Sunna (Sól)

The dominant religion in Bronze Age Scandinavia, at least among the elite levels of society, appears to have been centered on the sun.

Images and artifacts from that time include sunwheels—sometimes carried by ships or wagons— and rock art motifs aligned to the equinoxes and solstices. Details are sketchy as to what this cult believed and practices, but we have some artifacts that give us some clues.

The best known artifact of this time is the Trundholm sun-wagon (Glob, The Mound People, p. 103). Although petroglyphs ceased to be made around the beginning of the Iron Age, some sites with solar petroglyphs continued to be used for rituals for centuries after (Nilsson, “Reused Rock Art,” pp. 154-167). Pinwheel-like designs on the earlier Migration Age “picture stones” from Gotland are also thought to represent the sun; some of them show dragons or other beasts who may be trying to swallow them (Andrén, Tracing Old Norse Cosmology, pp. 127-136). The Bronze Age sun deity was probably seen as male; there are several petroglyphs of a human figure with a sunwheel of a body and an erect phallus.

The Twilight of the Sun Cult: The Bronze Age Ends

The old solar cult seems to have died out around 500 CE, and this may be when the popular perception of the sun’s gender changed; in the Germanic languages, the word for the Sun is grammatically feminine, and when the Sun is personified, she is a goddess.

According to Snorri, a man named Mundilfari (possibly meaning “The One Moving According to Particular Times”) had two children, so beautiful that he named them Sól and Máni. Angered at his presumption, the gods took Sól and Máni and set them to drive the chariots of the sun and moon, which the gods had shaped from sparks flying out of Muspelheim (Gylfaginning 11). Despite her mortal origins, Sól is listed among the goddesses (Gylfaginning 36; Skáldskaparmál, verse 435). She is said to have two horses, Árvakr “Early-Awake” and Alsviðr “Fully Swift” (Grímnismal 11, 37). She is said to be married to a man named Glen (“Gleaming”), about whom we know nothing further (Gylfaginning 11). Snorri adds that Sól will have a daughter as fair as herself, who will survive Ragnarok and bring light to the world afterwards (Gylfaginning 53).

The text Hversu Nóregr byggðist (“How Norway was Settled”) claims that King Alf of Alfheim in Sweden (roughly equivalent to the province of Bohuslän) married Svanhildr gullfjǫðr (“Goldfeather”), the daughter of Dagr (“Day”), who was the son of Sól (Flateyjarbók vol. 1, pp. 23-24).  It is just possible that this text preserves a memory of the old sun-cult, in which a ruler might claim descent from the sun.

Sun Worship in the Viking Age

Evidence that the sun was actively worshipped in the Viking Era is sparse and controversial. Many texts condemn the worship of the sun and moon; for example, Wulfstan claimed in his sermon De falsis deis [On False Gods] that

hȳ wurðedon him for godas þā sunnan and ðone mōnan for heora scīnendan beorhtnesse,

“they turned the sun and the moon into gods because of their shining brightness” (Marsden, Cambridge Old English Reader, p. 205).

But these are mostly “boilerplate” descriptions of what pagans supposedly did, not direct observations of what they were actually doing in Wulfstan’s time. Yet some texts suggest that the sun’s divine nature was still remembered. The Old English spell for fertility of fields, Æcerbot, tells the worker to “turn to the east and bow humbly nine times;” Godfrid Storms reads this as a thinly Christianized survival of Sun-worship (Anglo-Saxon Magic, pp. 6-7).

The Old Norwegian Rune Poem includes the verse Sól er landa ljóme, lúte ek helgum dóme: “Sun is the light of lands; I bow to holy judgment” (Kålund, “Et Gammel-Norsk Rune-Rim,” p. 13). Eddic poetry refers to Sól as skírleitt goð “shining-faced deity;” heið brúðr himins “glorious bride of heaven” (Grímnismál 39); and skínandi goð, “shining deity” (Grímnismál 38, Sigrdrífumál 15). Skúli Þórsteinsson describes her in a verse about the sunset: (quoted in Skáldskaparmál 26):

In the Second Merseburg Charm, Sunna is one of the goddesses chanting along with Woden to heal a horse with a sprained leg. This may suggest that the Sun was seen as a greater goddess than the surviving myths show her to be. Certainly the sun goddess had a prominent place in the religion of the neighboring Baltic countries, where many songs to her survive.

