Hazy Sun, Incense and Druids | The summer solstice celebrated at Stonehenge

The sun is long overdue, but when it appears, faces light up: clamor and arms rise among the thousand-year-old stones of the English prehistoric site of Stonehenge for the summer solstice.

At 4:49 a.m., sunrise time on Tuesday, the longest day of the year, the star is very timid in a sky as hazy as the minds of many of the revelers who spent the night there.

The event drew a total of 6,000 people for sunset and sunrise on Tuesday — according to the site manager and police — in the first major summer celebration at Stonehenge since the pandemic began.

Erected around 4,500 years ago, the famous set of megaliths is aligned with the axis of the sun during the summer and winter solstices.

“Maybe we’ll see him around 10 a.m.,” jokes Jade Tetlon, who came to Stonehenge for the first time from Leicester, in central England, with a friend.

Surrounded by the tunes of the flute, the drum, the song of the birds and the bleating of the sheep, but also the roar of the trucks on the expressway which is not far away, the young woman of 35 is thus immersed in the atmosphere. unique to the place.

In the air floats a mixture of smells of incense and grass, despite the ban in force stated at the entrance to the site.

Yoga in a toga

But at 5:08 a.m., the sun finally emerges from the haze, greeted by whistling and cheers, but also a massive lifting of cellphones.

Facing the star, two ladies, crowns of synthetic flowers in their hair, open and close their arms to greet “the new energy” of the summer sun, explains one of them, Joanna Willma.

A little further on, a group, which includes a handful of men in togas, is doing yoga facing the sun.

The members of another group, headphones on, hold hands in concentric circles in a slight sway before hugging each other in pairs, moved and smiling.

Stonehenge is the “world’s most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle” according to UNESCO, which declared it a World Heritage Site in 1986.

In the XVII^e century emerged the theory, since dismissed by historians, that Stonehenge was built by Druids.

“Fragile” monument

The neo-druids thus remain very present and celebrate solstices and equinoxes on the site.

During a ceremony before sunrise, the “Archdruid of Stonehenge”, Rollo Maughfling, thus launched incantations to peace at the four cardinal points, invitations to the sun and the earth, taken up in chorus by the assistance. But also incantations for the release of the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange, for “peace between Russia and Ukraine”, at the end of global warming.

“People seem very respectful when we do our ceremonies,” he told AFP, noting that many newcomers sometimes defy the ban on climbing the stones which, he says, resisted the over millennia.

The curator of the site, Heather Sabire, notes that despite the size of the stones, the monument is “fragile”, “there are many things that you cannot see with the naked eye”.

Among the many visitors, some do “almost ceremonies themselves”, she underlines, “it is almost a place of worship for them”.

To the point of giving rise to scenes of embraces and communion with the stone.

According to local police, this summer solstice at Stonehenge resulted in only two arrests, for an assault and a narcotics case.

The history of the site has however known a tumultuous past. 1^er June 1985, riot police intervened to stop a “freedom convoy” protesting against an exclusion zone set up to protect the site.

After these events with a highly disputed story on each side, where 400 people were arrested and several injured, it took 15 years for the site to be accessible again for the solstice.