The Northern Calendar

The Forgotten Realms calendar is important for understanding the dates in your save games. The game uses a 24-hour clock with AM/PM conventions for time.

The year

A year in the North consists of 360 days: 12 months of exactly 30 days each. Three ten-day weeks are in each month. Days are referenced relative to the month (e.g. "Eleint 21").

Year reckoning

Years are numbered using Dalereckoning (DR) — taken from the year humans were first permitted by the Elven Court to settle in the more open regions of the forests.

When does Icewind Dale take place?

The game takes place in Eleint, 1281 DR — the Year of the Cold Soul.

For Forgotten Realms readers: this is sixteen years prior to Drizzt Do'Urden's arrival on the surface, as documented in R. A. Salvatore's Icewind Dale Trilogy. Your characters are literally making history.

The months

Forgotten Realms name	Roughly	Colloquial description
Hammer	January	Deepwinter
Alturiak	February	The Claw of Winter / The Claws of the Cold
Ches	March	Of the Sunsets
Tarsakh	April	Of the Storms
Mirtul	May	The Melting
Kythorn	June	The Time of Flowers
Flamerule	July	Summertide
Eleasias	August	Highsun
Eleint	September	The Fading
Marpenoth	October	Leafall
Uktar	November	The Rotting
Nightal	December	The Drawing Down

Game units

The Survival Guide includes the following important note on how AD&D time scales map to real time in Icewind Dale:

Unit	AD&D time	Real time
Round	60 seconds	6 seconds
Turn	10 rounds (10 minutes)	60 seconds
Game day	24 hours	2 hours
Rest period	8 hours	≈ 40 minutes of running game time

The compression is roughly tenfold across the board — when a spell in the Mastering Melee & Magic manual says "lasts 1 turn," it lasts 60 real-time seconds (10 rounds).

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Source: iwdee/original_manuals/IWDEE - Survival Guide to the North.pdf — "The Northern Calendar", "Note to the Player: Game Units".