had any of those in the story.

 

[Ž.J.]

I decided to keep mine simple, so as not to distract from the story.

The main world has 12 months of 28 days each, plus a day for each Equinox and Solstice, which are major holidays. The lunar year aligns with the solar year.

Is it a single calendar for the whole world of your setting, or just of a specific nation/civilization?

 

[Meema]

I decided to keep mine simple, so as not to distract from the story.

The main world has 12 months of 28 days each, plus a day for each Equinox and Solstice, which are major holidays. The lunar year aligns with the solar year.

I did the exact same thing. Just keeps it easier.

 

[skip.knox]

I write alternate historical fantasy, firmly set in an alternate Europe. You'd think that'd make things simpler, but it really doesn't. Medieval Europe had multiple calendar systems operating simultaneously.

Happily, most folks were unaware of any of them. They moved through seasons and festival days. Even the hours of the days were flexible. And, it turns out, I can get through entire stories without needing to reference even the day of the week, much less to put a number on a year.

The calendar presented in the OP is fine. Out of curiosity I'll ask, who keeps this calendar? Who is the custodian and does the calendar affect any of the world? That is, let's take a feast day. Who determines exactly when that is, and how is that communicated to the people in general?

 

[JBCrowson]

Like Skip, I have not needed to reference days of the week or months as yet (2.5 books into the series).
If I did I would probably have to come up with something complex as my world has 4 moons, each of which is the embodiment of a different god, siblings of the sun god.
I have an historical timeline to keep track of how long ago certain events were. So far there are 3 separate counting systems used by different cultures / empires on different continents for historical events, but I use a spreadsheet to keep track of what the relevant dates are in each of those 3.

 

[MSadiq]

I've decided on two calendars for my world. One solar, which is kept for agricultural purposes, while the other is lunar, which is the more relevant to the story. The phases of the moon have an amplifying effect on the Ma (mana in a way) of creatures and people that corresponds to how much of the moon is visible. It affects how wars and raids are planned, what monsters to avoid on full moons, which to hunt on a new moon, and a lot of other things

 

[Mad Swede]

This is something I don't describe in my stories. That's partly because in a setting where most people can't read or write (or have only limited reading skills) the idea of a calender isn't needed. People will keep a track of the seasons and maybe the number of days (and they might know what a week is) but they won't need much more than that. It's only when the characters are dealing with official pronouncements or maybe things like bills of credit that a date may be needed and then only in passing.

 

[Ž.J.]

I write alternate historical fantasy, firmly set in an alternate Europe. You'd think that'd make things simpler, but it really doesn't. Medieval Europe had multiple calendar systems operating simultaneously.

Happily, most folks were unaware of any of them. They moved through seasons and festival days. Even the hours of the days were flexible. And, it turns out, I can get through entire stories without needing to reference even the day of the week, much less to put a number on a year.

The calendar presented in the OP is fine. Out of curiosity I'll ask, who keeps this calendar? Who is the custodian and does the calendar affect any of the world? That is, let's take a feast day. Who determines exactly when that is, and how is that communicated to the people in general?

Well this specific calendar was invented, around 800 years before the current year, when there existed a single empire, uniting most of the continent. It was invented by a priest in service of the main religion of that empire, known as The Covenant. Now that empire no longer exits but its successor states continue using the calendar. It is priests that determine when official holidays are. A conclave of archpriests is usually gathered when it comes to deciding when the leap year is.
And of course this affects the world. Most of the peasantry don't have a damn idea of what month or year it is. For them it matters the most the season and when it is a good time to plants seeds and work the earth. Even the nobility don't have a good idea of what month or it is or if the year is a leap year or not, unless they are informed by the priesthood. So it is the priesthood that are the custodians of the calendar. More precisely The Brothers of Mar. They are a priestly sect that almost serves as the scribes of The Covenant. They keep records clear and thus they take care of the calendar as well.