normalår

A normalår is a Swedish term referring to a common or ordinary year. In the Gregorian calendar system, which is widely used internationally, a normalår consists of 365 days. This is in contrast to a skottår, which is a leap year and contains 366 days. The extra day in a leap year is added to February, making it 29 days long instead of the usual 28.

The distinction between normalår and skottår is a mechanism to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year, which is the time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. The actual time for one orbit is approximately 365.2422 days. Without leap years, the calendar would gradually drift out of sync with the seasons.

Leap years are generally added every four years. However, there are exceptions to this rule: years divisible by 100 are not leap years unless they are also divisible by 400. For example, the year 1900 was a normalår, but the year 2000 was a skottår. Therefore, a normalår is any year that does not meet the criteria for being a leap year. The concept of a normalår is fundamental to understanding the structure of the Gregorian calendar and its relationship to celestial cycles.