Máni, the Moon of Norse mythology pursued by the wolf Hati

In the Germanic languages the Moon is masculine and the Sun feminine: der Mond and die Sonne in German, máni and sól in Old Norse. This grammatical feature reflects a precise mythology, known to us above all thanks to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson. In the Norse world, as it emerges from medieval Icelandic texts, the Moon is a young man who guides the night's luminary across the sky, always fleeing from a wolf that will one day catch him.

The children of Mundilfari

There are two main sources. The Poetic Edda, a collection of mythological poems preserved in a thirteenth-century Icelandic manuscript, and the Prose Edda, written by Snorri around 1220 as a handbook for poets. In the poem Vafþrúðnismál the wise giant answers Odin that the father of the Moon and the Sun is called Mundilfari, and that they must travel across the sky every day to mark the years for men.

Snorri, in the section entitled Gylfaginning, enriches the story. Mundilfari had two children so beautiful that he named them Máni and Sól, Moon and Sun. The gods, angered by such presumption, took them and set them in the sky: Sól drives the horses that pull the chariot of the Sun, while Máni steers the course of the Moon and governs its waxing and waning phases.

Hjúki and Bil

According to Snorri, Máni took from the earth two children, Hjúki and Bil, at the moment when they were returning from the spring called Byrgir carrying on their shoulders a pail hung from a pole. Since then the two have followed the Moon and can be seen from the earth. The passage is probably a mythical explanation of the markings on the Moon, as in many other cultures. Later in the same text Snorri counts Sól and Bil among the goddesses, a sign that the little water-carrier had won a place among the divine figures.

In the nineteenth century some scholars proposed linking this pair with the English nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill, who go up the hill to fetch a pail of water. It is a fascinating hypothesis but one that has never been proved, and today it is remembered mainly as a curiosity in the history of folklore studies. It remains significant, however, that in Scandinavia too, as in China or Polynesia, the shadows on the Moon were read as human figures at work.

The wolf and the end of the world

The Moon's journey is not peaceful. Snorri tells that two wolves chase the heavenly bodies: Sköll pursues the Sun, while Hati, son of Hróðvitnir, runs ahead and tries to seize the Moon. Another passage speaks of a wolf called Mánagarmr, «Moon-hound», who feeds on the lives of the dead and will one day swallow the Moon, spattering the sky with blood.

At Ragnarök, the end of the world in Norse mythology, the wolves catch their prey and the Sun and Moon are devoured. In the renewed world that follows, however, a daughter of the Sun will take up her mother's path, while the fate of the Moon, in the sources, remains wrapped in silence. Meanwhile a trace of the Moon remains in everyday language: the Old Norse mánadagr and the English Monday, the day of Máni.