Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sumarr and Vetr

Sumarr and Vetr

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Article cites five sources. Four of them are just different translations of the Edda (the primary source work that the two beings come from), which the article SYNTHs together into a loose historiography. The fifth is a dictionary that the article uses to translate the article title to "Summer and Winter". I can't access foreign-language sources, but I don't see anything that could reasonably count as SIGCOV in a secondary independent source, so... seems like a GNG fail to me as written. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mythology-related deletion discussions. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 07:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No and learn the basics before even nominating something like this. This is just obnoxious. First of all, this article discusses two items, the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, which are themselves compilations of earlier traditional works. They are not at all the same sources. The dictionary, Orchard's, is a handbook, not a list of words and definitions. There's nothing even approaching WP:SYNTH on this article. Second, as with just about anything in the eddic corpus, there's a mountain of secondary and tertiary discussion about these figures. There's a lot to do on Wikipedia and attempting to delete well-sourced and well-written articles on topics you clearly don't understand the first thing about isn't one of them. Yeesh. :bloodofox: (talk) 09:08, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging regulars in this area to comment, @Yngvadottir:, @Berig:, @Alarichall:, @Haukurth:, @Ingwina:, @Obenritter:. Feel free to ping others. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so what you're saying is that the article is various recaps of the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, cited to various translations of the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda. There's only one sentence that isn't just story summary, at the bottom of the Poetic Edda section. Doesn't sound like "a mountain of secondary or tertiary discussion" to me. Are there any secondary sources that meaningfully discuss Sumarr and Vetr at length? If there are, I would love for the article to be expanded with useful content. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 10:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, you'd be wise to become familiar with even the basic of fundamentals with a topic before injecting yourself into a discussion regarding it. These aren't "story summaries", which you'd know if you read the article you're trying to delete. We have a section discussing the historic record and then its scholastic reception, which is typical for accurate presentation of the Old Norse myth record, like in the handbooks of Simek, Orchard, and Lindow. This drive to delete well-sourced material useful for readers over actually working to improve Wikipedia is absurd. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit at a loss for words. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 04:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can provide plenty for you. Here are a few: Spend less time on pages like this and more time actually reading about these subjects before wasting your time and the time of others, or maybe even spend that time attempting to improve the project in some way. What you're up to here is essentially Wikipedia:Disruptive editing. :bloodofox: (talk) 04:09, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've spent quite a bit of time improving the project, and I also tend to feel crappy on the occasion or two my article shows up at AfD. I'm sure you're proud of your content contributions as well, so I do understand if you're frustrated. I'm glad you've taken a look at your article and decided it could use some improvement, though! At least there's some good secondary discussion in there now. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 09:09, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

delete This is pure primary source analysis. Mangoe (talk) 13:07, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The link above is WP:OR and this article does not contain a single sentence of WP:OR. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Seasons in the Literatures of the Medieval North, p. 39-42 seems to have quite a bit to say on those. Forecast - A Diary of the Lost Seasons, p. 79, is much shorter but seems non-trivial with its observation that Old Norse only recognized two seasons, sumarr and vetr, associated with life and death. Die Symbolik der Himmelsrichtungen, Jahreszeiten und Jahresfeste, p. 136, 155, has pretty similar content than both and falls inbetween lengthwise. With the limited preview there I don't quite get where the extended quotations(?) on the subject come from, though. Daranios (talk) 16:06, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first one seems like a good GNG-passing source. Anywhere we could find another one? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 09:10, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and improve. The article needs to make clear that the ancient Norse year was divided into two halves, vetr and sumarr, and that both are also found personified. We cite Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology (1996 English translation of his 1984 Lexikon der germanischen Mythologie—our article wording "In the late 1900s" is deceptively ambiguous) for his opinion that the personifications were literary. The article should be rebalanced, starting with the intro, to not present them as primarily mythological figures, although they are such in the Prose Edda and elsewhere (I'm not saying that should be removed from the article!). And it should definitely note that vetr is used for counting years—so many "winters" old, so many "winters" between events. From the summary we now have, Grimm was being silly. Ár is etymologically a "year" word but was used to refer to the year's harvest (and agricultural plenty in general). We are probably misrepresenting his position a bit; but the battle between winter and summer is a superannuated theory in Germanic mythology. Normally I would have rewritten the article a bit before responding here (thanks for the ping, bloodofox); however. I am typing this laboriously in a hospital (sorry for typos) without access to my books. Google Books won't show me Simek and I decided to leave checking Grimm for others. I did check Daranios' link to Harry Eilenstein's Die Symbolik der Himmelsrichtungen, Jahreszeiten und Jahresfeste (this is my search result, with p. 136 looking most likely). However, the snippets of text I can see and the publication information—volume 54 in the series Die Götter der Germanen, published on demand by Norderstedt—suggest to me that the book is too fringey to be citeable. And I doubt it has much of use to say since it's focussed on religious symbolism. This (Kristýna Králová, Fast Goes the Fleeting Time: The Miscellaneous Concepts of Time in Different Old Norse Genres, 2020, Münchner nordistische Studien; passage starts on p. 91) seems to me to be a good source for explaining the uses of the two words for the seasons, as well as suggesting that Snorri's personification is a later development. (And it's in English, and has a reference or two on the 4-fold division of the year being introduced with the Julian calendar.) I'm afraid I have to stop here and hope the trackpad hasn't destroyed this !vote (and the linguists may want to correct me). Yngvadottir (talk) 03:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This seems fine. The mythological figures are minor but the article relays what the primary sources say about them and has a bit of scholarly analysis as well. It all checks out and meets our requirements. Haukur (talk) 07:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This can be improved for sure but that is not because it can't be. We already have so much we're working on getting up to scratch and we shouldn't throw all of this away just to have someone start it again. I can add a bit when I get the time but it seems completely sufficient to me to stand as it is as a page, even if it can be fleshed out more. --Ingwina (talk) 08:53, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep based on the present + found sources establishing notability and the reasoning by Yngvadottir. Thanks for the detailed analysis and all the best for your health. Daranios (talk) 10:52, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]