Sun Worship in the Sagas

Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson has drawn attention to a passage in Laxdæla saga in which Guðrún rises early on the day of the killing of Kjartan, er sólu var ofrat—normally translated as “when the Sun rose” but literally meaning “when the Sun was lifted” (which seems odd) or “when the Sun was offered to.” He suggests that this tells of an offering to the Sun, made by Guðrún herself. He comments that

“at the Conversion, people were for the time being permitted to sacrifice in secret, this not being considered a punishable offense unless witnesses were present. . . . A sacrifice that took place before everybody else woke up would therefore not have been seen as an offence at this time” (“Folklore in the Icelandic Sagas,” p. 264).

Since Guðrún is trying to have Kjartan killed, she may be making an offering to the Sun for success. It’s significant that she does this at dawn, because this is a time of good omen: the expression dagrád til at berjask, literally “dawn for battling,” means the hope of victory in the battle (Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar 27, ÍF 26, p. 260). Sól may also grant blessings to the dying. In Landnámabók (S9/H10, ÍF 1, pp. 46-47), it is said that Thorkel Thorsteinsson “had himself borne out into the rays of the Sun in his fatal illness.”

Thorkel then “commended himself into the hands of that god who had shaped the sun” before dying. Christian saga-writers sometimes piously depicted their ancestors as “naturally” Christian even though they had not yet had the chance to hear the Christian message; Jón Aðalsteinsson sees this episode as an attempt to put a Christian veneer onto an authentic tradition of a Sun-worshipper’s death (“Folklore in the Icelandic Sagas,” p. 263).

Not every scholar agrees with this interpretation; Jonas Wellendorf doubts whether the sun, moon, and other “powers of nature” ever received worship in the saga times (Gods and Humans, p. 36, n69). Yet in myth and folklore, the Sun’s light turns Glens beðja veðr gyðju guðblíð í vé, síðan ljós kemr gott með geislum, gránserks ofan Mána. Glen’s bedmate, divinely mild, Steps into the goddess’s sanctuary, Then comes good light with rays From above, from gray-shirted Máni.

In the afterworld, the narrator sees the sólar hjǫrt, “hart of the sun,” whose feet are on the Earth and whose antlers reach the sky (55; ed. Larrington and Robinson, p. 334-335). While the poet probably intended the hart as a symbol of Christ, older texts hint that it was once associated with the sun; Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 38 compares Helgi to a young and splendid stag whose horns glow against the sky itself. This in turn is reminiscent of some of the Bronze Age solar petroglyphs which bear what look like antlers, and with the horned animals associated with the solar wheel on the early Gotland picture stones (Andrén, Tracing Old Norse Cosmology, p. 153). trolls to stone, and her light might have protected the dying by driving off or paralyzing any ill-willing wights.

Folklore around the Sun

Folk festivals and celebrations all over Europe celebrate the Sun with rites such as rolling wheels downhill (sometimes setting them on fire) and lighting bonfires at Midsummer, and the custom of getting up early to “see the Sun dance” on Ostara, May Day, Pentecost (Whitsunday), or Midsummer Day (e.g. Dowden, The Stations of the Sun, p. 204).

Sól or Sunna is clearly more than a bright light in the sky: she brings life and victory. The visionary poem Sólarljóð, written in Iceland in Eddic meter around 1200, is completely pious Christian in outlook but incorporates a few images from the older mythology. As he recounts his death, the narrator says in verse 41 (ed. Larrington and Robinson, p. 324):

Sól ek sá; svá þótti mér, sem ek sæja á gǫfgan guð; henni ek laut hinzta sinni aldaheimi í.

