ᛋᛁᛅᚢᛋᛏᛁᚱᚾᛁ siaustirni

Sjaustirni: the Pleiades, the seven-star

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'.

Sjaustirni is the Pleiades: Medieval source 'The Star' for telling the time: Medieval source

What the sources say

The word sjaustirni and the time-keeping use of 'the Star' occur in Old Norse prose; Cleasby and Vigfusson's dictionary gives the references. No poem or myth about the Pleiades survives.

The names

ᛋᛁᛅᚢᛋᛏᛁᚱᚾᛁSjaustirni: 'the seven-star', the Pleiades (modern Icelandic sjöstjarnan)
ᛋᛏᛁᛅᚱᚾᛅstjarna: 'the star': in time-keeping, the Pleiades

Runes: our letter-by-letter spelling in the Viking-age Younger Futhark; these names come down to us in manuscripts written in the Latin alphabet. How we write runes.

The story and what it means

The Pleiades are a small, tight cluster of blue-white stars in Taurus. Most people see six of them with the naked eye, sharp-eyed observers seven or more, and binoculars show dozens. Across Europe they were 'the seven stars', and Old Norse had the same name: sjaustirni, the seven-star, still Sjöstjarnan in Icelandic and Sjustjärnan in Swedish.

Medieval Icelanders used them as a clock. In winter, when the Pleiades rise in the evening and cross the sky through the night, their position told the time, and Icelandic sagas of the thirteenth century refer to them simply as stjarnan, 'the Star', when they mark the hour of an event. Cleasby and Vigfusson cite examples from Sturlunga saga and the bishops' sagas.

No myth about them survives in Old Norse. The Greek story of the seven sisters is a separate tradition.

How sure are we?

Claim	Grade	Basis
Sjaustirni is the Pleiades	Medieval source	Old Norse word (Cleasby-Vigfusson s.v. sjau-stirni).
'The Star' for telling the time	Medieval source	Sturlunga saga and Biskupa sögur, 13th–14th century (Cleasby-Vigfusson s.v. stjarna).

See it tonight

The Pleiades are best placed in the evening sky around December; they are up all night in November.

City	Tonight, Mon 26 Oct (local time)
Reykjavík	Up all night, highest around 03:00 (50° up in the south)
Oslo	Up all night, highest around 01:45 (54° up in the south)
Stockholm	Up all night, highest around 01:15 (55° up in the south)
London	Up all night, highest around 01:30 (63° up in the south)
New York	Clear of the east-northeast horizon from about 20:00, highest around 02:15 (73° S)
Sydney	Clear of the northeast horizon from about 22:45, highest around 02:30 (32° N)

The Pleiades are about 440 light years away and only about 100 million years old, young enough that their brightest stars are hot and blue. Look slightly to one side of the cluster: averted vision shows more stars.

Sources

Texts: Sturlunga saga; Biskupa sögur. Quotations from the public-domain translations of the Poetic Edda by Henry Adams Bellows (1923) and the Prose Edda by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916); Brodeur's chapter numbers. Cleasby-Vigfusson s.v. sjau-stirni and stjarna (citing Sturlunga saga and Biskupa sögur).