Fridjof Nansen Woodcut
Woodcut made by Fridjof Nansen. Based on a sketch from 1883.
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Northern Lights and Folklore
The northern lights and folklore -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since time immemorial, through different cultures and whenever they occur, there have been many beliefs about the northern lights. The Inuit around Hudson Bay had the following explanation of what they saw: The sky is a huge dome of hard material arched over the flat earth. On the outside there is light. In the dome there are a large number of small holes, and trough these holes you can see the light from the outside when it is dark. And trough these holes the spirits of the dead can pass into the heavenly regions. The way to heaven leads over a narrow bridge which spans an enormous abyss. The spirits that were already in heaven light torches to guide the feet of the new arrivals. These torches are called the northern lights In Middle-Age Europe, the northern lights were thought to be reflections of heavenly warriors. As a kind of posthumous reward, the soldiers that gave t...
The Origin of Northern Lights
The origin of Northern Lights The active Northern Lights, also known as aurora, are nature's most beautiful color display. In Finland normally just before midnight, when it is dark enough, a green glow appears in the sky, normally in the form of an arc across the whole sky, directed from east to west. Later during the night, this light might get structured, so bright as to make shadows on ground - and what is most fascinating, start moving fast, covering sometimes the whole sky! Today we know what the lights are. Electrically charged particles come down from space and hit the atmosphere. The air particles in turn, in fact oxygen atoms and ionized nitrogen molecules, get energy in the collisions with the incoming electric particles. Then the air glows the excess energy away, in the form of light emission. This light emission we know as the Northern Lights. We can detect those electric particles, which originally cause the Northern Lights, of course, by using satellite instruments. ...