I saw the sun; it seemed to me as if I were looking at worshipful God; I bowed to her for the last time in this world.

Thus it’s not surprising that eclipses were unlucky. Snorri Sturluson (Gylfaginning 12) describes wolves that pursue the Sun and Moon, and that will catch and swallow them at the ending of the world, just before Ragnarok. When the sun or moon shines through high clouds, reflections are sometimes formed which look like smaller suns or moons. Such reflections are still known as “sun dogs” and “moon dogs” in English, while Grimm (Teutonic Mythology, vol. 2, p. 706) records the Swedish names solvarg and solulf, “sun-wolf.” It seems likely that eclipses were seen as the wolf nearly overtaking the sun or moon (see the section on Máni).

Sun worship in Modern Heathenry (Post-1970)

Worshipping the Sun Sól or Sunna may be hailed at any time, especially on holy days that coincide with equinoxes and solstices. In the early days of the Heathen revival, Heathens were encouraged to greet the Sun with brief prayers at sunrise and noon (e.g. Thorsson, A Book of Troth, pp,. 149-151), or sometimes at sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight (e.g. Gundarsson, Teutonic Magic, p. 281).

While there is some evidence that these times were important, especially in the Bronze Age solar cult (Kaul, “Bronze Age Tripartite Cosmologies,” pp. 136-139), the modern practice derives from Thelema, as prescribed by Aleister Crowley in Liber Resh, written in 1907 or 1908. Crowley may have been inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s “A Song to Mithras” (Puck of Pook’s Hill, p. 173).

Many modern Heathens incorporate some form of “sun salutation” into their practice; something as simple as a quiet moment of appreciation in the morning. Heathens who have to wake up before dawn to go to work, or who work through the night, find a moment of solace and serenity as they see the first warm rays of dawn peak over the horizon. In that moment, some might choose to raise their hot cup of tea or coffee and say a quiet “Hail Day” as the morning breaks.

Day (Dagr), Night (Nótt), Dawn (Dellingr), and the Divine Twins

Eddic poetry distinguishes Sól, the Sun, from Dagr and Dellingr, who personify the day and the dawn. Night is also personified as a holy power. Sigrdrífa’s invocation to the gods, one of the most powerful and well-known verses of Old Norse poetry, begins

Heill dagr!

Heilir dags synir!

Heil nótt ok nipt!

Hail, Day!

Hail, sons of Day!

Hail, Night and her kinswoman! (Sigrdrífumál 4)

Snorri gives their relationship (Gylfaginning 10): Nótt herself is the daughter of a jotun named Narfi or Nǫrfi. Her first husband is a jotun named Naglfari (“Nail Traveler,” the same name as the ship of the dead at Ragnarok), and their son is Auðr (“Wealth”). Her second husband is Annarr or Ónarr (“Other” or “Second”), and their daughter is Jǫrð, the Earth. Her third husband is an Ás named Dellingr, and their son is Dagr.

The gods and goddesses assigned them their roles in primordial time, according to Vǫluspá 6:

Þá gengu regin ǫll á røkstóla, ginnheilǫg goð, ok um þat gættusk; nótt ok niðjum nǫfn um gáfu, morgin hétu ok miðjan dag, undorn ok aptan, árum at telja.

Then all the Powers went to the seat of judgment, the primal holy Gods, and discussed it: to Night and her descendants they gave names, they named the morning and the midday, afternoon and evening, to reckon the years.

Odin set Dagr and Nótt to drive around the Earth in chariots. Dagr is said to have the horse Skinfaxi (“Shining Mane”), while Nótt has Hrímfaxi (“Frost Mane”) (Vafþrúðnismál 11-14). A number of Indo-European mythologies include a dawn goddess, who is not the Sun, but who rides her own horse or chariot to prepare the way for the Sun. In Norse mythology, Dagr seems to have this role.

