ᚢᛁᛏᚱᛅᚱᛒᚱᛅᚢᛏ uitrarbraut

Vetrarbraut: the Milky Way, and was Bifröst a rainbow?

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.

Vetrhringr, 'winter ring', is the Milky Way: Medieval source Vetrarbraut, 'winter road': Later folk tradition Bifröst is the rainbow: Medieval source Bifröst is the Milky Way: Modern guess

What the sources say

Has it not been told thee, that the gods made a bridge from earth, to heaven, called Bifröst? Thou must have seen it; it may be that ye call it 'rainbow.' It is of three colors, and very strong.
Gylfaginning, ch. 13, tr. Brodeur (1916)

The names

ᚢᛁᛏᚱᛅᚱᛒᚱᛅᚢᛏVetrarbraut: 'the winter road': the Milky Way in Icelandic
ᚢᛁᛏᚱᚼᚱᛁᚾᚴᚱVetrhringr: 'the winter ring': a medieval name
ᛘᛁᚢᛚᚴᚱᚼᚱᛁᚾᚴᚱMjólkrhringr: 'the milk ring': a medieval translation of Latin via lactea
ᛒᛁᚠᚱᚢᛋᛏBifröst: 'the trembling road', the bridge of the gods

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 Milky Way is the light of the hundreds of billions of stars in the disc of our own galaxy, seen edge-on from inside. In Icelandic it is Vetrarbraut, the winter road. Cleasby and Vigfusson thought the name 'undoubtedly' old, though it does not occur in early writings; medieval Icelandic texts call the Milky Way vetrhringr, the winter ring, or mjólkrhringr, the milk ring, a translation of the Latin. Icelandic weather lore used it too: in autumn people read the coming winter from how the Milky Way looked.

The name fits the northern sky. In Iceland the Milky Way can only be seen in the dark half of the year, from late August to April; in summer the sky never gets dark enough.

Bifröst. It is often said that the Norse saw the Milky Way as Bifröst, the bridge between the world of men and the gods. Snorri says otherwise: Bifröst is the rainbow, of three colours, and its red is burning fire that keeps the giants out. The Milky Way reading is a modern idea with no support in the sources, so we grade it as a guess.

How sure are we?

Claim	Grade	Basis
Vetrhringr, 'winter ring', is the Milky Way	Medieval source	Medieval Icelandic usage (Cleasby-Vigfusson, Zoëga).
Vetrarbraut, 'winter road'	Later folk tradition	The Icelandic name; not found in early writings.
Bifröst is the rainbow	Medieval source	Gylfaginning 13 and 15.
Bifröst is the Milky Way	Modern guess	A modern reading; Snorri says rainbow.

In tonight's sky

City	The Milky Way tonight from a dark site
Reykjavík	no moonless full darkness tonight
Oslo	no moonless full darkness tonight
Stockholm	no moonless full darkness tonight
London	no moonless full darkness tonight
New York	no moonless full darkness tonight
Sydney	no moonless full darkness tonight

To see the Milky Way you need a moonless sky well away from lights; our city pages give tonight's moon-free dark hours.

Sources

Texts: Gylfaginning 13, 15; Grímnismál 44 (Bilröst). 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. vetrar-braut, vetr-hringr, mjólkr-hringr; Zoëga s.v. vetrar-braut, vetr-hringr.