The aurora in Sámi tradition and Nordic folklore, and myths to drop

Long before anyone knew the aurora is caused by particles from the Sun, people in the far north had their own explanations. In Sámi tradition the northern lights were above all something to respect, and in many places they were linked with the dead. Elsewhere in the Nordic countries you find both frightening and playful beliefs, while several "ancient myths" repeated online today turn out to be much younger than they claim. Here is what is actually documented, and where it comes from.

Guovssahasat: the Sámi word

The Sámi are an Indigenous people whose traditional homeland, Sápmi, spans Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In North Sámi, by far the most widely spoken of the Sámi languages, the aurora is guovssahas, plural guovssahasat. Sámi texts use it where English would say aurora borealis. The other Sámi languages have their own forms; this article uses the North Sámi word because that is what our sources use.

You will often read that guovssahasat means "the light you can hear". Treat that with caution. The Kautokeino nature centre (Guovdageainnu Meahcceguovddáš) notes that some explain the word that way while others say it is wrong, and the educational texts on Samiske veivisere ("Sámi pathfinders") are blunter: there is no etymological evidence for that meaning, even though it has become very popular in films and travel guides. It is a nice example of how a good story takes on a life of its own.

That people in the north believed they could hear the aurora is well documented, though, among Sámi and others. Physicists long dismissed it, because the aurora shines around 100 km up and no sound from there can reach the ground. More recently, researchers at Aalto University in Finland recorded crackling sounds linked to geomagnetic activity, but the source appears to sit only about 70 metres above the ground, in a temperature-inversion layer. So the sound does not come from the aurora itself, though it may share the same trigger.

Respect, not entertainment

Much of what has been written down from Sámi areas agrees on one thing: the aurora was not to be toyed with. Samiske veivisere describes a belief, found among several Sámi groups, that the lights represent the souls of the dead. Among the Eastern Sámi the tradition is said to have been that they were the souls of people who had died violently, which explained why the light was so restless and intense.

That is why you should not tease the aurora. There are stories of young, cocky men who kept provoking the lights despite warnings and were in the end "taken" by them. Some children's versions end more gently: the lights carry off the naughty boy, but he can be rescued through wit and cunning. Forskning.no, a Norwegian science news site, also retells an old legend from Finnmark about a child who mocked the lights and was struck down.

In practice this meant being careful about waving, shouting or whistling at the sky. You may still meet versions of this today, for example from guides or hosts in Finnmark and Troms. It is not a "tourist myth", but nor is it one fixed rule shared by all Sámi. Traditions have varied between areas, families and over time, and Sámi people today relate to them in many different ways.

The rhyme that teased the lights

There was a playful side too. The Danish aurora researcher Sophus Tromholt spent the winter of 1882–83 in Kautokeino (Guovdageaidnu) during the first International Polar Year. In his book Under Nordlysets Straaler ("Under the rays of the aurora", 1885) he wrote down a children's rhyme used to tease the lights into flaring up:

Guovssahas, viehká, viehká / lippaha, lippaha …

The rhyme pictures the aurora as something running and flapping, with a "hammer head", "auger feet" and a green trim on its tunic, holding a lump of fat in its mouth and a piece of cake in its hand. Samiske veivisere explains that the verb lippaha is used almost only for the aurora's quick movements, and that the "cake" probably refers to bread baked over the fire. The rhyme exists in several versions across Sápmi.

The point of these stories is balance: children could tease the lights a little to make them dance, but they had to know when to stop. According to the Kautokeino nature centre, aurora symbols also appear on some Sámi drums.

Nordic folk belief beyond Sápmi

The rest of Norway and the Nordic countries have plenty of beliefs too, collected among others by the physicists Asgeir Brekke and Alv Egeland and retold by forskning.no:

• In parts of western Norway, some believed that elderly unmarried women went to the aurora when they died, dancing there and waving white mittens.
• In Troms, laughing at the lights could leave you paralysed. In Østerdalen, in eastern Norway, people feared the rays could cut off your head.
• In the Faroe Islands, children had to wear a hat under the aurora or their hair might be singed.

An old Norwegian folk name is "verlys" or "vêrljos", roughly "weather light", which Store norske leksikon (the Norwegian encyclopedia) lists as alternative names for the aurora. The name ties the lights to the weather, and they were probably read as a weather sign.

What do Old Norse sources say?

The word for northern lights (Old Norse norðrljós) first appears in the King's Mirror (Konungs skuggsjá), a Norwegian instructional text from the mid-1200s, after the Viking Age had ended. In it a son asks his father about the lights the Greenlanders call northern lights. The father admits he does not know for certain, but passes on three theories: that fire surrounds the ocean at the edge of the world, that sunlight leaks up from below the horizon, or that the ice and frost of Greenland itself radiate light. He leans towards the last. What stands out is that all three explanations are natural, not divine.

"Valkyrie armour": a modern myth

Perhaps the most quoted "Viking myth" about the aurora is that it was light glinting off the armour or shields of the Valkyries. It appears on countless websites, but in no clear Old Norse text. Viking Answer Lady, which goes through the sources, traces the claim to Bulfinch's Mythology, a 19th-century popular book, and finds no support for it in Old Norse literature. Forskning.no sums up that researchers disagree: Brekke and Egeland pointed to possible traces of the aurora in Old Norse poems, while scholars of Norse mythology see no basis for the Valkyrie reading.

The same goes for the idea that the Bifröst bridge was the aurora. Snorri's Edda clearly describes Bifröst as the rainbow. And the notion that the god Ullr was behind the lights seems to rest on his name being related to words for glory or brilliance, not on any source.

How to be a respectful visitor

• If a Sámi host or guide tells you not to whistle or shout at the lights, go along with it. It costs you nothing.
• Tell documented tradition apart from marketing. An "authentic Sámi aurora legend" on a souvenir is not necessarily something anyone ever told.
• Remember that Sámi culture is living and diverse, not a historical curiosity.

To understand what physically happens when the sky lights up, read what the aurora actually is and why it comes in different colours. If you are heading to Kautokeino, Karasjok or Alta, see our guide to the aurora in Finnmark, and check safety and clothing before you head out into the cold.

In short

Guovssahasat is the North Sámi word for the aurora, but "the light you can hear" is a popular gloss without linguistic backing. Sámi tradition is mostly about respect: you do not tease the lights, and many linked them with the dead. The King's Mirror from the 1200s is the oldest Norwegian source, and it explains the lights through nature. The story of Valkyrie armour is a much more recent myth.