In the North, the sun is female. Sunna – Sól to the Norse – races across the sky day after day, pursued by a wolf who will devour her at the end of time. She is goddess of light, life and victory – and right now, at the summer solstice, at the height of her power.
Sunna (Old High German/Old English) or Sól (Old Norse) is the personified sun. Unlike in the Greco-Roman world, the day-star in the Germanic North is a woman. She is the daughter of the giant Mundilfari – who found his children so beautiful that he named them after sun and moon; as punishment for this presumption, says the Edda, Sól and her brother Máni have driven the sky-chariots ever since.
Sól is radiant and fair, „the shining bride of heaven". To the Germanic peoples she was a source of light, life and victory; even victory offerings dedicated to her are attested. As a bringer of light she is the natural foe of trolls, witches and dark-elves, who shun the sunlight.
Sól drives the sun-chariot Álfröðull („elf-glory") across the sky, drawn by the horses Árvakr („the early") and Alsviðr („the swift"). So that the two steeds do not burn in the sun’s heat, the gods set cooling bellows – ísarnkol, „iron-cold" – beneath their shoulders. And between herself and the earth Sól holds the shield Svalinn, „the cooling one": were it not there, land and sea would burst into flame. That the sun was already imagined as a chariot in the Bronze Age is shown by the famous Trundholm sun chariot.
Her brother is Máni, the moon. In the Germanic North the sun is female and the moon male – the exact reverse of the Roman-Greek world. Máni too rides a chariot across the sky, only by night; his story, his children Bil and Hjúki and his own wolf we tell in the article Máni – the Moon of the North.
Sól is ceaselessly pursued by a wolf: Sköll chases the sun, his twin brother Hati the moon. On the day of Ragnarök, Sköll catches and devours her. But before that happens, Sól bears a daughter – a new sun who will shine over the green world after the doom. During a solar eclipse the Norse believed the wolf had come threateningly close. The whole story of the two sky-wolves – their origin, the moon-hound Mánagarmr and the end of the world – we tell in the main article Sköll & Hati – the Eternal Chase.
In the second Merseburg Charm a row of deities heals a horse’s wrenched leg – among them „Sunna, her sister" and the mysterious Sinthgunt. Ancient sun-worship lives on in customs to this day: the fire-wheels rolled blazing down hillsides at the solstice or Yule are held to echo pre-Christian rites.
“Sköll is the wolf that follows the shining god / to the shelter of the wood; / and Hati, Hróðvitnir’s son, / awaits the bright bride of heaven.”— Grímnismál 39, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)
Máni – the Moon · Sköll & Hati – the Eternal Chase · Ragnarök · The Norns · Kolovrat or Black Sun?.
Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál, Völuspá, Merseburg Charms (Poetic Edda / OHG), English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning. Tacitus, Germania. Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; J. de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte.