Forager Number 2 Fall 2015 | Page 45

PEUPLELOUP Green lights streaming across the sky in northern Canada northern lights for the first time. They had several theories for what they were seeing. They thought perhaps Greenland lay on the outermost edge of the earth and the light they were seeing was the leftover sun of the day. Others believed the icebergs and snow that dominated the scenery were so powerful they were able to emit these flames. In more recent years, many have suggested a connection between the god Ullr and the northern lights. His name means “glory, or shining” and scholars have thought there was a connection there despite the lack of concrete proof in Old Norse literature. Also, there are some mentions in Old Norse mythology that the armour of the Valkyries “sheds a strange flickering light, which flashes up over the northern skies” and that this is the cause of the northern lights. North America In North America, much of the folklore relates to the spiritual world and departed ancestors. The Forager 2 Fall 2015 tales tell of the native peoples’ special relationship with death. For the most part, they do not fear it: they believe the northern lights are their departed loved ones, or animals they worshipped and hunted, that live in the sky. The anthropologist Ernest W. Hawkes wrote The Labrador Eskimo after his 1914 trip to the coast of Labrador. Hawkes travelled alongside those he was studying and his book (published in Ottawa in 1916) reports on everything he saw, from clothing to burying rituals. Hawkes spent many months at a time among aboriginal people and recounts many of their rituals and myths in his book. One of the myths from his book is below: The Heavenly Regions 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 39