I thought I would expound a bit more on my Sunstop theory, to provide a bit more background on it. This extract from a letter to Greg was written before I posted, so some specifics may not be new, and may no longer be true in my mind. Take it for what it's worth.
To recap a couple of things as background for my belief. A pre-GRoY document claims that the Sun stood still above the Emperor during the Sunstop, singing his praises.
Another sheet says that the Orlanthi/Theyalans had only four seasons in the First Age: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
To this day, Dara Happa has the same four seasons. However, this is awkward for the normally anal DHs, because it makes each season 72 1/2 days long. Assuming a 10 day holy week taken all at once, or holy days throughout the year, two of which are not in any season, but are seasonal markers, fixes this apparently nasty problem. But it seems aritificial to me.
Glorantha: Genertela says that nobody knows exactly what Nysalor did which was so different - no new art forms or architecture were introduced, etc. But something about his attempt to recreate the Golden Age was different.
Additionally, "A Footnote on the Birth of Gbaji" (in Tales 8 and Dorastor: Land of Doom) says that men agree that Time was different after the Sunstop, and that it was shorter -- men seemed to age faster. Zzabur agreed that this was so, but basically said to live with it.
OK. Here is what I think happened. Before the Sunstop, there were four seasons (as above), each of which was 70 days long. The year was only 280 days long. Period.
The Sunstop comes, and lasts exactly 2 weeks. And from then on, the year ends with a two-week holy week, (initially) the celebration of Nysalor's birth. Even after his death, Time stayed the way he had made it, perhaps proving that he was not completely dead (the Arkati would probably agree with this, since illuminates were still around). This was the change that he made -- he changed Time itself, though afterwards no one could quite remember how things had been different before.
Although the year got longer, the days did not get shorter -- Time sped up. Now, people aged 294 days a year instead of 280. This means that they aged more quickly -- an additional year for every 20! With an average lifespan of 63 or so, this reduced average lifespan to 60 -- not insignificant.
At some point, the Dara Happans added their holy days as separate days to the seasons, to make their years come out sort of like they did before. This was probably when the Carmanians ruled, since it seems a farmer thing to do.
After Arkat and the Orlanthi and trolls defeated Nysalor, or perhaps during the time of the EWF, the four seasons of 70 days each, were redistributed into 5 seasons of 56 days each. After all, Umath had to once again force a place for himself in the world. The extra two weeks were still kept as a holy time, eventually becoming the world-oriented Sacred Time we know now.
[Added now: I note that the Sacred Time is still considered to be outside of normal time -- it is not part of a season, normal events don't happen during the Sacred Time, or not in the same way, etc.]
There are appropriate parallels in Kralorela -- when the Dragon Emperor of the time liberated himself, he fixed the calendar. Before, there had been four seasons of 70 days each, or maybe five seasons of 56 days each. But, in their myths the Kralorelans had 6 seasons of 7 weeks (49 days) each. So, he added 2 weeks to the year, and restored the Golden Age calendar to the land.
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