Yggdrasil: The World Tree and the Nine Worlds

An ash tree that stays green, although ash trees drop their leaves. Three roots in three worlds, a spring at each. A dragon gnawing from below, an eagle perched above, and a squirrel carrying insults between the two. And a god who hangs himself on that tree for nine nights to find the runes. Yggdrasil is the densest image Norse myth ever produced — and one the sources describe far more sparsely than a thousand posters and tattoos would suggest. Here is what the Eddas actually say, where the "nine worlds" came from, why the tree may not have been an ash at all, and what a world tree can do for a person who does not have one.

The sources: what we actually know

Everything we know about Yggdrasil sits in three texts written down in Iceland between roughly 1220 and 1270 — two centuries after the conversion to Christianity. The Poetic Edda, preserved in the Codex Regius, contains the Voluspa, the seeress's prophecy; the Grimnismal, in which Odin himself describes the world; and the Havamal, the sayings of the High One. The Prose Edda of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, from about 1220, pulls all of it into an orderly cosmology in the section called Gylfaginning — and that orderliness is exactly the problem.

Snorri was a Christian scholar building a system out of scattered poems. Where the poems are silent, he filled in; where they contradict each other, he chose. Anyone who wants to understand Yggdrasil has to keep the two layers apart: the poems, which are older and darker, and Snorri's handbook, which is clearer and younger. Nearly every diagram you have ever seen of the world tree is Snorri's version, tidied further by people who came after him.

The name itself is a riddle. Yggdrasill means literally "Ygg's horse," and Ygg, the Terrible One, is a name of Odin. In skaldic verse a gallows is called "the horse of the hanged." So the tree is the gallows Odin hung on. The poems usually call it askr Yggdrasils, the ash of Yggdrasil, or simply the tree, or Mimameid, Mimir's tree, or Laerad. That all of these names mean the same tree is a scholarly assumption, not a statement the sources make.

The tree in Grimnismal: roots, wells, inhabitants

The most detailed description comes from Odin himself, in the Grimnismal, bound between two fires, in stanzas 29 to 35. The ash has three roots, he says: under one dwells Hel, under the second the frost giants, under the third humankind. Snorri moves the third root to the gods and assigns a spring to each — Urd's well among the Aesir, where the Norns live and the gods hold court; Mimir's well among the giants, which holds wisdom and Odin's eye; and Hvergelmir in Niflheim, the roaring cauldron from which all rivers come.

Then come the animals that turn a tree into a world. An eagle sits in the crown with a hawk called Vedrfolnir between its eyes. Four stags — Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Durathror — eat the shoots. Below, at Hvergelmir, the serpent Nidhogg gnaws the root, along with more snakes than a fool can imagine. Between eagle and serpent the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the trunk carrying spiteful words back and forth.

The ash, Odin says, endures more hardship than people know: the stag eats it above, the side rots, the serpent tears at it below. Yggdrasil is not a symbol of harmony. It is a tree attacked from every direction that goes on standing — and the Norns pour water over it every morning from Urd's well and coat it with white clay so it will not wither.

Being	Place on the tree	What it does	Source
Eagle (unnamed)	Crown	Sits there, knows much	Grimnismal 32; Gylfaginning 16
Vedrfolnir, a hawk	Between the eagle's eyes	Unclear — a weather sign?	Gylfaginning 16
Ratatoskr, a squirrel	Trunk	Carries insults between eagle and serpent	Grimnismal 32; Gylfaginning 16
Four stags: Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Durathror	Branches	Eat the shoots	Grimnismal 33
Nidhogg, a serpent	Root above Hvergelmir	Gnaws the root, feeds on the dead	Grimnismal 32–35; Voluspa 39, 66
The Norns: Urd, Verdandi, Skuld	Urd's well at the root	Water the tree, cut fate into wood	Voluspa 19–20; Gylfaginning 15–16
Heidrun, a goat, and Eikthyrnir, a stag	On Valhalla, feeding from the tree Laerad	Mead, and all the rivers	Grimnismal 25–26

The nine worlds that no source lists

Every poster shows them: Asgard, Midgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Muspelheim, Hel — neatly distributed on the tree, gods at the top, the dead at the bottom. Here is what the posters do not know: no surviving source lists the nine worlds.

