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However, some of the elements he includes may have been drawn from legitimate sources that are now lost to us. Here as elsewhere, Snorri is probably introducing an artificial systematization of his own invention that didn’t exist in the Viking Age (Snorri wrote centuries thereafter). The third well is that of the wise being Mimir, and it and its root lie in the realm of the giants. The second well is called Hvergelmir (perhaps “Bubbling Cauldron” or “Roaring Kettle” ), and it’s the body of water beneath the second root, which stretches into Niflheim, the world of primal ice. The Well of Urd is where the gods hold their daily council meetings. The Well of Urd, according to him, is not below Yggdrasil, as it is in Völuspá – it’s actually in the sky, and the root that grows out of it bends upward into the sky (!). However, Snorri Sturluson, in his Prose Edda, holds that there are actually three wells beneath the tree, one for each of its roots. Völuspá mentions only one well beneath the tree: the Well of Urd ( Urðarbrunnr, “Well of Fate“). The Old Norse sources provide vivid but contradictory accounts of the number and arrangement of the roots and wells beneath the base of Yggdrasil’s trunk.Īccording to the poem Grímnismál, Yggdrasil has three main roots: one planted in Midgard, the world of mankind one in Jotunheim, the world of the giants and one in Hel, the underworld. Īmusing though some of these animals and their activities may be, they hold a deeper significance: the image of the tree being nibbled away little by little by several beasts expresses its mortality, and along with it, the mortality of the cosmos that depends on it. Meanwhile, four stags – Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, and Durathror – graze on the tree’s leaves. An unnamed eagle perches in its upper branches, and a squirrel, Ratatoskr (“Drill-Tooth” ), scurries up and down the trunk conveying the dragon’s insults to the eagle and vice versa. Around its base lurk the dragon Nidhogg and several snakes, who gnaw at its roots. Numerous animals are said to live among Yggdrasil’s stout branches and roots. The gods hold their daily council at the tree.

“No one knows where its roots run,” because they stretch all the way down to the underworld, which no one (except shamans) can see before he or she dies.

Hávamál adds that the tree is “windy,” surrounded by frequent, fierce winds at its heights. Its heights are snow-capped like the tallest mountains, and “the dews that fall in the dales” slide off of its leaves. In the words of the Old Norse poem Völuspá, Yggdrasil is “the friend of the clear sky,” so tall that its crown is above the clouds. As with so many aspects of Norse mythology and religion, there doesn’t seem to have been any airtight consensus on this during the Viking Age. In Old Norse literature, Yggdrasil is commonly said to be an ash tree, but at other times, it’s said that no one knows the species to which the magnificent tree belongs. The tree was his gallows and bore his limp body, which the Norse poetic imagination described metaphorically as a horse and a rider. The second element, drasill, means “horse.” So Yggdrasil’s name means “Horse of Odin,” a reference to the time when the Terrible One sacrificed himself to discover the runes. The first element in Yggdrasil’s name, Yggr (“Terrible”), is one of the countless names of the god Odin, and indicates how powerful and fearsome the Vikings perceived him to be. When the tree trembles, it signals the arrival of Ragnarok, the destruction of the universe. Because of this, the well-being of the cosmos depends on the well-being of Yggdrasil. The rest of that cosmos, including the Nine Worlds, is arrayed around it and held together by its branches and roots, which connect the various parts of the cosmos to one another. Yggdrasil ( Old Norse Yggdrasill or Askr Yggdrasils) is the mighty tree whose trunk rises at the geographical center of the Norse spiritual cosmos.

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