and men appeared on the earth. But other gods envied her, and the God of Darkness (reminiscent of the Scandinavian Hodder), bothered her until she shed tears to the earth and everything vanished in darkness. In the end, the gods decided to create a fifth sun, and for that purpose they had to make a sacrifice, which would bring into being the sun and the moon. The sacrifice to the sun was to be the little goddess Nanna (again, reminiscent of an old world deity connected with the Nordic Balder). While the gods were burning their sacrifice, an eagle (one of the most prominent symbols of the sun) took out her body from the fire in the shape of a ball of fire, fixed it in the sky as she was wrapped in her golden hair.
Many golden haired figures appear in folk tales, which have developed from the ancient myths; one such legendary woman was Isolde, Tristan’s lover, famous not only from medieval poetry and a novel by the 19th cent. French author Joseph Bedier, but also from Wagner’s Opera. The legend tells that when Mark, the king of Cornwall, saw Isolde’s golden hair in a bird’s nest, he declared that he would only marry the owner of that hair. When it was found that the hair belonged to Isolde, the Irish royal princess, Tristan was sent to bring her to Mark, and on the way they fell hopelessly in love. Isolde is a typical Love goddess for whom the hero must die in the end.
It is also possible to find blond heroines in the Grimm Brothers’ Fairy Tales. One of these heroines is Rapunzel, who is said to have had “magnificent long hair, fine as spun gold”; another is the Goose Girl, whose waving locks “were all of pure silver”. Folk tales in turn have developed into modern fiction, and another divine