Goddess Of The Sun And The Moon

In Sami mythology from Lapland there is a story of two rival sisters. The other one was the goddess of nightime, moon and winter and the other one was the goddess of summer, warmth, the sun and the day.

Transcript

Hello,

This is Neena,

Your watching FaerieChamber channel.

I still have stories left about Sami mythology and this story is about two Faerie spirits or should I say my new nature goddesses.

Her name is Hahtechan and her name is Nyavechan.

I hope I pronounced them right.

Hahtechan in Finnish,

Her name is Jureta.

I guess Hahtechan is the northern Sami name for her.

Sami people are the native people of northern Europe,

If someone didn't know that.

And probably ancestors of the Finns and other people in Nordic countries these days.

So the Sami mythology is very rich and vivid and has lots of different personifications for nature.

Everything in nature is sacred and holy in the Sami folklore and in the Sami mythology.

So Hahtechan,

She was the ruler of winter and she ruled winter from autumn equinox till spring equinox.

That was her time.

It's a bit similar thing about the Holy King and the Oak King in Kädikn told she how they have these time periods in the year that they rule.

It is a bit similar to Hahtechan and Nyavechan.

So Hahtechan was the winter goddess and she was goddess of the night time,

Goddess of the cold and ice.

She was goddess of darkness,

Goddess of shadows and later on when Christianization started she became an evil goddess as well.

She ruled the shadows and in the night time when there were shadows behind the winter hills and behind the winter mountains she ruled the dark side of the mountains.

Then her counterpart was Nyugachon and she was the daughter of Beybe and Beybe is the Sami personification for the sun.

She was the sun goddess by the navy Beylnäda,

The sun maiden and Hahtechan,

She was wife of the moon.

At least in some versions of the stories she is the wife of Manu and in some mythology moon is personified as male and sun is personified as female.

I don't know are they related or not.

This mythology gets very vague at some point but anyway we know the fact that Nyavechan was the daughter of Beybe the sun and Nyugachon she was the goddess of the warm weather,

Goddess of sunlight when the Hahtechan was the goddess of the night time and darkness.

Nyugachon she was goddess of the warm weather and she ruled from spring equinox they are the autumn equinox.

She was the mother of life,

The queen of life because she was the goddess of the warm and she was the protector of bees,

She was the protector of bugs and butterflies because the bugs and butterflies and bees they create life when they go from flower to flower and she was the protector of good spirits and protector of tamed reindeers.

So here we can see this good eva duality that arrived later on to some in Tohchi because of the Christianization and then when Nyagachon is the goddess protector of reindeers the Hahtechan she was protector of the white deers so in a way she is protector of the white wilderness when Nyagachon is protector of more domesticated animals.

Here we can also see the effect of Christianization and when people see something that is controlled by man and then the things are not controlled by man.

The stories between these two female spirits is quite sad but I'm not a fan of this story.

I prefer the Finnish version where Sun and the Moon are sisters and they get along very well but I will tell you the stories anyway.

The story goes that Hahtechan she had a girl child and her children had a boy child and they were picking berries in the human form in the woods someday and they had this competition that which one would pick more berries they would get the boy child.

In the Sami culture boy children were much more valued than the girls with stinks but that was back in the days and they had this competition that which one would pick more berries would win the boy child and that was the son of Nyagachon.

So Hahtechan she won the competition but she tricked because she put some moss to her basket and she got Nyagachon's son and Nyagachon she had to keep the girl of Hahtechan.

Hahtechan she raised the boy as her own but of course this boy whose name was Ascorbius he at some point realized that Hahtechan was not really his mother his real mother was never never every day Hahtechan she became more and more evil spirit and one day one night she got pregnant from the north wind and she got a son called Atzis with the moon god Manu.

I don't know how Moong can personify themselves as a northern wind but that's what happened.

And Meton the older son Ascorbius he found out that he was actually the son of Nyagachon and that started this whole family argument between these creatures.

I don't know it's possible that Hahtechan and Nyagachon were sisters like they were they are in Finnish mythology nobody really knows but Hahtechan and Ascorbius no sorry Nyagachon and Ascorbius they could fairy spirit and her son they start to plan how to kill the evil Hahtechan and and Nyagachon's stepdaughter.

I don't know about you but I don't see this very good behavior either if Nyagachon is supposed to be a good good creature.

Anyway they kill Hahtechan I imagine that they killed her by burning because the legend said says that from her ashes different nasty creatures were born or at least things that the creatures of this myth thought were nasty such as wasps and frogs and mosquitoes.

I have nothing against frogs so I don't really know why people demonize frogs but yeah I don't like wasps or mosquitoes.

Well this story it goes along with Finnish myth about killing birds all the nasty bugs in the world and this is what happened so this is how they overbeat the light in some mythology.

So the other son of Hahtechan at six he became more like his real mother he became a trickster spirit he did not take care of the reindeers and he was very unpleasant for other gods and at one point he started to make fun of his father Manu and his mother Hahtechan and then Manu he got really mad for his son and he put him to the moon and it is said that since the day at six he lives there in the moon and he he lives very boring life because of his behavior on earth.

And this whole story of Nhavechan and Hahtechan it is ancient it goes all the way back to first inhabitants of Nordic Europe 8,

000-9,

000 years ago when they arrived to the Nordic parts of Europe and it was originally displayed that there was this good and evil aspect that is much later added to this mythology.

Originally this whole story goes around the totemic fate for ancestors the animal ancestors and in the Sami Finnish mythology and in historically the ancestors were there and the moons so Hahtechan had a relationship with the cosmic bear so she was the mother of the early humans and father of the early humans was the cosmic bear and this created this relationship totemic fate for bear and seeing bear as a totem animal and then there was Nhavechan who had cosmic who had relationship with the cosmic mouse and she was the mother of the moose tribe so this myth goes all the way back to this very early Euro-Asian-Uranian worldview that had totemic belief system to animal ancestors.

So this was the story of Nhavechan and Hahtechan and as you can probably see that it's actually another shamanistic journey this whole mythology and all different layers on it.

So thank you for watching guys I will see you on my next video.