Aurora

Photographs and words Nick Sidle

Photograph – Aurora borealis over Boblainy Forest, Inverness-shire, Highland Scotland

The Northern Lights, Aurora Borealis and Southern Lights, Aurora Australis, are a spectacular phenomenon that can light up a night sky and have demanded the attention and earned the awe of people from the beginnings of history. Much later than that, science was able to provide an explanation and yes, for something we only see at night, it’s all down to the sun. It is not just light that reaches us from the sun, but also other forms of energy and incredibly small particles, which travel across space on constant solar winds but also from solar flares and solar storms, including coronal mass ejection phenomena which are when the sun emits a large mass of electrically charged particles in a single incident. Fortunately, earth is protected, it has a magnetic field which blocks most of the energy and particles and, as this happens, towards the North and South poles, the energy and particles travel along the lines of the magnetic field and interact with the gas atoms making up the atmosphere, essentially heating them up and generating light, although technically the process is called ‘excitation’. Oxygen gives off green and red light and Nitrogen blue, pink and purple producing the colours mostly seen in the aurora. The shapes and waves of light in the aurora are the result of the patterns in the earth’s magnetic field.

Aurora borealis, Glen Convinth, Highland Scotland

So that’s the science and it is very important but one thing is certain, when the first people looked up and saw the aurora many thousands of years ago, no one said in whatever language they were using, ‘Oh look, I think that must be an excitation phenomenon of nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere’, let alone going on to relate it to magnetic fields and coronal mass ejections. What those first people and what many others who followed tried to do was understand what they were seeing and relate it to their beliefs and knowledge of the world.

Many early Chinese legends of dragons are thought to arise from the Northern Lights, seeing these and the variations in colour as a battle in the heavens between good and evil dragons beathing fire across the skies. The native Australian Aboriginal peoples saw the aurora as a dance of the gods in the sky, or fires in the cosmos and the gods speaking to the elders, whilst the native American Cree interpreted the lights as the spirits of the departed trying to communicate with those they had left behind on earth. Still in North America, the Algonquin tribe related to the Northern Lights as being the fire of Nanahbozho, the creator, which he kept burning to remind them that he remembered and was watching over them. Other native Americans saw the lights as animal spirits, including Ravens or spirit guides holding torches to guide the dead into the next world or as restless spirits of their slain enemies.

Photograph – Aurora borealis over Boblainy Forest, Inverness-shire, Highland Scotland

In Iceland and Greenland, the lights are associated with birth and some of its dangers whilst some of the Sámi people of Lapland saw the aurora as a creation of the spouts of whales when they breathe out on the surface from their blowholes, although other Sámi regarded the lights as the souls of the dead, who were still bleeding and something to be careful of. In Finland, they are the work of the Arctic Firefoxes running so fast across the snow that their tails generate sparks flying into the night sky or throw up snowflakes into the darkness, which catch the rays of the moon. Before this is seen as too fanciful, fur in very dry cold conditions can easily be charged with static electricity giving off sparks. A similar belief to the Firefox is held by indigenous peoples in Canada, except they look to the thick heavy fur hides of reindeer. In Sweden aurora are a good omen either as a gift of benevolent gods providing warmth and light or a reflection from large shoals of Herring confirming a good harvest from fishing in the coming year.

Photograph – Arctic Foxes, Vulpes lagopus

Norse mythology approached the aurora from its recurrent themes of death and honour in battle. This saw the lights as either reflections from the shields and armour of the Valkyrie, the female sprit warriors who lead those Odin had chosen to die in battle to him, or that they were a ‘Bifrost Bridge’ over which the fallen passed to reach their final rest in Valhalla. The aurora were also said to be the breath of warriors who had died in combat. In Siberia, the Northern Lights can be seen as a manifestation of lost love or as drops of blood from the dead riding horses in the sky. To the Inuit, the aurora can be the spirits of ancestors playing.

Scotland has its own aurora lore and, although the lights have attracted the name ‘merry dancers’, these dancers were either fallen angels or warriors locked in an epic battle. Estonians were drawn to a less fearful conclusion thinking that the Northern Lights were celestial sleighs bearing guests to a spectacular wedding in the heavens. In Denmark, a story is told that swans embarked on a contest to see who could fly the furthest North and that some became trapped in the ice and as they beat their wings to escape, they created flashes of light that carried up into the sky.

Photograph – Aurora borealis, Glen Convinth, Highland Scotland

So, to return to the science. If dragons were to make themselves less elusive and be open to study, is it possible that we would find that their home is towards the sun, that a dragon birth is what we describe as a coronal mass ejection and that the fire of their breath would be shown to be a stream of electrified particles that excite Oxygen and Nitrogen atoms in the air? When people see something literally awe inspiring, they seek ways to understand it, interpret it, relate to it and assimilate it into their views of the world. There is room for there to be more than one way of doing that and they do not have to be in conflict, either on the earth or high in the heavens above it. Science is about how the universe works, legends and stories might just be about why.

Photograph – Aurora borealis over Boblainy Forest, Inverness-shire, Highland Scotland

Arctic Foxes – not photographed in the wild.