All hail the Queen of Winter

Women inspired by Scotland’s female gladiators take centrestage at city’s sold-out Samhuinn fire festival

On Thursday streets around the world will be adorned in cobwebs and carved pumpkins and kids in costume in what is an increasingly international celebration of Hallowe’en. In Edinburgh, at Holyrood Park, thousands will gather for a sold-out celebration of the ancient Celtic festival said to be the origin of Hallowe’en, writes Sarah McArthur.

Samhuinn (pronounced something like sah-wain) was celebrated in pre-Christian Celtic Britain, and later appropriated into All Saints Day by the church. Coming from the Gaelic phrase for “summer’s end,” it marks the arrival of winter in the Celtic calendar. 

In this liminal time between the seasons, Celts believed that the divide between this world and the next was at its thinnest. On this night, the spirits of ancestors should be honoured, and the ghosts of the underworld were released to prowl the winter nights. In order to ward off the more malevolent of these spirits, folks might disguise themselves in costumes or place lanterns outside their doors. 

Samhuinn celebrations carried on in Scotland for centuries after the arrival of Christendom, but finally petered out in the 20th century. Thirty years ago societies like Beltane Fire Society began reviving them. While little is known about Samhuinn compared to its springtime counterpart Beltane, the central themes are simple: there is a battle between Summer and Winter, and Winter wins ushering in the new season. 

Female first

Beltane Fire Festival’s Samhuinn aims to take these core themes and deliver a unique show each year, relevant to a modern crowd. “We basically have three pillars of our concept,” says Seraphina, who is this year’s Summer Queen, “the under-reported importance of female leaders, the difference between the mainland Celtic and the Northern Celtic and the impact of climate change and the instability that that brings to the seasonal turnover.” Seraphina and Narma, the Winter Queen, will be the first females to take on the battle of the seasons for Beltane’s Samhuinn. Drawing on myths and history from all over Scotland, the Winter Queen and her army will display many Orcadian and Shetland personas, while the Summer Queen has taken much of her inspiration from the warrior queens of the mainland Celts. 

Seraphina first became interested in the prominence of female Celtic leaders during her undergraduate degree in Classics. “I have read the original Roman accounts of the Celts… there were a lot more female leaders here than other places and then [I was] surprised that people often don’t know that.” Seraphina tells me of female gladiators assumed to be captured Celts, and letters home from Roman soldiers about fighting a bunch of women, and Cartimandua, the lesser-known contemporary of Boudica. The biggest inspiration for her Summer Queen character is Scáthach, mytho-historic queen whose fortress at Dunscathe on the Isle of Skye was a training school for warriors coming from as far as modern-day Iran. 

While some of the Beltane Fire Society performers are stunt people by profession, Narma and Seraphina are both scientists by day; Narma’s research is on the Arctic. The pair’s characterisation of summer and winter this year depicts some of the deregulation of the seasons. “Often summer is kind of the good guys… we’re making the battle of the seasons kind of uncomfortable the way that we both feel that the seasonal changes have become uncomfortable. Summer is often not summery enough because of crazy weather systems coming through, winter is often not cold enough, and it’s slightly unsettling. So my summer is not obviously the good guy… slightly too big for my boots and not giving up when I should give up,” says Seraphina. 

Within Beltane Fire Society there are many for whom Samhuinn remains a spiritual event, for others it’s about playing around with fire, swords and acrobatics. For Seraphina it’s mainly about fun and community, but she also feels the psychological benefit of acknowledging the changing seasons. “The changing of the seasons can be quite challenging, [but]… the coming of the darkness doesn’t bother me so much if I’m doing a really big community coming together and making something together, it makes me kind of look forward to it.”

Gael Force

Edinburgh’s Samhuinn Festival is constantly growing in popularity; this year the show sold out weeks before the event, and the audience is set to be significantly larger than last year’s. It seems that this is reflective of a wider trend of increasing interest in Gaelic and Celtic culture among Scots. 

For example, in 2022, 31% of adults say that Gaelic is important to their cultural heritage - among young adults that figure rises to 43%. Twice as many Scots have some level of Gaelic now than in 2012. Scottish traditional music is also having a revival, with acts like Talisk, Valtos and Project Smok blending traditional tunes with funk, dub and electronic beats. Edinburgh’s folk bars Sandy Bell’s, the Royal Oak and Captain’s Bar are as busy now as ever. 

What fuels this growth in interest? With nearly one in ten Scots experiencing some kind of seasonal depression linked to winter, the importance of community around this time shouldn’t be underestimated. And in a time of climate chaos, there’s some evidence that myth and story are more effective than hard science in education and communication about climate change. Perhaps Scots feeling frustrated with politics are leaning more into their cultural identity? Or maybe, it is a bit simpler. After all a demonstration of acrobatics and fighting with fire swords is always going to be a mesmerising spectacle; and that’s reason enough, isn’t it?