The Voluspa says in its second stanza that the seeress remembers nine worlds and nine roots of the measuring tree below the earth. The Vafthrudnismal has a giant say he has travelled through all nine worlds down to Niflhel. That is the whole of it. Nine is a sacred number that also counts Odin's nights on the tree and Thor's steps after his fight with the serpent — a number of completeness, not a floor plan.

The familiar list was assembled by nineteenth-century scholars from place names scattered through the Eddas. That it is exactly those nine is a reconstruction, and the tree's three roots do not even fit it. This does not diminish the tree. It makes it more honest: Yggdrasil is not an org chart of the cosmos but an image of everything that exists hanging on one trunk and drinking from the same roots.

Ash or yew? The tree that is always green

The poems call Yggdrasil askr, ash — and describe it as evergreen, standing ever green over Urd's well, with dew falling from it into the valleys. But ash trees are deciduous and bare in winter. Since the early twentieth century some scholars have read this differently: the Old Norse barraskr, "needle ash," means yew — and the yew is evergreen, extremely long-lived, poisonous, a tree of graveyards and bowmen, and held sacred across Scandinavia.

The tree at Uppsala that Adam of Bremen described around 1075, green in winter and summer alike and of a species nobody knew, was very likely a yew. Whether the Edda poets truly meant a yew, and "ash" was simply an elevated word for "great tree," or whether the evergreenness is just a way of saying the tree is not of this world, remains open. What it means for you is this: anyone who tells you Yggdrasil is "the world ash" is telling you half the truth, and anyone who says it is a yew is telling you the other half.

Nine nights on the tree: Odin and the runes

The most famous scene in the Eddas happens at this tree, in Havamal stanzas 138 to 141. Odin says he hung on the windswept tree for nine full nights, wounded with a spear, given to Odin, himself to himself, on that tree whose roots no one knows. No one passed him bread or a drinking horn. He looked down, took up the runes, took them screaming, and fell back.

That is the god's self-sacrifice: he hangs himself on the gallows that bears his name, wounds himself with his own weapon, goes hungry for nine nights — the number of completeness — and brings up out of the depth the runes, the knowledge that writes.

The resemblance to the Crucifixion has often been noticed — spear wound, thirst, the tree, the god who sacrifices himself — and just as often disputed. The stanzas were written down by Christians, but they do not read like an imitation so much as like something older: the shaman who hangs himself on the world tree to cross into the other world is a figure attested from Siberia to Lapland. Which way the influence ran cannot be settled. What remains is the image: knowledge that costs something. Whoever wants the runes has to hang.

Root	Well	What belongs to it
Among the Aesir	Urdarbrunnr, Urd's well	The Norns, the gods' court, white clay, swans
Among the frost giants	Mimisbrunnr, Mimir's well	Wisdom, Odin's eye left in pledge, Mimir's head
Over Niflheim	Hvergelmir, the roaring cauldron	Nidhogg, all the rivers, serpents

This is Snorri's arrangement (Gylfaginning 15). Grimnismal 31 distributes the roots differently — Hel, frost giants, humankind — with no root among the gods at all.

Ragnarok: the tree that shudders and does not fall

At the end of the world, the seeress of the Voluspa says, Yggdrasil's ash shakes, the old tree groans, and the giant breaks loose. The tree does not fall. It trembles. And in the aftermath Snorri tells, two people, Lif and Lifthrasir, survive the world fire hidden in Hoddmimir's wood, which most scholars read as the world tree itself. They live on the morning dew — the same dew that falls from the tree into the valleys in Voluspa 19 — and repopulate the new earth.

Yggdrasil is therefore the one thing that outlasts the twilight of the gods. Not Odin, not Thor: the tree everything gnaws at. If you have met Fenrir or read about Snorri's Prose Edda, this is the frame both of them sit inside.

