Nótt

• 1. Introduction

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  Nótt, the personification of night in Norse mythology, is the target of a curious interrogation in the poem Alvíssmál. In stanza 30, the god Thor demands that the dwarf Alvíss tell him what night is called in each of the nine worlds. The poem sits among the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from older traditional sources. The Prose Edda, composed in the same century, gives the goddess a fuller portrait. Together the two works raise questions that this documentary will follow. Who were her parents and her husbands? What did she ride across the sky, and who rode beside her? And why do the surviving manuscripts quarrel over who bore the child named Day?

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• 2. Names in Nine Worlds

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  Alvíssmál gives Thor five answers, and each one reveals how a different people felt about the dark. Mankind simply says "night." The gods prefer "darkness." The mighty Powers call her "the masker," a name that treats night as a disguise worn by the world. The jötnar, the giants, say "unlight," defining night only by what it lacks. The elves speak of "joy-of-sleep," which is the most tender of the set. The dwarves call her "dream-Njörun," meaning dream-goddess. In Thor's question, night is described as the one whom "Nórr" birthed, which hints at a parentage the Eddas spell out elsewhere.

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• 3. Father and Husbands

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  In chapter 10 of Gylfaginning, the figure called High sits enthroned and explains where Nótt came from. Her father was a jötunn of Jötunheimr, named "Norfi or Narfi." She herself is described as "black and swarthy." The Poetic Edda agrees on her father in Vafþrúðnismál, where the jötunn Vafþrúðnir tells Odin, who is traveling under the name Gagnráðr, that night was born of Nörvi. The spelling of the father's name wobbles from text to text. Nótt married three times. Her first husband was Naglfari, and their son was Auðr. Her second husband, Annar, fathered her daughter Jörð, who is the personified earth. Her third husband was the god Dellingr. Their son Dagr, the personified day, took after his father's people in brightness and fairness. In the same stanza, Vafþrúðnir adds that the beneficent powers made the new and waning moons to count the years for men. Odin then decided where this mother and her bright son belonged.

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• 4. Chariots and Dew

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  Odin placed Nótt and her son Dagr in the sky, giving each of them a chariot and a horse. They circle the Earth once every 24 hours, with Nótt riding ahead of Dagr. Her horse is Hrímfaxi, and in Vafþrúðnismál stanza 14, Odin says that this horse draws every night to the beneficent gods. Each morning, foam falls from the horse's bit, and that foam becomes the dew in the valleys. Gylfaginning describes the same sprinkling of the Earth. Skáldskaparmál, in chapter 58, offers a second name for the animal: "Hrimfaxi or Fiorsvartnir draw the night." Yet the manuscripts do not all agree that the child riding behind Nótt is hers.

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• 5. A Manuscript Puzzle

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  The scholar Haukur Thorgeirsson noticed that the four manuscripts of Gylfaginning tell the family story in two ways. In the oldest one, called U, Jörð is married to Dellingr and is the mother of Dagr. The other three, called R, W and T, cast Nótt in that role instead. Haukur argues that the version in U "came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT." The slip did not stay on the page. In his words, the results of the accident made their way into the Icelandic poetic tradition. Evidence of that tradition appears in Skáldskaparmál, which lists "daughter of Nótt" as a way to refer to Jörð.

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• 6. Prayers and Plain Words

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  In Sigrdrífumál, the hero Sigurd wakes the valkyrie Sigrdrífa from her sleep curse and asks her name. She answers by handing him a drinking horn of mead, called a memory-drink, and then she speaks a prayer. Its opening lines greet the cosmos in order: "Hail to the Day! Hail to the sons of Day! To Night and her daughter hail!" Night receives a blessing here, as a figure to be honored and not feared. Outside the poems, the word nótt turns up throughout Old Norse literature as an everyday noun. Skáldskaparmál, in chapter 64, lists it among the words for time. The same chapter cites a version of Thor's questioning of the dwarf Alvíss, which returns the story to the many names for night.

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