Årvår

Årvår is a term used in speculative fiction and world-building to denote a yearly cycle of care, maintenance, and welfare within a community. The word appears to be a portmanteau drawing on Swedish elements år (year) and vård (care), suggesting a ritualized or systematic form of annual attention.

In narrative contexts, Årvår is typically organized around the turning of the year or the harvest season and may combine practical tasks with social rituals. Common elements include collective provisioning, health checks for people and animals, maintenance of infrastructure, seed saving, and memory-sharing or storytelling to reinforce social bonds.

Several variants exist across settings; some depict Årvår as codified by councils or guilds, others as informal community custom. Rituals may involve feasting, vows, or reciprocal obligations, and may emphasize sustainability and resilience. The concept is often used to explore themes of communal responsibility, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and governance during transition periods.

Outside fiction, the term is rarely used in real-world discourse. Real-world discussions of annual care and maintenance typically employ terms such as årsunderhåll (annual maintenance) or årsvård in certain dialects. As a concept, Årvår can serve as a prompt for world-building, comparative folklore, or systems thinking about how communities organize care over the course of a year. See also: annual maintenance, seasonal rituals.