Vafþrúðnismál 27 and Gylfaginning 19 also mentions Vindsvalr (“Wind- Cool”) or Vindlóni (“Wind-Bringer”) son of Vásaðr (“Damp”), the father of winter; and Svásuðr (“Pleasant”), the father of summer. We can also mention Hræsvelgr (“Carrion Swallower”), a jotun in eagle form who sits at the edge of the sky, and whose wings create the winds (Vafþrúðnismál 27). These figures have little role in the myths that we have, and they were not worshipped as far as we know.

Comparative Worship and the concept of the “Divine Twins”

One of the myths common to a number of Indo-European cultures, and probably going back to a Proto- Indo-European form, was a myth about Divine Twins, or Dioscuri (from Greek Dioskouri, “Zeus’s Boys”). The Twins are sons of the Sky and associated with the Sun; sometimes they are the brothers of either the Sun or the Dawn.

Sometimes interpreted as the Morning and Evening Stars, they protect the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. Humans also pray to them for rescue and healing, and they are known to be helpful. Scandinavian Bronze Age art, both petroglyphs and metalwork, often includes paired male figures who could be a motif of the Divine Twins.

The earliest picture stones from Gotland, dating from the Iron Age, depict a large whirling design, associated with a pair of smaller whirling designs and/or a pair of animals or human figures. The large design is thought to represent the sun, while the pair of whorls, animals, or humans has been identified with the Twins.

Tacitus mentions that the Naharvali, a tribe living somewhere in northeast Germany, worshipped the Alci, two gods said to be young men and brothers, whom he equated with the Dioscuri. Tacitus claims that they were worshipped in a sacred grove, where the male priest dressed like a woman (Germania 43). The name Alci might be related to words for “sanctuary; protection” (e.g. Gothic alhs, Old English eolh, both meaning “temple; sanctuary”); Jacob Grimm suggested that Tacitus or his informants mistook the word for the gods’ sanctuary for the name of the gods (Teutonic Mythology, vol. 1, p. 67). The report must have come from German informants: no Romans are known to have penetrated that far into German-held territory (Woolf, “Cruptorix and His Kind,” pp. 212-213).

To this we can add the Greek geographers who claimed that the “Celts” living along the Baltic coast were devoted to the Dioscuri (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historiae IV.56, transl. Oldfather, vol. 2, pp. 522-523); classical historians didn’t alwaoys bother to distinguish between different tribes of barbarians, and these “Celts” probably included speakers of both Baltic and Germanic languages.

Moon (Máni)

Many mythologies consider the moon to be a goddess: Selene in Greece, Luna in Rome, Chang’e in China, iNyanga among the Zulu, and so on. In Wicca, the Goddess is associated with the moon, and the lunar crescent is one of her symbols. However, many other mythologies feature a male moon (ancient Egyptian Khonsu, or Chandra in India, for example), and so it is with us: the moon is grammatically masculine, and when the moon is personified, he is male (as in “the Man in the Moon”). This is hard for some people to get used to.

Lee Hollander’s translation of the Poetic Edda makes the sun male and the moon female in Vǫluspá 5 (p. 3), and texts such as Nigel Pennick’s Runic Astrology and Practical Magic in the Northern Tradition sometimes make the moon female, or punt the ball by referring to the moon as “having both male and female aspects.” The outdated idea that Nanna, Balder’s wife, is a moon goddess continues to pop up even though there is no evidence for it at all.

The Old Norse name Máni (cognate with English “Moon”) was used for the heavenly body only in poetry or in stock prose phrases, being a personal name for the Heathen god; the usual prose word for the moon in the sky was tungl. According to the Eddas, Máni is the brother of Sól, and both of them are children of the jotun Mundilfari. He is called gránserkr Máni, “gray-shirted Máni” (Skáldskaparmál 26).

