Are modern-day Druids wrong about the summer solstice at Stonehenge?

As they do every year on the summer solstice—which this year falls on Friday, June 21—modern-day Druids and assorted revelers will gather at Stonehenge to watch the sun rise over the heel stone outside the entrance to the circle. But the author of a recently published novel about Stonehenge says these New Age Druids have it wrong.

K.P. Robbins, author of The Stonehenge Scrolls, claims the winter sunset, not the summer sunrise, is what the Stonehenge builders were more likely celebrating. She says the very design of Stonehenge itself confirms her conclusion, because the tallest upright stones in the monument were aligned to the winter solstice sunset.

"It makes sense that the Stonehenge builders would have considered the tallest structure in their design as the most important," Robbins said. "That would have been the center trilithon, two 25-foot tall upright stones with a third stone connecting them at the top. The Stonehenge Scrolls calls it a doorway, because that's what it resembles. Four thousand years ago, the sun would have set between the uprights of this huge doorway during the winter solstice. Unfortunately, we can't witness that today because only one of the stones of this structure is still standing."

Robbins, who has studied stone circles and other ancient monuments throughout the UK, Ireland and Brittany, says many are aligned to the winter solstice, the start of the solar new year when days begin to lengthen again. In effect, Robbins says, Stonehenge was the site for New Year's celebrations.

So why do so many persist in flocking to Stonehenge on the first day of summer? The Stonehenge Scrolls offers a fictional explanation. Hint: It's somebody's birthday.

The Stonehenge Scrolls is published by the Canadian publisher MuseItUp Publishing as an e-book and is available on Amazon and Nook. For more information, go to www.TheStonehengeScrolls.com or contact info@TheStonehengeScrolls.com.