Primstav
A staff calendar of wood carved with notches, crosses, and figures marking the church feasts and farm year of Norway. Each primstav was tailored to its district and showed sowing, slaughter, the start of fishing, and the move up to the seter, runic signs mingling with Christian symbols. In use from the Middle Ages into the 19th century, it remained a symbol of Norwegian folk timekeeping. The staff was read along its edges, with each day marked by a notch and the great feasts by carved symbols, such as an anchor for the day of the fisherman's patron or a sheaf for harvest time; a farmer could t