#SOLANDMANI #SOL #MANI The medieval Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, whose Prose Edda can’t be taken at face value but nevertheless is in most low-quality introductory books on Norse mythology, tries to compile these disparate references into a comprehensive narrative that’s utterly ridiculous and useless as a source of information: Mundilfari had two children who were so beautiful that he called the girl “Sol” after the sun and the boy “Mani” after the moon. Sun married a man called Glenr (“Opening in the Clouds”[8]). The sun, which had originated as a spark in Muspelheim, was pulled through the sky in a chariot, but the chariot had no driver. The gods were outraged by Mundilfari’s arrogance in the names he chose for his children, so they forced Sol to drive the sun’s chariot. The conception of the sun and the moon riding on chariots through the sky is evidently a very old one among the Norse and other Germanic peoples. It can be found on rock carvings and other Scandinavian artifacts from the Bronze Age, perhaps the most notable of which is the Trundholm sun chariot (pictured). The idea that the sun deity was female, and with a name that means simply “Sun,” is also attested among the continental Germanic peoples.[10] So while we don’t know much about Sol and Mani, we can be sure that the basic conception they indicate is not only authentic, but was a part of pre-Christian Germanic religion from the earliest times.