Tonight is the summer solstice.
Other years I might not have noticed, but this year we visited Avebury, a World Heritage Site that rivals Stonehenge for its standing stones. What makes Avebury unique is that the standing stones are in a village. For generations, farmers found them inconvenient. They dug them up and broke them apart for projects like barns and fences. Then in the 1930s, the heir to the Keillor marmalade fortune bought the village and began recovering stones and replacing them where they had once stood. Archaeologists believe they were placed about 3000 BC. Other aspects of the site, such as an enormous burial mound called Silbury Hill, are about 1000 years younger, showing that the site was continuously occupied or at least used over a long period of time.
The result is incredibly evocative.
The standing stones
Silbury Hill
But back to the summer solstice.
The day we visited, Avebury was littered with the lithe, semi-naked bodies of stoned and hungover 18-25 year olds, sleeping it off in the shade of the stones. There also was a strong minority showing from the “wrinklies” as our friend Stu calls them, hippies past their sell by date. One young woman stood with palms pressed fervently to a standing stone, eyes closed, whispering (hoping to be transported to the 18th century and into the arms of a hunky Scot?)
We’re very glad we didn’t visit Stonehenge. Last year the summer solstice attracted 12,000 drumming, dancing and baptizing revellers. (Julian’s query about what people had been baptized as went sadly unanswered, but did prompt him to ask me if he has a particularly dry sense of humour)
Modern groups like the Druidry and the Wiccan view Avebury as a living temple. The site is so popular among contemporary pagan groups that a rota of usage has been established: The Loyal Arthurian War Band, the Secular Order of Druids and the Glastonbury Order of Druids use it on Saturdays, while the Druid Network and the British Druid Order plan their events for Sundays.
I’m not sure the young celebrants we saw think much about the spiritual aspect. I may be doing them a disservice, but I think they might see Avebury as an extension of the pop festival at Glastonbury, which also takes place this weekend. There was a fair amount of drinking and eyeing one another up going on at the local pub. And would you really smoke a ciggie while lounging against a stone you consider sacred?
Academics believe that Avebury most likely was a place where people got together to celebrate and trade goods, and where they buried their dead. There’s no discernible connection between the stones and the stars, the way there is at similar Irish sites and at Stonehenge. The Avenue, a double line of stones, is like a driveway that funnels people toward the gathering place.
Avebury is humbling the same way that visiting the Dinosaur Museum in Alberta was humbling. Dinosaurs died 165 million years before our remotest ancestors evolved. Avebury was used for at least as long as it’s taken us to get to here from the Dark Ages. It’s a spiritual place because it reminds us that we and our concerns, which seem so pressing in the moment, are just a blip in human history.
