What does it mean to see a rainbow?
Rainbows are read as promises, bridges and messengers. In the Hebrew Bible a rainbow is the sign of a covenant after the flood, in Norse myth it is a bridge between worlds, and in Greek myth it is a goddess carrying messages.
Last reviewed October 20, 2026
What each tradition says
Jewish scripture, the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, compiled in ancient Israel across the first millennium BCE
The Hebrew Bible
After the flood in Genesis, God sets a rainbow in the clouds as the sign of a covenant, a promise put somewhere both sides can see. Underneath the picture it is a legal idea about a promise made visible.
Scandinavia, recorded in Iceland in the thirteenth century
Norse mythology
In Norse myth the rainbow is Bifrost, a burning bridge between the world of people and the world of the gods. It holds for now and is prophesied to break when Ragnarok, the end of the world, comes. The texts that tell this were written down in Iceland in the thirteenth century.
Greece, from around 750 BCE to late antiquity (the sixth century CE)
Greek myth and religion
In Greek myth, Iris is the rainbow, a goddess who carries messages between the gods and people. The link between a rainbow and a message passing from one place to another goes back at least this far.
Britain and Ireland, collected mostly in the nineteenth century
British and Irish folklore
In British and Irish folklore a pot of gold is said to lie at the end of the rainbow, often guarded by a leprechaun, a small figure in Irish tales. The end of a rainbow cannot be reached, which is the point of the story.
How to weigh it
A rainbow is light bending through rain, and it moves when you do. Every one of these traditions reads it as a connection between two things, the sky and the ground, gods and people, a promise and its keeper. That shared reading is probably the safest thing to say about a rainbow, and it comes from the shape of the thing itself.