The Northern Lights

Legends and Folklore of the Northern Lights
The aurora borealis has intrigued people from ancient time.
The Esquimos and Indians of North America have many
explanations for the northern lights. Imagine living through
a few months each year when the sun does not rise very high
in the sky and the darkness prevails. During these periods of
darkness the sky is frequently aglow with displays of aurora.
Imagine all of the stories that could be told to explain these
wonderful lights.

Different Stories
One story is reported by the explorer Ernest W. Hawkes in his
book, "THE LABRADOR ESKIMOS":
The ends of the land and sea are bounded by an immense abyss,
over which a narrow and dangerous pathway leads to the
heavenly regions. The sky is a great dome of hard material
arched over the Earth. There is a hole in it through which the
spirits pass to the true heavens. Only the spirits of those who
have died a voluntary or violent death, and the raven, have
been over this pathway. The spirits who live there light torches
to guide the feet of new arrivals. This is the light of the aurora.
They can be seen there feasting and playing football with a
walrus skull. The whistling crackling noise which sometimes
accompanies the aurora is the voices of these spirits trying to
communicate with the people of the Earth. They should always
be answered in a whispering voice. Youths dance to the aurora.
The heavenly spirits are called selamiut, "sky dwellers," those
who live in the sky.
EVIL THING
The point Barrow Eskimos were the only Eskimo group who
considered the aurora an evil thing. In the past they carried
knives to keep it away from them.
OMEN OF WAR
The Fox Indians, who lived in Wisconsin, regarded the light as
an omen of war and pestilence. To them the lights were the
ghosts of their slain enemies who, restless for revenge, tried
to rise up again.
DANCING SPIRITS
The Salteaus Indians of eastern Canada and the Kwakiutl and
the Tlingit of Southeastern Alaska interpreted the northern
lights as the dancing of human spirits. The Eskimos who lived
on the lower Yukon River believed that the aurora was the
dance of animals spirits, especially those of deer, seals,
salmon and beluga.
GAME OF BALL
Most Eskimo groups have a myth of the northern lights as the
spirits of the dead playing ball with a walrus head or skull. The
Eskimos of Nunivak Island had the opposite idea, of walrus
spirits playing with a human skull.
SPIRIT OF CHILDREN
The east Greenland Eskimos thought that the northern lights
were the spirits of children who died at birth. The dancing of
the children round and round caused the continually moving
streamers and draperies of the aurora.

FIRES IN THE NORTH
The Makah Indians of Washington State thought the lights were
fires in the Far North, over which a tribe of dwarfs, half the
length of a canoe paddle and so strong they caught whales with
their hands, boiled blubber.
STEW POTS
The Mandan of North Dakota explained the northern lights as
fires over which the great medicine men and warriors of
northern nations simmered their dead enemies in enormous
pots. The Menominee Indians of Wisconsin regarded the lights
as torches used by great, friendly giants in the north, to spear
fish at night.
CREATOR REMINDER
An Algonquin myth tells of when Nanahboxho, creator of the
earth, had finished his task of the creation, he traveled to
the north, where he remained. He built large fires, of which
the northern lights are the reflections, to remind his people
that he still thinks of them.