Mani was the Norse god of the moon — the brother of the sun-goddess Sol, who drove the moon across the night sky and governed its waxing and waning, pursued like his sister by a hungry wolf fated to swallow him at the end of the world. He is the personified moon of the north, the measurer of time and the guide of the night.
The Moon-Driver
Mani (Old Norse Máni, “moon”) was the brother of Sol and, like her, a child of Mundilfari who was set in the heavens by the gods to guide one of the great lights of the sky. While Sol drove the chariot of the sun by day, Mani drove the moon by night, governing its course and its phases — its waxing and waning, its growing and shrinking through the month. As the moon was the great measure of time for ancient peoples, Mani was bound up with the reckoning of months and the marking of the passage of nights.
The Children of the Moon
A curious tale tells that Mani took up two children from the earth, Bil and Hjúki, as they were carrying a pail of water from a well, and set them in the sky to follow him — figures that some have connected to the markings seen on the face of the moon, and even, distantly, to the later nursery image of figures going up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Through this story Mani gathered companions to ride the night sky with him, the moon-god and the two children forever following his course.
The Wolf Hati
Like his sister Sol, Mani is pursued across the sky by a ravening wolf. His hunter is named Hati Hróðvitnisson, who races after the moon as Sköll races after the sun, hungering to catch and devour it. The Norse saw in this chase the reason for the heavens' restless motion and an explanation for the terror of a lunar eclipse, when the wolf seemed to gain upon his prey. At Ragnarök, it is foretold, Hati will at last catch Mani and swallow the moon, even as Sköll swallows the sun — and the sky will go dark as the world rushes to its end.
The Light of the Night
Mani endures as the Norse personification of the moon — the night-light and time-keeper, brother to the sun, driver of the lunar course, pursued by his own wolf to a foreordained doom. He embodies the northern peoples' intimate relationship with the moon as the great lamp and clock of the long northern nights, and completes, with Sol, the Norse vision of the two heavenly lights as living drivers racing their chariots across the sky, each fleeing the jaws that will at last devour them when the world ends.
By night the moon-god drives his chariot across the dark, two children following and a wolf in pursuit — the lamp and the clock of the long northern night, fleeing the jaws that will swallow him at the end.