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As April ends and May Day waits just around the corner, there is one night that stands apart from the rest – electric, ancient and just a teensy bit eerie. Walpurgis Night, traditionally observed on the eve of April 30th into the morning of May 1st, has been sending shivers down European spines for centuries. And as it turns out… some of literature’s greatest minds couldn’t resist its draw either!
The origins of Walpurgis Night are a somewhat fascinating tangle of pagan tradition mixed with the Christian calendar. The night gets its name from Saint Walpurga, an English missionary nun whose feast day falls on May 1st – but the celebrations themselves reach back way further, with their roots in ancient Germanic and Celtic spring festivals designed to welcome warmer months (and ward off evil spirits, of course). Bonfires have been lit across hillsides from Scandinavia to Central Europe, noise was made, herbs were burned and communities gathered to keep the darkness at bay during what was believed to be one of the nights when the boundary between the living world and the spirit world grew dangerously thin. Similarly to how the day of Samhain (Halloween) was thought of, witches were said to ride to a mountain in Germany for a grand holiday, and protective charms were hung on both doors and livestock alike. It was, in short, not a night you’d want to spend wandering alone down a dark road… which brings us to how this holiday has been seen in literature.
Few authors have written about Walpurgis Night as masterfully as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the epic drama Faust… which features a pretty gloriously chaotic Walpurgis Night scene in Part One – complete with witches, devils and enough general mayhem to make even Mephistopheles blush. Bram Stoker, never one to miss a good omen, placed his hapless Jonathan Harker in Transylvania on Walpurgis Night in Dracula. Harker specifically even notes the date in his journal with dread, unaware that his host has quite a bit more in common with the evening’s traditions than he originally lets on!
The good news is that Walpurgis Night is alive and well today, celebrated with happy enthusiasm across Scandinavia and Germany. In Sweden it is known as Valborg and marked with massive bonfires, student celebrations and a ceremonial welcoming of spring. In Germany, towns still light fires on Brocken mountain (where the witches were said to fly to). The holiday may have shed much of its supernatural menace but has luckily kept a hold on all of its atmosphere… which (much like a well-loved first edition book) is really the whole point! Happy Walpurgis Night!
