Look up at an Alaska aurora and someone will tell you the Vikings thought it was light glinting off Valkyrie armor. It’s a wonderful story, but it almost certainly isn’t Viking. Here’s what the Norse sources actually say about the northern lights, and where the famous legends came from.
Valkyries Riding Across the Sky
The best-known ‘Norse’ aurora legend says the lights are the gleam of the Valkyries‘ armor as they ride. Valkyries are genuinely Norse: in the Poetic and Prose Eddas they are Odin‘s ‘choosers of the slain,’ who bring the bravest fallen warriors to Valhalla, where those warriors wait to fight beside the gods at Ragnarok. But no Old Norse text links the Valkyries to the aurora. The connection appears in writing only in the modern era (it was popularized in the 1800s), and it probably grew out of a passage in the Eddic poem Helgakvida Hundingsbana I, where light flashes in the sky and rays shine from the Valkyries’ spears as they appear to the hero Helgi.
Heimdall Guarding the Bridge Bifröst
Another popular claim is that the aurora is Bifrost, the bridge between worlds. In Snorri’s Prose Edda, Bifrost is a strong, three-colored bridge, its red part burning fire, that joins Midgard, the world of humans, to Asgard, home of the gods. Snorri says plainly that it is what people call the rainbow. It is guarded by Heimdall, who needs less sleep than a bird, sees a hundred leagues by night as well as by day, and can hear grass growing. At Ragnarok he will sound the horn Gjallarhorn to warn the gods.
So what did the Norse actually say? Surprisingly little. The sagas and Eddas are nearly silent on the aurora, perhaps because in Norway and Iceland it was simply part of the winter sky. The earliest detailed Norse description comes from the King’s Mirror (Konungs skuggsja), written in Norway around 1250, which describes the ‘northern lights’ (nordrljos) seen in Greenland and offers natural explanations: perhaps fire encircles the outer ocean, perhaps the sun shines up from below the horizon, or perhaps the Greenland ice has stored up so much power that it glows. Not a god in sight.
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What Causes the Aurora Borealis?
Today we know the aurora happens when charged particles from the sun, steered by Earth’s magnetic field, slam into oxygen and nitrogen high in the atmosphere and make them glow green, red and violet. Want to catch it yourself? The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute publishes a free aurora forecast.
Even knowing the physics, the aurora still stops you in your tracks, and it’s easy to see why people everywhere have told stories about it. Have a favorite aurora night? Tell us about it in the comments.
Next time the sky starts to ripple, you can tell your friends the real story: the Valkyries are genuine Norse myth, the aurora connection is a modern tale, and a 13th-century Norwegian scholar was already hunting for a natural explanation.
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Sources
- “Northern Lights Myths,” Norwegian Travel, https://www.norwegian.travel/inspiration/northern-lights-myths
- “Northern Lights,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/northern-lights-atmospheric-phenomenon
The people behind Norse mythology are called Norse, none of them were called or called themselves Vikings. Which makes a large portion of your post historical fabrication.
Thanks for your comment. As we have noted elsewhere on our site, we use the term “Viking” as it has been popularized today. It’s the people of Scandinavian origin, who lived between approximately 750 and 1100 A.D. “Viking” in their time meant something similar to “pirate.” Viking (Vikingr) was an occupation not a people, but it was a term applied to the people from the Scandinavian area, which was not united into countries the way we know them today.
They also did not refer to themselves as the Norse. They referred to themselves as “Ostmen.” The first known use of the word “Norse” occurred in 1560 and is likely derived from the Dutch for “North.”
Using words with their popular definitions does what language should, makes it easier for people to understand each other. Pedantic attachment to an obsolete or older use of a term only serves to create unneeded barriers to learning and communication.
If you go back and read the post you will see that Vikings believed in Norse mythology, so I’m not sure exactly what you find objectionable. Unless you don’t believe that Vikings were Norse…
We appreciate your input. Thanks for reading.