A few kennings hint at connections between Máni and the jotuns, such as óskkvánar mána, “desired woman of Máni,” for a female jotun (Lindow Norse Mythology, pp. 222-223); “moon-bears” (mána bjarnar) is a kenning for jotuns (“Sonatorrek” 13, Egils saga 78). These may be fragments of lost myths.

According to Gylfaginning 11, Máni stole the children of a man named Viðfinn, a boy named Hjúki and a girl named Bil, as they were carrying water from a well called Byrgir (“Hider”) in a bucket on a pole between their shoulders. They accompany him to this day. Some Victorian antiquarians thought that this myth survived in the nursery rhyme, “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. . .” The names of Hjúki and Bil might be related to ON jakka, “to increase,” and bila, “to dissolve, break up,” hinting that Hjúki and Bil embodied the waxing and waning moons (Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 188-190). Bil, at least, is listed among the goddesses in Snorri’s Edda (Gylfaginning 35; Skáldskaparmál verse 433).

In English and German folktales, the “man in the moon” has a different origin. A man commits an offense, usually stealing brushwood or working on a Christian holiday, and is punished by being placed in the Moon (Grimm, Teutonic Mythology vol. 2, pp. 713-716). In some versions the man’s wife is placed in the sun; in one tale the wife’s offense is spinning on Christmas Eve, which was forbidden in folk custom (Ranke, Folktales of Germany, p 157).

Several commentators accused Heathens of worshipping the Moon.

Julius Caesar claimed that the Germans “reckon among the gods those only whom they see and by whose offices they are openly assisted—to wit, the Sun, the Fire-God, and the Moon. . .” (De bello Gallico, VI.21; transl. Edwards, pp. 344-345). The sixth-century Martin of Braga condemned the Suebians’ worship of the Sun, Moon, stars, fire and water (McKenna, Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain, p. 99 n95) The laws of King Canute of England defined heathenism as the worship of “heathen gods, and sun or moon, fire or flood, wells or springs or stones or any kind of wood. . .” (Dowden, European Paganism, p. 42). And the 11th-century Decretum by Burchard of Worms demands to know, “Hast thou observed the traditions of the pagans. . . that is, that thou shouldst worship the elements, the moon or the sun or the course of the stars, the new moon or the eclipse of the moon” (McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 330).

It’s hard to be sure whether these really do reflect actual practice, because many authors who listed pagan practices copied from each other; Martin of Braga, for example, borrowed most of his list of pagan practices from the fifth-century Caesarius of Arles (Dowden, pp. 149-156). However, almost all of these listings include original material, which presumably the authors had observed or heard about themselves (Filotas, Pagan Survivals, p. 61), so we cannot discount these accounts completely.

What did people pray to the Moon for?

On the Old Norse side, Hávamál 137 recommends that heiptum skal mána kueðia, “Moon shall be prayed to against hate.” This may be connected with an episode in Eyrbyggja saga 52, in which a mysterious sign called a “moon of wyrd” (urðarmáni) appears by the hearth of a farmstead, foretelling an epidemic. There are also Icelandic place-names compounded with Máni, listed in Landnámabók: Mánaberg (“Moon Mountain”), Mánafell (“Moon Cliff ”), and Mánaþúfa (“Moon Hillock”).

Finally, there is a great deal of lore about the Moon determining the right times for certain actions. The English priest Ælfric of Eynsham denounced divination by the moon as “great error” practiced by “foolish men,” but he accepted learned opinion that the moon did influence life on Earth:

“Every bodily creature in the creation which the earth produces, is, however, according to nature, fuller and stronger in full moon than in decrease. Thus trees also, if they are felled in full moon, are harder and more lasting for building, and especially if they are made sapless. This is no charm, but is a natural thing from their creation” (transl. Thorpe, Homilies, pp. 100-103).

Burchard of Worms condemned people who “observed the new moon for building a house or making marriages” (Mc- Neill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 330). As early as the 7th century, the inscription on the Eggja stone in Norway protects a grave against those who would dig into it is niþ rinR, “when the waning moon runs,” implying that such things were best done under certain lunar phases.

