+18 Northern Lights Folklore References. The lights, usually starting as a subtle brightening on the northern horizon (in the northern. The ancient romans believed the aurora borealis was the physical manifestation of aurora, who was their goddess of the dawn.

They received many interesting names, like “sky’s open eyes” or “stars like rain”. When they witnessed the lights, many inuit, the arctic’s indigenous peoples, believed they were spirits of the dead playing a game with a walrus skull as the “ball.” ( kjv) in finnish, the name for the aurora borealis is revontulet, which literally translated means fox fires. the name comes from an ancient finnish myth, a beast fable, in which the lights were caused by a magical fox sweeping his tail across the snow spraying it up into the sky.