Study › Runes & Norse › Sol and Mani
Sol, the Sun, and Mani, the Moon, are sister and brother in Norse mythology, who drive the sun and moon across the sky. They can never slow down, because the wolves Skoll and Hati chase them, and at Ragnarok the wolves catch them.
Who are Sol and Mani?
Sol, the Sun, and Mani, the Moon, are sister and brother, the children of a man named Mundilfari, who was proud enough to name them after the lights of the sky. The gods took them up and set them to drive those lights across the heavens: Sol drives the chariot of the sun, drawn by the horses Arvakr and Alsvidr, 'Early-Waker' and 'All-Swift', and Mani steers the moon and governs its waxing and waning.
Skoll and Hati, the wolves
They cannot slow down, because they are hunted. The wolf Skoll runs after the Sun and the wolf Hati after the Moon, both of them, Snorri says, the offspring of a giantess in the Iron Wood.
The end, and a new sun
At Ragnarok the wolves catch their prey and swallow the lights of the sky. Yet the poem Vafþrúðnismál promises that before she is taken the Sun will bear a daughter, no less fair than her mother, who will ride her mother's path in the world that comes after.
The wolves catch their prey at Ragnarok, the same end that comes for Odin.
Questions
What are the wolves that chase the sun and moon?
Skoll chases the Sun, and Hati chases the Moon.
What happens to the sun at Ragnarok?
Skoll swallows her, but before that she bears a daughter who lights the new world.