Sól ok Máni
In Norse myth the Sun is a woman, Sól, and the Moon her brother Máni, two children set in the sky by the gods to drive its lights.
Medieval source
ᚬᛋᛅᛦ ᛒᛅᚱᛏᛅᚴᛁÁsar bardagi
The Norse sky
The Eddas tell how the gods built the sky from a giant's skull and set the Sun and Moon running before two wolves. Later Icelanders and Scandinavians gave their own names to the stars. Here is what the sources actually say, which stars the names belong to, and how sure anyone can be, with what is up tonight.
Medieval source named in a medieval Old Norse text Later folk tradition recorded in later tradition Modern guess a modern guess
Sköll ok Hati
Two wolves run across the sky: Sköll behind the Sun, Hati ahead of her after the Moon. At Ragnarök they catch them.
Medieval source Modern guess
Dagr ok Nótt
Night rides first on Hrímfaxi, whose bit drips the morning dew; Day follows on Skinfaxi, whose mane lights the sky.
Medieval source
Ymis hauss
The gods made the sky from the skull of the giant Ymir, set a dwarf under each corner, and filled it with sparks from the fire-world Muspell.
Medieval source
Þjaza augu
To make peace with the giantess Skaði, the gods threw her father Þjazi's eyes into the sky as two stars. Which two, no source says.
Medieval source Modern guess
Aurvandilstá
Þórr carried Aurvandill home from giant-land in a basket; one toe froze, so he broke it off and threw it into the sky as a star. Nobody knows which star.
Medieval source Modern guess
Lokabrenna
An Icelandic name for Sirius, the brightest star of the night, recorded by scholars around 1800. No medieval text uses it.
Later folk tradition Modern guess
Karlsvagn
Medieval Icelandic texts call the Big Dipper simply 'the wain' and the pole star 'the guiding star'; Karlsvagn, the carl's wain, is its later Scandinavian name.
Medieval source Later folk tradition Modern guess
Fjósakonur
In Iceland the three stars of Orion's belt are Fjósakonur, the women who milk in the cowshed; in Sweden they were Friggerock, Frigg's distaff.
Later folk tradition Modern guess
Sjaustirni
Old Norse called the Pleiades the seven-star, and medieval Icelanders told the time on winter evenings by them: in the sagas they are simply 'the Star'.
Medieval source
Vetrarbraut
Icelanders call the Milky Way the winter road; medieval texts call it the winter ring. Bifröst, the gods' bridge, is a rainbow in Snorri, not the Milky Way.
Medieval source Later folk tradition Modern guess
Norðrljós
The only medieval Norse account of the aurora is in a Norwegian textbook of about 1250, and it offers three natural explanations, not a myth.
Medieval source Modern guess
Today is mánadagr
ᛘᛅᚾᛅᛏᛅᚴᚱ
The moon's day: Máni, the Moon. The name translates the Latin dies Lunae.
Gormánuður, day 3
ᚴᚢᚱᛘᛅᚾᚢᚦᚱ
Week 1 of winter in the old Icelandic calendar. Gormánuður: 'slaughter month' (gor: the half-digested contents of an animal's stomach).
What is up tonight?
Every city page now has a Norse section: when Sól sets and Máni rises, which of the named stars are up, and where to look.
How we tell myth from guesswork
Almost everything we know about Norse beliefs on the sky comes from two Icelandic books of the thirteenth century: the Poetic Edda, a collection of older poems, and the Prose Edda that Snorri Sturluson wrote around 1220 as a handbook for poets. Both were written down two centuries after Iceland became Christian. They tell us a great deal about the Sun, the Moon and how the sky was made, and very little about individual stars: only two myths say that a god made a star, Þjazi's eyes and Aurvandil's toe, and neither says which stars they are. Medieval Icelandic prose adds a few plain names, such as the wain for the Big Dipper and the seven-star for the Pleiades.
Many star names that books and websites present as 'Viking' come from Icelandic or Scandinavian folk tradition written down centuries later, or are modern guesses repeated until they look like facts. We grade every identification on this site, give the source, and say so when nobody knows.
Quotations come from the public-domain translations of the Poetic Edda by Henry Adams Bellows (1923) and the Prose Edda by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916). The explanations are our own. More on our sources on the methodology page.