Yggdrasil is the world tree of Norse mythology, a vast ash whose branches reach across the cosmos and whose roots extend into different realms. Its name is commonly explained as "Odin's horse," a reference usually connected with Odin's ordeal on a hanging tree. The Eddas describe a tree that shelters life, suffers damage, and needs tending.
There is quite a lot happening in its branches. Deer eat the foliage, a squirrel carries hostile messages, and a serpent gnaws below. Even the gods have business at its roots.
What does Yggdrasil mean?
The Old Norse spelling is Yggdrasill. The usual explanation combines Yggr, a name of Odin related to words for fear, with drasill, "horse." In the index to Anthony Faulkes's edition of Gylfaginning, the connection with Odin's hanging ordeal is presented as a possibility. Faulkes also notes that the tree is usually called askr Yggdrasils, "the ash of Yggdrasill."
"Odin's horse" is an unsettling name for a tree until you read the sacrifice story. The familiar interpretation treats the hanging tree as the horse Odin rides. It connects the name with an ordeal through which he gains knowledge of the runes, though Hávamál never names the tree.
What kind of tree is Yggdrasil?
An ash, according to both Völuspá and Snorri's Gylfaginning. Völuspá, stanza 19, describes it standing green beside Urd's well, wet with pale water, with dew falling into the valleys.
Its greenness has prompted other readings. Faulkes notes that the word barr, used for its foliage, normally refers to conifers, although poetic usage may be broader. He also allows that the mythical tree could have been imagined with conifer-like qualities. Those observations complicate the picture without overturning the texts' repeated description of an ash.
What are Yggdrasil's nine worlds?
A familiar modern overview of the nine worlds, also used by the Swedish History Museum, includes:
- Asgard, associated with the Aesir gods.
- Vanaheim, associated with the Vanir gods.
- Midgard, the human world.
- Jotunheim, the giants' world.
- Alfheim, associated with elves.
- Svartalfheim, associated with dark elves and dwarves in this overview.
- Muspelheim, the realm of fire.
- Niflheim, associated with mist and cold.
- Helheim, the realm of the dead.
Keep a qualification beside that list. Völuspá mentions nine worlds but names none of them in that stanza. Bellows's commentary proposes a different grouping and calls the ninth uncertain. A labeled tree diagram is a useful way to introduce the subject, but its precise arrangement should not be mistaken for a map supplied by the poem.
The people and gods who inhabit these places are covered in Norse Gods: Who They Were, and Who Wrote Them Down.
What lies beneath Yggdrasil's roots?
Snorri's Gylfaginning, chapter 15, describes three roots, reaching toward the Aesir, the frost giants, and Niflheim. Three wells belong to the account:
- Urd's well, where the gods gather for judgment.
- Mimir's well, associated with wisdom and Odin's pledged eye.
- Hvergelmir, beneath the root gnawed by Nidhogg.
Grímnismál, stanza 31, gives a different placement: Hel, the frost giants, and humankind lie beneath its three roots. The difference is there in the sources, so a single tidy arrangement needs some caution.
The Norns also belong here. Völuspá names Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld beneath the tree and describes them allotting lives and fates. Snorri adds a daily task: they sprinkle the ash with water and mud from Urd's well to prevent its branches from drying or rotting.
Which animals live in Yggdrasil?
Grímnismál describes Ratatosk, the squirrel who runs along the tree carrying the eagle's words to Nidhogg below. Four stags feed in its branches: Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Dyrathror. More serpents lie beneath the ash.
Snorri supplies another detail: a hawk called Vedrfolnir sits between the eagle's eyes. His eagle is unnamed in this passage. Ratatosk's messages are hostile, so the squirrel's errand does little to improve relations between the crown and the roots.
The damage is explicit in Grímnismál, stanza 35. A deer bites above, the trunk decays, and Nidhogg gnaws beneath. Reading Yggdrasil as a symbol of endurance makes sense, provided you keep that damage in view.
Why did Odin hang from the tree?
In Hávamál's account of the rune ordeal, Odin hangs for nine nights on a windswept tree, wounded by a spear and offered to himself. He receives neither bread nor drink. Looking downward, he takes up the runes with a cry, then falls back.
The tree is generally identified as Yggdrasil, including in Bellows's commentary, but the passage does not name it. It says that no one knows where its roots run. Bellows numbers the hanging stanza 139; readers using other editions will often find it at 138.
Odin's eye at Mimir's well belongs to a separate episode. Both concern the cost of knowledge, but the eye is not the payment made during the hanging ordeal. For the written signs themselves, see Elder Futhark: The 24 Runes, and Where the Meanings Came From.
What happens to Yggdrasil at Ragnarök?
In Völuspá, Yggdrasil shakes as catastrophe approaches. Snorri describes the ash trembling in chapter 51 of Gylfaginning. Neither passage tells us whether the tree burns or grows again.
Snorri later describes two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, hiding from Surt's fire in a place called Hoddmimir's Holt. That passage, in chapter 53, does not name their refuge Yggdrasil. The renewed world is described more clearly than the tree's fate.
Is Yggdrasil the same as the Tree of Life?
"Tree of Life" can describe a broad visual idea, while Yggdrasil names a particular tree in Norse myth. Similar-looking branches and roots do not identify every tree image as Yggdrasil.
There is a useful historical example on the silver-inlaid Mammen axe. The National Museum of Denmark's account of the axe allows two interpretations of its tree motif: the Christian Tree of Life or the pagan Yggdrasil.
From the archive
The world tree appears in Yggdrasil: The Nine Worlds, Yggdrasil: The Watching Eye, and Odin: Beneath Yggdrasil. These are contemporary designs drawing on the mythology.
For another part of Odin's search for knowledge, read Odin's Ravens: What the Eddas Say About Huginn and Muninn.
Sources
- Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, edited by Anthony Faulkes, second edition, Viking Society for Northern Research, 2005. Old Norse text, with English notes and glossary. Notes on foliage, printed page 62; index entries for Yggdrasill and Yggr, printed page 179.
- Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, 1916, chapters 15, 16, 51, and 53. Roots, wells, animals, the Norns' care of the tree, the trembling ash, and the human survivors' refuge.
- Völuspá, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 2, 19, 20, 47, and 59, with commentary. Nine worlds, the green ash, the Norns, the shaking tree, and the renewed earth.
- Grímnismál, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 31 to 35. Root placement, animals, and damage to the ash.
- Hávamál, translated by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923, stanzas 139 and 140, with commentary. Odin's hanging ordeal and the runes; numbering differs between editions.
- Swedish History Museum, "The mythological world of the Vikings." A modern museum overview of the nine worlds. The animal details above follow the Eddas directly.
- National Museum of Denmark, "An axe with double meaning." The alternative interpretations of the Mammen axe's tree motif.