Winter Nights or Old Norse vetrnætr was a specific time of year in medieval Scandinavia. According to Zoega's Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, vetr-nætr referred to "the three days which begin the winter season". The term is attested in the narrative of some of the Fornaldarsögur, mostly to express passage of time ("as autumn turned into winter").
Famous quotes containing the words winter and/or nights:
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;Mthey are the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this book, for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them;Mone cold external winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;Mhe steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids All-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“And the sun and the stove and the mice and the gnawed paper
Made up the days and nights when I missed supper,
Paring my nails, looking over the farbelow street
Of tramways and bells. But one night I heard the feet.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)