Sól (Germanic mythology)

In Germanic paganism and mythology, Sun, or Sunna (Old Norse: Sól [ˈsoːl], Sun, Sunna; Old English: Siġel, Sunne; Old Frisian: Sunne, Old Saxon: Sunna, Old High German: Sunna, Gothic: 𐍃𐌿𐌽𐌽𐍉, romanized: Sunnō), is the sun personified as a goddess. In Norse mythology, she is an Aesir, and travels across the sky in a horse drawn wagon, a motif dating all the way back to the Nordic Bronze Age, as depicted on the Trundholm sun chariot. As a proper noun, Sól appears throughout Old Norse literature. Scholars have produced theories about the development of the goddess from potential Nordic Bronze Age and Proto-Indo-European roots.

One of the two Old High German Merseburg Incantations, written in the 9th or 10th century CE, attests that Sunna is the sister of Sinthgunt. The Norse depiction, Sól, is attested in both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, based on source material from around the 10th century. She is described as the daughter of Mundilfari and the night personified, Nótt. She is the sister of the personified moon, Máni, and married to the god Glenr ("opening in the clouds"). At times, she is referred to as Álfrǫðull, the name of her chariot. It is foretold, that during Ragnarök ("the final battle upon end of the world"), she will be eaten by a monstrous wolf (Fenrir), though beforehand she will have given birth to a daughter who continues her mother's course through the heavens.