The sky is a huge dome of hard material arched over the flat earth. On the outside there is light. In the dome there are a large number of small holes, and trough these holes you can see the light from the outside when it is dark. And trough these holes the spirits of the dead can pass into the heavenly regions. The way to heaven leads over a narrow bridge which spans an enormous abyss. The spirits that were already in heaven light torches to guide the feet of the new arrivals. These torches are called the northern lights

In Middle-Age Europe, the northern lights were thought to be reflections of heavenly warriors. As a kind of posthumous reward, the soldiers that gave their lives for their king and country were allowed to battle on the skies forever. The northern lights were the breath of these brave soldiers as they resumed their fight in the skies.

Fig.2.Northern lights over Nuremberg in Germany in 1591.

Otherwise the northern lights were a sign of omen. They warned of illness, plague and death. When red, whic

In the days of old, the weather forecast was sometimes based on the northern lights. They were however, often contradictory. In Labrador, coloured lights forecasted fine weather, whereas on Greenland they were a sign of southerly winds and storms. Even at the turn of last century, one could read in the Encyclopedia Brittanica that the northern lights and thundery weather were the result of the same phenomenon, but with different forms of electrical discharge. In North Norway, the northern lights were often associated with cold weather.

Between 1645 and 1715, there was little sunspot activity adn therefore little northern lights activity. This period is called the Maunder minimum, after the leader of the Greenwich Observatory in England who was the first to document this low activity (Fig. 16). Petter Dass, a famous Norwegian priest and author of the same period, has described much of the North Norwegian way of life, but never mentions the northern lights. The northern lights oval was then in such a position that the northern lights should have been visible, but the sun was less active and the northern lights failed to appear. During such periods, the climate on earth has generally been colder and the Maunder minimum coincides with what is now known with as the Scandinavian "little iceage". Since then, sunspot activity has increased and reached a maximum in 1991. This was the largest maximum in 300 years with more solar energy release, greater sunspot activiy and more northern lights. How much today's global warming is a result of increased solar activity is difficult to say, but we do know that when sunspots and northern lights were lacking, the climate was colder in the north.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2662
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)