Aurora Borealis Effect on Humans: Psychology, Culture, and Mythology

The experience of witnessing aurora borealis in person produces a well-documented emotional response that psychologists have studied with increasing rigor over the past two decades. The most consistently reported effect is what researchers call awe — a distinct emotional state triggered by encounters with phenomena perceived as both vast and difficult to comprehend within existing mental frameworks.

Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, who first systematically studied awe as an emotion, identify two core components: perceived vastness (the thing is much bigger than the self) and need for accommodation (existing mental structures are insufficient to process the experience — the world is more than your current model of it). Aurora satisfies both criteria simultaneously: it is enormous in scale (spanning hundreds of kilometers) and physically inexplicable to most observers without specialized knowledge. The result is a state of cognitive and emotional suspension in which the usual stream of self-referential thought is interrupted.

Studies on awe experiences in natural settings show consistent secondary effects: a temporary reduction in self-focused attention, increased feelings of connectedness with others and with the world, reduced feelings of time pressure, and elevated prosocial motivation — subjects who experienced awe in laboratory or field settings were subsequently more likely to report feeling generous, more connected to strangers, and more oriented toward long-term goals rather than immediate concerns. Several studies specifically using aurora or analogous celestial phenomena report these effects more strongly than awe induced by non-natural stimuli.

Aurora travelers — people who travel specifically to witness the northern lights — frequently report that the experience altered their sense of scale and priority. Anecdotal accounts from tour operators in Norway, Iceland, and Finland describe guests weeping spontaneously upon first witnessing a major display, standing in silence for extended periods, or expressing that the experience met or exceeded expectations built up over decades. The neurological basis appears to involve the default mode network (the "self-referential" brain network) temporarily deactivating during intense awe states — consistent with the subjective sensation of the self feeling small or temporarily absent during profound natural experiences.

Aurora borealis has been observed, interpreted, and incorporated into cultural frameworks wherever people have lived under northern or southern auroral zones. The remarkable fact is not that different cultures developed aurora mythologies — it is that these mythologies, developed independently in geographic isolation, share recurring structural themes.

Ancestral spirits and the dead is the most common cross-cultural interpretation of aurora. The Algonquian peoples of northeastern North America saw aurora as the fires of their creator Nanahbozho, lit to reassure the living that he watched over them. The Menominee of Wisconsin believed the dancing lights were the torches of friendly spirits. Across northern Eurasia, multiple Siberian peoples interpreted aurora as the spirits of those who died violently — warriors and murder victims — active in the night sky. The Finnish term for northern lights, revontulet ("fox fires"), derives from a legend of a cosmic fox running across the northern sky so fast that its tail's sparks produced the aurora.

Omens and portents appear in European medieval and early modern interpretations. Aurora was frequently interpreted as a sign of war, plague, famine, or divine displeasure — partly because the most spectacular aurora events are visible at mid-latitudes only during major geomagnetic storms, which occurred infrequently enough to stand out as notable events associated temporally (by coincidence) with human catastrophes. The English word "aurora borealis" was popularized by Pierre Gassendi in 1621, referencing both Aurora the Roman goddess of dawn and Boreas the Greek god of the north wind — reflecting the connection early modern Europeans drew between the lights and celestial divinity.

In contrast, the Yup'ik peoples of western Alaska historically treated aurora with fear and avoided whistling or making noise outside during displays, believing the lights could descend and harm those who attracted attention. This caution likely reflects the same awe response calibrated as respect or wariness rather than reverence — aurora's unpredictability and dynamic movement made it feel agentive, capable of intention and response.

Today, aurora retains profound cultural significance for Indigenous communities across the Arctic. Aurora australis holds equivalent mythological importance for Māori in New Zealand, who called it tahu nui a rangi — the burning of the sky — and for Aboriginal Australians, among whom several groups in Tasmania and South Australia incorporated the southern lights into dreaming traditions.

The three cultural traditions most directly shaped by long habitation of aurora-rich regions — Inuit, Sámi, and Norse — offer the most developed and nuanced mythological frameworks around the northern lights.

