Middle Ages

Imagine yourself in the Middle Ages in Norway on a cold winters night. Your laying in bed looking out your window at the stars as you do every night before you go to bed. Your looking at the stars and then all of the sudden you see a faint glow appear on the horizon. You see green and red flames of light strech across the sky. A glowing curtain of light forms, waving and swirling in the sky above you. The lights last about thirty seconds and then the lights fade away and then soon dissapers. The sky is dark and clear with the stars shining down on you. It was almost as nothing had happend. You are astonished and facinated with what you have just witnessed but dont understand what it was. You have just witnessed the Aurora Borealis or more commonly known today as the Northern Lights. The Ancient Romans named this awsome natural phenomenon the Aurora Borelis which is a Latin name. Aurora was the name of a Roman goddess of the dawn. Borelis For thousands of years, the northern lights have fascinated and astonished the human imagination, leading to stories, myths and paintings to explain their mysteries. Beyond superstion, culture, mysticism and religous beliefs lie to explanations provided by research and science. The oldest desriptions of the aurora are from the the Mediterranean countries and from ancient China. Most people in these Regions would of only have seen the northern Lights once or twice in their lives. A wonderful article in National Geographic explains that in the sixth century BC, Ezekil, a profit - priest of ancient Israel, saw the aurora and wrote ...a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itseslf, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. After Ezekil was the famous Greek philospher Aristotle who observed the aurora and described it as lights th...