Sumarr and Vetr

The Old Icelandic nouns sumar and vetr derive from Proto-Germanic and their cognates can be found throughout other Germanic languages, including contemporary English summer and winter.

[3] In the stanza 26 of the Poetic Edda poem Vafþrúðnismál, the god Odin (disguised as "Gagnráðr") asks the jötunn Vafþrúðnir from where warm Sumarr and Vetr come from, stating that they arrived "first among the Wise powers".

The enthroned figure of High responds, and (after scolding him for asking a question everyone knows the answer to) states that the father of Sumarr is Svásuðr, who is quite pleasant, while the father of Vetr is referred to as Vindsvalr or, alternately, Vindljóni, and that Vetr derives his countenance from his ancestors, as they are "cruel and cold-hearted kinsmen".

Grimm discusses a variety of other personifications of summer and winter in the Germanic textual corpus, concluding that some instances "are at war with one another, exactly like Day and Night".

[10] In the late 1900s, Austrian philologist Rudolf Simek proposes that both seasons were "purely literary personifications", "perhaps adopted from earlier riddle poetry".