Sköll and Hati: the wolves that chase the Sun and Moon
Two wolves run across the sky: Sköll behind the Sun, Hati ahead of her after the Moon. At Ragnarök they catch them.
Wolves as the cause of eclipses: Modern guess
What the sources say
Skoll is the wolf that to Ironwood / Follows the glittering god, / And the son of Hrothvitnir, Hati, awaits / The burning bride of heaven.
It is two wolves; and he that runs after her is called Skoll; she fears him, and he shall take her. But he that leaps before her is called Hati Hródvitnisson. He is eager to seize the moon; and so it must be.
Then shall happen what seems great tidings: the Wolf shall swallow the sun; and this shall seem to men a great harm. Then the other wolf shall seize the moon.
The names
- ᛋᚴᚢᛚSköll
- the wolf that chases the Sun (meaning of the name uncertain)
- ᚼᛅᛏᛁHati
- the wolf that chases the Moon; probably 'hater'
- ᚼᚱᚢᚦᚢᛁᛏᚾᛁᚱHróðvitnir
- 'famous wolf', Hati's father, usually taken to be Fenrir
- ᛘᛅᚾᛅᚴᛅᚱᛘᚱMánagarmr
- 'Moon-hound', the wolf that will swallow the Moon
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
Snorri explains why the Sun seems to hurry across the sky: she is running for her life. The wolf Sköll is close behind her, and another wolf, Hati Hróðvitnisson, runs ahead after the Moon. Both are of the brood that an old giantess breeds in the forest Járnviðr, Ironwood, east of the world of men; Völuspá calls one of them the Moon's snatcher in troll's guise
.
The chase has an end. At Ragnarök, the doom of the gods, one wolf swallows the Sun and the other seizes the Moon, the stars vanish from the sky and the sunshine turns dark. Vafþrúðnismál then offers a hope: before she is caught the Sun bears a daughter, who will ride her mother's paths in the new world.
Eclipses. It is tempting to read the wolves as an explanation of eclipses, when something visibly eats part of the Sun or Moon. Wolves or other beasts devouring the Sun at an eclipse are a common motif in many cultures. But no Old Norse text says that eclipses are the wolves' doing: the Eddas describe a chase that ends only once, at the end of the world. The link is a modern reading, and we mark it as one.
What the sky really does is this. A solar eclipse happens at new Moon, when the Moon passes in front of the Sun; a lunar eclipse at full Moon, when the Moon passes through Earth's shadow. Both need the Moon to be near one of the two points where its tilted orbit crosses the Sun's path, which lines up two to five times a year.
How sure are we?
| Claim | Grade | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Wolves as the cause of eclipses | Modern guess | A modern reading; the Eddas describe the chase and its end at Ragnarök, not eclipses. |
In tonight's sky
| City | Sól sets | Full dark | Máni | Moonrise | Moonset | Sól rises |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reykjavík | – | 99% | — | |||
| Oslo | – | 99% | ||||
| Stockholm | – | 99% | ||||
| London | – | 99% | ||||
| New York | – | 98% | ||||
| Sydney | – | 100% |
Every eclipse up to five years ahead is on our eclipse pages, with local times for 170 cities.
Sources
Texts: Grímnismál 39; Gylfaginning 12, 51; Völuspá 40–41, 57; Vafþrúðnismál 46–47. 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.
More Norse sky lore
- Sól ok Máni Sun and Moon
- Dagr ok Nótt Day and Night
- Ymis hauss Ymir's skull
- Þjaza augu Þjazi's eyes
- Aurvandilstá Aurvandil's toe
- Lokabrenna Loki's burning
- Karlsvagn the Wain and the lodestar
- Fjósakonur the cowshed women
- Sjaustirni the seven-star
- Vetrarbraut the winter road
- Norðrljós the northern lights
- The old Norse calendar