Máni is the moon god of Norse mythology, the figure who guides the moon along its path through the night sky. Brother of the sun goddess Sól, he measures out the moon's waxing and waning while a wolf runs forever at his back, waiting for the end of the world.
Who is Máni?
Máni — his name is the Old Norse word for "moon" — was, in Snorri Sturluson's telling, the son of a man named Mundilfari, who named his son after the moon and his daughter Sól after the sun because he found them so beautiful. The gods took offence at this pride and set the two in the heavens to steer the lights whose names they bore. Máni took charge of the moon, controlling its course and its phases. The poem Vafþrúðnismál names him among the beings who order the reckoning of time, for it is by the moon that the seasons and the years are counted.
Bil, Hjúki, and the moon's course
Snorri also tells that Máni took up two children from the earth, Bil and Hjúki, as they walked from a well carrying a pail of water on a pole between them. They followed the moon and can be seen from the earth — a detail that some later readers have linked to folk traditions about figures glimpsed in the moon's face. Like his sister, Máni does not travel unharried: the wolf Hati Hróðvitnisson courses through the sky in pursuit of the moon, straining to seize it, as the wolf Sköll hunts Sól and the sun.
Ragnarök and legacy
When Ragnarök comes, the pursuing wolf at last overtakes Máni and swallows the moon, and the night sky goes dark along with the day. Máni belongs to the cold and constant company of the night — the same domain as Nótt, night personified, who rides the heavens between the two lights. His steady round through the sky made him a keeper of time itself, and something of that watchful, measuring quality lives in the rune Isa, the rune of stillness and ice. As the personified moon, Máni remains one of the clearest images of how the Norse imagined the turning lights of the sky as living beings with a fate of their own.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Máni in Norse mythology?
Máni is the god who personifies the moon. Son of Mundilfari and brother of the sun goddess Sól, he steers the moon on its course across the night sky and governs its waxing and waning.
What wolf chases Máni?
The wolf Hati Hróðvitnisson pursues Máni across the sky, just as the wolf Sköll chases his sister Sól. At Ragnarök the wolf catches and devours the moon.
Who are Bil and Hjúki?
Bil and Hjúki are two children Máni took up from the earth as they carried water from a well. They follow the moon, and some scholars connect them to later folklore about figures seen in the moon.
How is Máni related to Sól?
Máni and Sól are brother and sister, children of Mundilfari. He guides the moon and she drives the sun, and both are chased across the heavens by wolves.