From about September to March, if you live far enough north, you might find yourself on a cold, clear night staring up at the sky watching for the northern lights to appear.
In Finland, the northern lights are called revontulet, which translates to “fox fires” and is a nod to one of their myths explaining the lights. In the myth, the revontulet is created by Arctic foxes running over the land causing sparks to fly into the sky as their tails brush against the mountains. A variation of this story says it is snowflakes that the fox’s tail sweeps up, perhaps because the lights are visible during the winter.
Menno Schaefer. Arctic fox in an Autumn Landscape. Shutterstock.
Linking foxes to fire is not uncommon in folklore. In many tales, fire was originally meant for the divine and had to be stolen in order for humans to get a hold of it. In an Apache myth, people are given fire by Fox. As the story goes, Fox decided to steal fire from the fireflies to help warm up the world. He learned how to fly from geese to go to where the fireflies lived and kept fire to themselves. Lighting a piece of cedar attached to his tail, he managed to run off with sparks flying everywhere, and eventually, fire reached the people.
Fire is also a source of protection and can be connected to the spirit world. The concept of fox fire shows up again in Japanese kitsune mythology where it is called kitsunebi. Kitsune refers to both real foxes and fox spirits, or rather every fox can become a fox spirit, and they can have many powers. Kitsunebi refers to a phenomenon of strange glowing orbs that appear in a row which are thought to be little balls of fire breathed out by kitsune, or foxes, to light their way. If there are many lights in one area, it is said that there is a fox wedding taking place. The Hida Furukawa Kitsune-bi Matsuri is a one-day festival celebrating the kitsunebi, and it is thought that you will be blessed in life if you have witnessed a kitsunebi procession.
Utagawa Hiroshige. New Year’s Eve Fox Fires at the Changing Tree (Ōji shozoku enoki omisoka no kitsunebi), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Bertha Lum. Fox Woman, 1916. Library of Congress.
Kitsune also possess another quality commonly associated with foxes - shapeshifting. In most lore involving foxes shapeshifting, the fox will transform into a beautiful young woman who seduces men but they can sometimes be dangerous. An old Irish superstition warns men about meeting a red-haired woman early in the morning for she might be a fox in disguise. Kitsune shapeshifters are not always seen as malicious and will marry human men unaware that their wife is a fox. The Chinese fox spirits, huli jing, on the other hand, can take the appearance of a man or woman and can sometimes lead to your death.
The Fox Woman is an Inuit folk story of a fox who sheds her skin to become a wife of a hunter. After a short time, the hunter comments on a musty smell in the house not knowing that it was coming from the Fox Woman. She then put her fox skin back on and left.
Otto von Groote. Reinecke auf Pirsch, 1920. Wikimedia Commons.
The fox in mythology is one of the many ways we connect to nature and explore our inner selves. There are many more myths that include these themes, but no matter the content of the story or where it originated from, the fox will remain true to its nature and we will continue to be inspired by them.
Cover image: Ohara Koson. Fox in the Reeds, pre-1945. Wikimedia Commons.
The work of art is considered public domain for the following reason: The author died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or fewer.
References
https://thenestcollective.co.uk/fire-folklore/
https://www.visitfinland.com/article/revontulet-fox-fires/#9044f5b1
https://www.hurtigruten.com/inspiration/experiences/northern-lights/myths-legends/
https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheOriginofFire-Apache.html
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Kitsunebi
https://mythology.net/japanese/japanese-creatures/kitsune/
https://visitgifu.com/see-do/hida-furukawa-fox-fire-festival/
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/folklore-of-ireland/folklore-in-ireland/the-life-cycle/death/announcing-death
https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TheFoxWoman-Eskimo.html