Folklore about the Moon was common throughout Europe.

In general, enterprises that you want to increase should be started under the new or waxing moon: marriages and planting crops should take place under the new or waxing moon, and if an animal is slaughtered under the waxing moon, the meat will not shrink in the kettle. On the other hand, if your work involves making things diminish, such as cutting wood or pulling weeds, it is best done under the waning moon (Baker, Folklore and Customs of Rural England, pp. 21, 45, 49, etc.; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, vol. 2, pp. 704-713; Opie and Tatum, A Dictionary of Superstitions, pp. 261-264; Hoffmann, “Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans,” pp. 129- 130).

The moon could also help with finances; people bowed to the waxing moon the first time they saw it—especially to the first visible moon of each new year—and turned out the money in their pockets. Grimm recorded the saying “the new moon does not love to look into an empty purse,” and recorded a brief spell from 1611: bis gottwillkommen, neuer Mon, holder Herr, / mach mir meines Geldes mehr! “Welcome, new Moon, dear lord, / make my money greater!” (p. 704-713)

Some of these customs are similar to traditions in Greek and Roman lore; for example, Pliny the Elder, whose work was well known to Bede and other learned authors, recommended trimming plants at the waning moon, sowing seeds around the new moon, and so on (Naturalis Historia XVIII, 75, transl. Rackham, pp. 390-393).

The idea that the moon’s phases marked important dates is documented all over the pre-conversion Germanic world.

Both Tacitus (Germania 11) and Julius Caesar (De Bello Gallico I.50, transl. Edwards, pp. 80-83) agreed that the lunar phases marked favorable times for assemblies and actions. Bede mentions the first day of winter in the Old English calendar, Winterfylleþ or “Winter Full Moon,” which gives its name to an entire month (Reckoning of Time 15, p. 54). The Gothic missionary Ulfilas, translating the Bible in the 4th century, rendered the Greek word neomenia, “New Moon celebration,” by the Gothic word fulliþ, “full moon” (Colossians 2:16), which suggests that the Goths held celebrations under the full moon (Wolfram, History of the Goths, p. 112).

The English monk Ælfric of Eynsham disapprovingly wrote that “Many are also possessed with such great error, that they regulate their journeying by the Moon, and their acts according to days, and will not undertake anything on Monday, because of the beginning of the week; though Monday is not the first day in the week, but the second. . .” (Homilies, p. 100-103).

Even in Iceland, people paid attention to the moon; Jóns saga helga 8 tells how Bishop (and later Saint) Jón of Hólar bannaði ok alla hindrvitni þá er fornir menn hǫfðu tekit af tunglkvámum eða doegrum, “He also banned all the superstitions that the men of old had taken from new moons or days” (ÍF 15b, pp. 209-210). Divination, Healing, and Magic Perhaps because of the Moon’s link to wyrd, it was used in divination in the Germanic world.

The references in the lore to what we would now call “astrology” refer to the Moon more often than any other heavenly body.

A large number of Old English lunaria have survived—these are texts which predict the weather, human fates, fortunate or unfortunate days, and outcomes of endeavors by the phase and color of the Moon.

The moon also marked good and bad days for bloodletting and for picking medicinal herbs. Clufwyrt (buttercup, Ranunculus acris), leonfot (lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris), and milotis (yellow sweet clover, Melilotis officinalis) were all medicinal herbs that had to be harvested under the waning moon to be effective (de Vriend, The Old English Herbarium, pp. 52-55, 128-130). The custom of consulting lunaria seems to be of Greek or Roman origin, as is some of the lunar herblore. The English lunaria date from the 11th century or later, long after the coming of Christianity, and they are included in compilations of Christian texts (Bremmer and Chardonnens, “Old English Prognostics,” pp. 165-166).

