Nordic and North American Indigenous Star Lore: The Big and Little Dipper

On Canada Day, the city of Winnipeg put on a drone show instead of fireworks this year. This was a great idea for many reasons. First of all, it is less loud for pets and people with sensory issues. Secondly, Canada is having a particularly bad wildfire year and it is not a good idea to poke the bear. The last reason is that the drone show allowed a unique opportunity to tell a story, and the story chosen was a retelling of Indigenous star lore. Everyone was captivated as the stories of the stars came to life in 3D in the sky above them. There were people exclaiming and tearing up. When the show was done people lay, stunned, on the grass, not willing to shake off the spell of the remarkable storytelling.

Whoever wrote the story for the drone show, pieced together lots of different stories from Indigenous Star Lore expert, Wilfred Buck, and paired it with the broader Western understanding of the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The result was a multi-layered story that brought people of all backgrounds together. 

It made me think about the star lore of the Nordic peoples, and how we could revive some of that knowledge in a similar way. It also made me think about how star lore might connect people in the Northern Hemisphere, who are seeing and navigating by those same stars, even if the constellations they compose with them are different. I like the idea of trying to reconstruct ancient Nordic star lore, but also pair it with Indigenous star lore, in an attempt to reconcile the stories of the land many of us are living on now.

Nearly all the knowledge of Old Norse sky stories is lost as the constellations were replaced with Greek and Roman sky stories during Christianization of the Nordic regions. We are left to speculate on what remnants we have primarily in folklore. I also think it is worth looking at Saami star lore, since the Saami lived alongside the other Nordic people, often meeting and swapping stories.

The Big and Little Dipper:

The significances of the Big and Little Dipper for all cultures is that they are used to locate Polaris, the North Star, for the purpose of night time navigation. This was important across the Northern Hemisphere.

Ursa Major and Ursa Minor:

The Big Dipper is a group of stars visible all year even in places with light pollution and is very recognizable. The dipper is not a constellation itself, but an “asterism” which is a collection of stars. The Big Dipper is part of Ursa Major, but it is not all of it. The great bear and the little bear are the well-known lore coming from Greek and Roman star lore. The bears are believed to be Callisto and Arcus (hiding from Hera in bear form) or Jupiter and Juno in the Roman version. The bears have long tails because Zeus accidentally stretched them while throwing them into the sky. The Big Dipper is also known by other names around the world, such as the Plough, the Seven Sages, a boat, a salmon net, and many more.

Indigenous Lore:

The constellation surrounding the Big Dipper in Indigenous star lore is also a bear. This time however, the bear does not have a long tail. Instead the stars trailing out behind it are seen as the hunters of the bear. 

In an Inuit story, the constellation is instead a caribou and was used as a calendar of seasons as well as a sort of clock.

Saami:

The Saami have a hunting story similar to the bear story from North American Indigenous star lore except instead of a bear, the hunters are going after a great celestial reindeer, a huge constellation that takes up most of the night sky. The Big Dipper is part of the constellation called The Bow or Fávdna’s Bow. The hunters try to chase down the Great Reindeer but each night the hunter Fávdna hesitates to shoot, thinking he might instead hit the Great Rivet (Polaris). If he did the sky would collapse, and the world would end. By tracing the roots of the Old Finnish names for these constellations, it is believed historically that the Saami also used them to tell time, similar to the Inuit.

Nordic: 

It is believed the constellations surrounding the Big and Little Dippers in Nordic star lore were not bears, but instead, chariots or wagons. The large one was a man’s chariot/wagon and the smaller one a women’s chariot/wagon. The speculation is that they may have been Thor and Freyja’s chariots. This is consistent as well with the UK and Ireland, where historically Ursa Major was seen as a plough or wagon, although sometimes the Big Dipper is called Wodan’s wagon as well.

What the stories were that went along with these constellations sadly have been lost to time. Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to make our own star lore, which could help to bridge divides between our communities and those of Indigenous peoples. At the very least we can tell a story that makes sense to the significance of these constellations both historically and in our modern world.

When we think about these stories and how we can rewrite them for the modern context we should first look back at the common images in them. There is a bear/hunting story or a wagon/plough/chariot/agriculture story. Which story is told depends on the culture telling it because it has to be relatable to that community. The other common element is the North Star, and navigation. This is the usefulness cross-culturally of being about to read these constellations to tell time and the seasons and to navigate at night. Where we want to go with these stories in the modern context is up in the air. We are more of an agricultural society, than a hunting one, but we are also mostly removed from agriculture as well. To some extent reclaiming the star stories of animals and nature seem like a powerful thing in the modern world. It is a way of returning to an Animist worldview. While we may not use the North Star in the same way as people historically, it is still great information to know about our world and how the cosmos operate. 

As Heathens we may also want to retell stories of the gods and their chariots to help bring the Lore to life in the night sky, but it is equally as valuable learning the star stories of the land we are living on and finding ways of relating to these places and the peoples who have inhabited these lands much longer than us.

Resources: 

"Bears in the Sky: Ursa Major and Ursa Minor" https://peecnature.org/ursa-major-and-ursa-minor/#:~:text=When%20Zeus'%20wife%2C%20Hera%2C,%2C%20Arcus%2C%20became%20Ursa%20Minor 

"The Heavenly Hunt" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ZyGtjY30U 

"Mi'kmaq Story of the Stars" https://beakingoff.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/mikmaq-story-of-the-stars/ 

"Norse Constellations" https://www.digitaliseducation.com/resources-norse.html 

"Norse Constellations" https://mythsmysterieswonders.site/index.php/norse-constellations/ 

"Norse Constellations" https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315830610_Norse_constellations 

"Norse Constellations, and the Astronomy of Myth" https://www.deviantart.com/heathen-kindred/journal/Norse-Constellations-and-the-Astronomy-of-Myth-219759725 

"Norse Constellations: how the stars came to be." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdaFV1GCVs 

"Northern Circumpolar Sky from Around the World: The Arctic Inuit Sky" by Bryan E. Penprase. (Published in The Power of Stars.)

"Old Norse: Reading into ancient sky stories" https://skynews.ca/reading-into-old-norse-sky-stories/ 

"Relearning The Star Stories Of Indigenous Peoples" https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/indigenous-peoples-astronomy/  

"Sámi: Looking for lost elements of night skies" https://skynews.ca/the-lost-elements-of-sami-night-skies/ 

"Stories in the stars / Pride in our hearts" https://www.ontarioparks.com/parksblog/indigenous-astronomy/ 

"Viking Age Star and Constellation Names" http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/stars.shtml 

"What did the Vikings and Saxons call the Stars?" https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-did-vikings-and-saxons-call-stars.htm 

"Wilfred Buck: The Story of The Great Bear And The Seven Birds" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8zgR0qygEE 

Image Source:

“Old Norse god Thor” (Accessed through Creative Commons license on Wikimedia) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D4%B9%D5%B8%D5%BC_%D5%A1%D5%BD%D5%BF%D5%BE%D5%A1%D5%AE%D5%A8.jpg