Anna Lehespalu

2019 -2022 — Iceland, Greenland, Estonia

About this series

Some say that if you whistle at the Northern Lights, they will dance for you. Some say don’t whistle when the northern lights are high, let them lift you into the luminous sky.
In Sami Northern lights are called guovssahas, the audible light. That refers to the electroacoustic sound heard under the polar lights. In other words, it’s an audiovisual experience. There is a belief among Indigenous peoples of the North that spirits are seen in the aurora, and Inuit mythology tells of spirits kicking around a walrus’ skull similar to soccer. It is the ballgame of the departed souls that appears as the aurora borealis, and is heard as a whistling, rustling, crackling sound. The noise is made by the souls as they run across the frost-hardened snow of the heavens. If one happens to be out alone at night when the aurora borealis is visible, and hears this whistling sound, one has only to whistle in return and the light will come nearer, out of curiosity.” (Knut Rasmussen in 1932 about Greenlandic Inuit belief)