Nonetheless, if nothing else, their popularity in monastic circles suggests that the use of the moon to predict luck was already popular in England. Ælfric of Eynsham condemned such practices around the year 1000, writing “No Christian man shall practice anything in the way of divination by the Moon; if he does, his faith is nothing” (De Temporibus Anni VIII.7, ed. Blake, pp. 90-91).

Eligius of Noyon, living among the Frisians and Suebi in the 600s, concurred: “Let no one set store by the first work of the day, or the moon. . . . Let no one call the sun or moon lord, or swear by them” (Audoenus, Vita Eligii II.16, pp. 705-707).

The Moon could also have been important in magic.

Several Stone Age stone circles in the Orkneys were used as holy steads, as late as the 18th century. One of them, the Standing Stones of Stenness on Orkney mainland, was called the “Temple of the Moon.”

At a nearby standing stone with a hole in it, the now-destroyed Odin’s Stone, one could acquire magical powers by going nine times around the stone on one’s knees on nine successive full moons (Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, pp. 59-60). Other stones with holes in them were the site of dancing and singing under the full moon (Burl, The Stone Cir321 Sun, Day, Moon, Sea, and Hel cles of Britain, p. 213).

In Shetland in the last century, a healer would tie a knotted black wool thread called the “wristen treed” around a sprained limb. Usually, the thread had three or nine knots in it, but sometimes, one knot would be tied in the thread for every day of the moon’s age. The healer would remove one knot each day; the sprain would be cured when all the knots were untied (Marwick, pp. 132-133).

Finally, lunar eclipses were seen as perilous times, when the wolf pursuing the moon nearly caught and swallowed it.

It was a widespread custom all over western Europe to make as much noise as possible during a lunar eclipse, and Christian priests complained a lot: Eligius of Noyon, living among the Frisians and Suebi, wrote “Let no one presume to shout when the moon is obscured, because by God’s command, it is obscured at certain times. Nor should they fear the new moon, or abandon work, for God made the moon for this reason: to mark the time and moderate the shadows of night, not to impede any work, or to make people demented, as fools believe who think they suffer from invasion by demons from the moon” (Audoenus, Vita Eligii II.16, p. 707). And the mid-eighth-century Indiculus superstitionum et paginarium, which lists a number of things that Christians aren’t supposed to do, includes “Eclipses of the moon, what they call vince luna [“conquer, moon!”]” (Dowden, European Paganism, p. 154).

The German monk Rabanus Maurus gives more details of what his flock in the Rhineland in the early 800s did during a lunar eclipse: they blew horns, grunted like pigs, threw spears at the sky, chopped down their hedges, and smashed their pots, because “they affirmed that I-know-notwhat monsters were mauling the moon, and had they themselves not gone to its help, those same monsters would have devoured it completely” (Filotas, Pagan Survivals, pp 124-128).

Burchard of Worms accused Germans around 1000 of believing in “the eclipse of the moon, that thou shouldst be able by thy shouts or by thy aid to restore her splendor, or these elements [be able] to succour thee, or that thou shouldst have power with them” (McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penitence, p. 330)

The picture that emerges is of a power that governs the ebb and flow of luck on Earth, one which humans could use for their own benefit.

It is very much within Heathen tradition to carry out important actions in accordance with the phase of the moon.

New or waxing moons would be good times to build or move into new homes, plant gardens, open bank accounts, conduct marriages, and found kindreds and initiate new members, in hope that your success, frith and wealth will wax brightly like the moon.

Full moons seem to be good times for meetings, rituals, and holy feasts, and waning moons would be good times to handle things that you want to shrink or go away, such as pulling weeds. Crescent-shaped filigree silver pendants are known from Viking-era sites, mostly from Russia and Finland, but extending into Sweden. Today they are known as lunulas, or by the Russian name of lunnitsy or lunniky. Crescent-shaped ornaments made of sheet gold are known from all over Europe in the Bronze Age. Whether they have anything to do with honoring a moon deity is not clear, but those who want to honor Máni today might wear a replica.