Sol- Norse GodDeity"Sun Goddess"

Origins

Sól owes her celestial post to her father's vanity. A man named Mundilfari had two children so beautiful that he named his daughter after the sun and his son after the moon. The gods took this as arrogance and seized both children, setting Sól to steer the sun's chariot across the sky and her brother Máni to guide the moon. Snorri tells it plainly in the Gylfaginning: what had been a father's boast became an eternal sentence.

The Chariot and Its Shield

Two horses draw Sól's chariot: Árvakr, "Early Waker," and Alsviðr, "All-Swift." The gods fixed iron-cool bellows beneath their shoulders to keep them from burning, for the heat of the sun is terrible. Before the chariot stands the shield Svalinn. Without it, mountains and seas would catch fire. The Grímnismál names both the horses and the shield.

In the earliest age, before the gods ordered the cosmos and assigned each body its path, Sól did not know her proper place in the sky. Only once the powers established the reckoning of days and seasons did her course become fixed, as the Völuspá recounts.

The Wolf at Her Heels

Sól's daily ride is a flight for survival. The wolf Sköll chases her from the moment she rises until she sets, jaws snapping at the chariot's wake. Each day she stays just ahead of his reach. When he draws close enough to graze the sun, shadow falls across the earth.

Ragnarök and the Daughter

At Ragnarök, Sköll overtakes Sól at last and swallows her whole. The sun turns black. Darkness falls over the world. But before her death, Sól bears a daughter who takes up her mother's course and rides the same path across a renewed sky. The Vafþrúðnismál says this daughter will be no less fair than her mother. The sun's light, once devoured, returns.