Inuit traditions (spanning thousands of kilometers from Alaska to Greenland) contain diverse aurora interpretations that vary significantly by region. In much of the eastern Arctic (Labrador, Baffin Island), aurora was often interpreted as the spirits of the dead playing football with a walrus skull — an image that captures both the dynamic movement of the lights and their connection to the afterlife. The Iglulik Inuit feared aurora and would rush indoors during displays. In Greenland, different traditions described aurora as the spirits of still-born children dancing. What unifies these interpretations is the consistent sense of aurora as animated, purposive, and connected to souls — a fundamentally animist framework in which the celestial display is not physics but person.

Sámi (Sami) traditions across northern Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula treated aurora — guovssahasat in Northern Sámi — with a mixture of reverence and caution. In many Sámi communities, it was forbidden to wave at or whistle during aurora, as the lights were considered to have the power to descend and harm humans who showed disrespect. Aurora was sometimes identified with the spirits of the dead and sometimes with cosmic forces beyond the familiar spirit pantheon. Sámi shamans (noaidi) used the aurora's appearance and movement as prognostic information, interpreting the lights' direction, color, and intensity as messages about forthcoming weather, hunting conditions, or community fate. These practices survived well into the period of Christianization in the 18th–19th centuries.

Norse mythology provides perhaps the most globally recognized aurora mythology through the modern revival of interest in the Viking age. In Old Norse cosmology, aurora is frequently connected to the Valkyries — the warrior spirits who rode across the sky collecting the souls of slain heroes for transport to Valhalla. The term nordlys ("northern lights" in Norwegian) appears in Norse skaldic poetry as a reflection of their divine weaponry. Some scholars connect aurora to the Bifröst — the shimmering rainbow bridge between the mortal world (Midgard) and the realm of the gods (Asgard) — though the textual evidence for this specific identification is debated. What the Norse framework shares with Sámi and Inuit traditions is the deep sense that aurora is not merely atmospheric physics but a manifestation of forces that transcend and encompass human existence.

Beyond the well-documented psychological effects of witnessing aurora, a more contested question is whether geomagnetic activity associated with aurora produces any direct physiological effects on humans. This area sits at the boundary between established science and active research, with claims ranging from well-supported to highly speculative.

What is established: The geomagnetic storms that produce aurora do generate measurable electric currents in Earth's crust through a process called geomagnetically induced currents (GICs). These currents run through long conductors like power lines, pipelines, and undersea cables, and in extreme cases can damage infrastructure. However, the magnetic field changes at Earth's surface during a geomagnetic storm — typically a few hundred nanotesla in a strong event, compared to Earth's ambient field of roughly 50,000 nT — are far too small to produce physiological effects through simple electromagnetic induction in the human body. The human body is not a long conductor in the GIC sense, and the field changes are orders of magnitude below any demonstrated biological threshold.

The contested area: Some researchers have proposed that humans may have a biological sensitivity to geomagnetic fluctuations operating through mechanisms other than simple electromagnetic induction. Evidence from magnetotactic bacteria (which navigate using geomagnetic fields via crystalline magnetite particles) and some migratory bird studies suggests that biological magnetoreception exists in nature. Magnetic nanoparticles (magnetite crystals) have been found in human brain tissue, though their functional role — if any — is unknown. A small number of epidemiological studies have reported correlations between geomagnetic storm periods and slight increases in hospital admissions for certain cardiovascular conditions, though these studies are methodologically contested and have not been replicated consistently.

The practical conclusion: The dominant scientific consensus is that geomagnetic activity at the intensities associated with aurora has no demonstrated harmful or beneficial effect on human health. Claims that aurora viewing improves mental health are almost certainly attributable to the well-documented psychological effects of spending time in natural environments and experiencing awe — not to any direct geomagnetic influence. Conversely, claims that severe solar storms cause widespread health problems in humans are not supported by controlled evidence. The most honest statement is: the physics of aurora is well understood; the question of subtle human magnetoreception remains genuinely open but is unlikely to be medically significant at aurora-associated field intensities.