Starship Asterisk*

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=27697&p=171452#p171368 wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:
"I've never seen glare from snow as green, or heard it reported that way."

geckzilla wrote:
But wait! That's not glare.

• MACBETH: Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
  • Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
    Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
    Which thou dost glare with!

ta152h0 wrote:
just imagine our ancient ancestors living in Iceland watching one of these .......

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/njordrljos.shtml wrote:
The Aurora Borealis and the Vikings

<<The Old Norse word for the aurora borealis is norðrljós, "northern lights". The first occurrence of the term norðrljós is in the book Konungs Skuggsjá (The King's Mirror, known in Latin as Speculum Regalae), written in 1250 AD, after the end of the Viking Age (the Viking Age dates ca. 800-1100AD), describing the Northern Lights as seen by settlers in Greenland:

• "But as to that matter which you have often inquired about, what those lights can be which the Greenlanders call the northern lights, I have no clear knowledge. I have often met men who have spent a long time in Greenland, but they do not seem to know definitely what those lights are. However, it is true of that subject as of many others of which we have no sure knowledge, that thoughtful men will form opinions and conjectures about it and will make such guesses as seem reasonable and likely to be true. But these northern lights have this peculiar nature, that the darker the night is, the brighter they seem; and they always appear at night but never by day, most frequently in the densest darkness and rarely by moonlight. In appearance they resemble a vast flame of fire viewed from a great distance. It also looks as if sharp points were shot from this flame up into the sky; these are of uneven height and in constant motion, now one, now another darting highest; and the light appears to blaze like a living flame. While these rays are at their highest and brightest, they give forth so much light that people out of doors can easily find their way about and can even go hunting, if need be. Where people sit in houses that have windows, it is so light inside that all within the room can see each other's faces. The light is very changeable. Sometimes it appears to grow dim, as if a black smoke or a dark fog were blown up among the rays; and then it looks very much as if the light were overcome by this smoke and about to be quenched. But as soon as the smoke begins to grow thinner, the light begins to brighten again; and it happens at times that people think they see large sparks shooting out of it as from glowing iron which has just been taken from the forge. But as night declines and day approaches, the light begins to fade; and when daylight appears, it seems to vanish entirely.
  
  The men who have thought about and discussed these lights have guessed at three sources, one of which, it seems, ought to be the true one. Some hold that fire circles about the ocean and all the bodies of water that stream about on the outer sides of the globe; and since Greenland lies on the outermost edge of the earth to the north, they think it possible that these lights shine forth from the fires that encircle the outer ocean. Others have suggested that during the hours of night, when the sun's course is beneath the earth, an occasional gleam of its light may shoot up into the sky; for they insist that Greenland lies so far out on the earth's edge that the curved surface which shuts out the sunlight must be less prominent there. But there are still others who believe (and it seems to me not unlikely) that the frost and the glaciers have become so powerful there that they are able to radiate forth these flames. I know nothing further that has been conjectured on this subject, only these three theories that I have presented; as to their correctness I do not decide, though the last mentioned looks quite plausible to me."

There appears to be no substantiation for a connection between the god Ullr and the aurorae. People seem to have made a leap from the etymology of the god's name, which is connected with roots meaning "glory, shining", to the idea of the Northern Lights.

Similarly, there is the claim in Bullfinch's Mythology that the armor of the Valkyries "sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies" making the aurora. Once again, there is nothing mentioned in the Old Norse literature that substatiates this assertion, and it can only be taken as either a fanciful interpretation, or perhaps an accretion from later folklore that arose after the end of the Viking Age.

A third misunderstanding about the Vikings and the Northern Lights is that the colorful auroral archways were identified as the Bifröst Bridge, which was a trembling and fiery path that fallen warriors could travel to Valhalla. In Gylfaginning ch. 13, a part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, we are clearly told that this bridge is in fact the rainbow:

• "Er þér eigi sagt það að guðin gerðu brú til himins af jörðu, og heitir Bifröst? Hana muntu séð hafa. Kann vera að það kallir þú regnboga. Hún er með þrem litum og mjög sterk og ger með list og kunnáttu meiri en aðrir smíðir."
  
  "Have you never been told that the gods built a bridge from earth to heaven called Bifröst? (Quivering Roadway) You will have seen it, (but) maybe you call it the rainbow. It has three colors and is very strong, and made with more skill and cunning than other structures."

Strange as it may seem, when examining Old Norse literature, none of the mythological materials nor sagas mention the aurora at all.>>