The Legend of the Northern Lights

Lights in the Winter Sky

Far to the north of the world, where winter nights last almost forever and the snow lies deep and silent, something magical happens in the sky. On the coldest, clearest nights, great curtains of colour ripple overhead — glowing green, soft pink, and deep violet. They swirl and dance and fold across the stars, then fade, then flare again, brighter than before.

We call these lights the Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights. For thousands of years, the people who lived beneath them did not know what they were. But they did what people have always done when faced with a wonder they cannot explain: they told stories. And from the Arctic lands of Europe, Asia, and North America came some of the most beautiful legends ever imagined.

This is a journey through a few of those legends — the tales that different peoples told as they gazed up at the very same dancing sky.

The Fox of Fire

Among the Sami people, who herd reindeer across the frozen north of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, there is a wonderful old tale.

They say the lights are made by a great fox — the revontulet, the "fox fires." Imagine an enormous, magical fox racing across the wide snowfields of the far north. As it runs, its bushy tail sweeps along the ground, flinging up clouds of glittering snow. Those crystals fly so high that they brush against the sky itself, and where they touch the heavens, they burst into shimmering light.

Some storytellers said that as the firefox ran, the tip of its tail struck the mountains and sent sparks flying up into the dark, painting the night with fire. And so, on a winter evening, when a Sami child looked up and saw the green light ripple overhead, a parent might whisper, "Look — the fox is running tonight."

Even today, the Finnish word for the Northern Lights, revontulet, still means "fox fires," keeping that ancient story alive in everyday speech.

Spirits in the Sky

Far across the cold seas, among the Inuit peoples of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, the lights told a different kind of story.

Some Inuit communities believed the lights were the spirits of those who had died, living on in the heavens. On clear nights, they said, you could see these spirits playing a great game in the sky — a game rather like football, but played with the skull of a walrus. As the spirits chased the skull back and forth across the heavens, their movements made the lights flicker and leap. The swirling glow was the spirits dancing and laughing together, far above the snow.

Other groups told that the lights were spirits holding torches, lighting the way for new souls travelling to the world beyond. Some warned children not to whistle at the lights, lest the spirits hear and come down to carry them away — but others said that if you clapped your hands or called out, the lights would dance even more wildly, as the spirits answered back. To these peoples, the aurora was a comforting sight: a sign that those they had loved and lost were still close, still playing, still watching over them from above.

A Bridge for Heroes

Sail east to the lands of the Vikings, the bold seafarers of old Scandinavia, and the legend changes once more.

The Norse people, who told tales of gods and giants and great warriors, looked at the shimmering lights and saw something glorious. Some believed the aurora was the glittering armour of the Valkyries — fierce warrior-maidens who rode their horses across the sky. The Valkyries' shining shields and breastplates flashed and glimmered as they galloped through the night, choosing brave fighters to join the gods in the great hall of Valhalla. The flickering of the lights was the gleam of their armour catching the starlight.

Others among the Norse believed the lights were reflections from Bifröst, the great rainbow bridge that connected the world of humans to the home of the gods. To these storytellers, every flicker of the aurora was a glimpse of that magical bridge, burning with colour across the heavens.

One Sky, Many Stories

It is a remarkable thing. All these different peoples — the Sami with their reindeer, the Inuit on the ice, the Norse in their longships — lived far apart and spoke different languages. Yet they all looked up at the very same glowing sky, and each of them found a story in it.

To one, the lights were a running fox. To another, they were the spirits of beloved ancestors at play. To another, the armour of warrior-maidens. The lights were the same, but the stories were as different as the people who told them. And that is one of the most beautiful things about legends: they show us how human beings everywhere have always looked at the mysteries of the world and answered them with wonder and imagination.

What the Lights Really Are

Today, scientists can explain what the early storytellers could not. The Northern Lights are not foxes or spirits or magic armour — but the truth is almost as amazing as the legends.

Our Sun is constantly throwing out a stream of tiny invisible particles, far too small to see. These particles travel ninety-three million miles across space and arrive at our planet. Most of the time, the Earth's invisible magnetic shield steers them safely away. But near the very top and bottom of the world — the North and South Poles — some of these particles slip through and crash into the gases high up in our air.

When the particles strike these gases, they make them glow, just as electricity makes the gas inside a lamp light up. Oxygen high in the sky glows green or red. Nitrogen glows blue or purple. And so the colours we see are really the Sun's energy lighting up our own atmosphere, hundreds of miles above the ground. (At the South Pole, the very same thing happens, where it is called the Aurora Australis, or the Southern Lights.)

Wonder That Lasts

So now we know what makes the lights. But knowing the science does not make the legends any less precious. The old tales remind us of the people who once stood in the snow, wrapped in furs, looking up at a sky they could not understand — and instead of fear, they chose wonder. They turned a mystery into a fox, a game, a bridge to the gods.

The next time you see a picture of the Northern Lights, or perhaps one day stand beneath them yourself, remember that you are looking at the very same dancing colours that have filled people with awe for thousands of years. The science tells us how the lights are made. The legends remind us how it feels to look up at them — small beneath a vast and beautiful sky, full of questions, and full of wonder.

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The moral: People everywhere have looked at the same sky and told their own beautiful stories — and wonder is a gift that connects us all.

Want more myths and legends? Try The Trojan Horse or Anansi the Spider next.