The goddess of the dawn has given millions of Americans a rare treat the past couple of years: brilliant displays of the northern lights in regions where they’re seldom seen. Today, we know that these colorful curtains of light are powered by storms on the Sun. Bigger storms expand the viewing area. But in centuries past, cultures around the globe created their own explanations.

In Scandinavia, for example, the northern lights might have represented Bifrost, the “rainbow bridge” that connected Earth to Asgard, the home of the gods. In some of the islands of Scotland, the lights represented a pair of chieftains fighting for the hand of a “merry dancer.”

In southern England, they were considered omens of misfortune. Some saw the lights as clashing swords; red lights were streamers of blood. During an intense outburst in March 1716, at the end of a civil war, people ran into the streets in their nightclothes, and some thought it was judgment day. One writer said that some “read in its glaring visage, the fate of nations and the fall of kingdoms.”

The name for the northern lights – the aurora borealis – was bestowed in 1619 by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. Aurora was the Roman goddess of the dawn. Boreas was the Greek god of storms and the north wind – one of the namesakes of the always beautiful, sometimes frightening northern lights.

More about the aurora tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield