Nott was the Norse personification of the night — the dark goddess of giant descent who rode across the sky bringing darkness, the mother of the day and the ancestress of the night itself. Older than the bright gods, she is the deep darkness from which the day is born, riding her dark horse across the heavens in eternal procession.
The Dark Goddess
Nott (Old Norse Nótt, “night”) was the personification of the night, a goddess of the giant-kind (jötnar), dark-haired and dark-complexioned as befitted her nature, and counted among the oldest of beings. She was the daughter of a giant named Nörvi (or Narfi), and through her marriages she became the mother of several beings, including, by the shining Delling, the bright god Dagr (Day) — so that Night was, fittingly, the mother of Day, the darkness giving birth to the light. By another union she was mother of Jord (Earth), and thus grandmother of Thor.
Hrimfaxi, the Frost-Mane
Like her son Dagr, Nott was given a horse and chariot by the gods with which to ride around the earth, bringing night in her wake. Her horse was named Hrímfaxi (“frost-mane” or “rime-mane”), and it was said that each morning, as Hrímfaxi finished his nightly course, the foam and froth from his bit fell upon the earth as the morning dew. So the Norse explained the dew of dawn as the spume from the night-horse's bridle, scattered across the land as night gave way to day — a counterpart to the shining mane of her son's day-horse Skinfaxi.
The Mother of the Cycle
Nott rode first, and her son Dagr followed: mother and son together drove their horses around the same circular path across the sky, one after the other, weaving the endless alternation of darkness and light. Nott's precedence — night riding out before day — reflected an old northern sense that darkness comes first and the light is born from it, just as Night was the mother and Day her child. In the reckoning of time, too, the Norse counted by nights rather than days (a custom that survives in our “fortnight”), giving Nott a quiet primacy over her shining son.
The Darkness From Which Day Is Born
Nott endures as the Norse personification of the night — the dark giantess on her frost-maned horse, mother of the day and of the earth, the deep darkness that comes before and gives birth to the light. She embodies the northern reverence for the long, dark nights and the profound idea woven through Norse myth: that darkness is not merely the absence of light but its mother, the ancient deep from which day, earth and even the thunder-god's line all descend.
Night rides out before the day on a frost-maned horse whose dripping bit scatters the morning dew — for to the Norse, the darkness came first, and from Night herself the bright Day was born.