old calendars

how have various people in the past measured time? do anyone of you know and would like to share.:)
I'm mostly interested in the vikings, but if you have anything put it up here.:)
 
When you want to set up a systematic calendar, you will always stumble across one principal question:

Do you want to align at sun revolutions ("years"), or moon revolutions ("months"), or do you want a compromise of both?

If you choose the first, you will get something like our Gregorian Calendar, with fictive months without lunar reference, only as a subunit of a year.
If you choose the second, you end up with something like the Islamic Calendar, with the beginning of the year looping through all seasons.
And you decide in favor of the last option (mixed system), there are more decisions to take; see the Chinese or the Hebrew Calendars.


The next question is whether you notice the necessity of leap periods (leap days, or even leap months), and how you arrange their appearance.
 
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