What the tree carries today

In the nineteenth century Yggdrasil became a national symbol; in the twentieth it became a case study for historians of religion, who saw in the world tree a basic form of the axis mundi, the world axis joining sky, earth and underworld, from Siberian shamanism to the cross. Today, in the United States, most people meet it first as a tattoo, a pendant, the name of a game or a company, and for practitioners in Heathen and Asatru communities as an image to gather under. All of that is legitimate, and all of it is younger than the tree.

What holds me to Yggdrasil is not the order Snorri gave it but the hardship Odin attributes to it. A tree eaten by stags, gnawed by a serpent and slandered by a squirrel, which three women coat with clay every morning so it will not die, and which at the end shakes but stands — that is not a symbol of cosmic harmony. It is an image of endurance. And it is the only one that outlives the gods.

Voices from practice

A Scandinavian studies scholar I spoke to about the yew question considers it undecidable, and the wrong question besides. "The poets were not doing botany," she said. "They meant the biggest tree there is, and they gave it the one thing no tree has — that it never goes bare. Whether they were picturing a yew in somebody's yard or nothing at all does not change the poem." Her advice to readers: read the Grimnismal in a good translation rather than the summaries. "The original is shorter than any explanation of it, and better."

A rune reader who has worked with the Elder Futhark for twenty years told me he begins every session with the Havamal stanzas, not out of piety but out of honesty: "The stanzas say knowledge costs something. Anyone casting runes should know they are giving something for it — time, attention, the willingness to hear an answer they did not want. The tree is the reminder."

What we don't promise

We do not claim that people of the Viking Age knew the "nine worlds" the way posters show them; that list is a nineteenth-century reconstruction. We do not claim Yggdrasil was an ash or a yew — the sources permit both and settle nothing. We do not claim that Odin's self-sacrifice was a pagan rite performed as described, or that it was modelled on the Crucifixion; both are interpretations. And we do not claim that a rune cast shows you what Odin saw on the tree. What we do say: Yggdrasil is the most precise image the North found for endurance — and an image can be carried without believing in a tree.

Practically: how to work with this

• Read the source, not the summary. Grimnismal 29–35, Voluspa 19–20, Havamal 138–141: together under two pages. Carolyne Larrington's Poetic Edda and Anthony Faulkes's Prose Edda are the standard English translations and are easy to find. After that you will know more than most people wearing the tree tattooed.
• Keep Snorri separate from the poems. Three roots among gods, giants and the dead is Snorri. Hel, giants, humankind is the Grimnismal. Both are Edda; only one is older.
• Take nine as a number, not a map. Nine nights, nine worlds, nine steps — it is the number of completeness. Anyone selling you a map of the nine worlds is selling you a poster.
• Find a tree. Not the world ash — a tree near you. Visit it in all four seasons. That is the whole of the practice the Norns model: water it, tend it, come back.
• If you cast runes, give something for it. Time, silence, the willingness to sit with an uncomfortable answer. How the casting works is in how to read runes; what the individual characters mean is in the Elder Futhark meanings.

Frequently asked questions

What does Yggdrasil mean?
Literally "Ygg's horse." Ygg, the Terrible One, is a name of Odin, and "horse" is skaldic shorthand for a gallows. The name points to Odin's self-sacrifice: he hung nine nights on this tree (Havamal 138). Other readings of the name exist; none is settled.

Which nine worlds hang on Yggdrasil?
The sources give the number nine (Voluspa 2, Vafthrudnismal 43) but never list the worlds. The usual list — Asgard, Midgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Muspelheim, Hel — is a nineteenth-century reconstruction from scattered place names.

Is Yggdrasil an ash or a yew?
The Edda calls it an ash (askr) but describes it as evergreen, which ash trees are not. Since the early twentieth century part of the scholarship has read it as a yew (Old Norse barraskr, "needle ash"); the evergreen sacred tree at Uppsala described by Adam of Bremen supports that. The question is not settled.

Which animals live in Yggdrasil?
An eagle in the crown with the hawk Vedrfolnir between its eyes, the squirrel Ratatoskr on the trunk, four stags (Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Durathror) in the branches, and the serpent Nidhogg with many snakes at the root above Hvergelmir (Grimnismal 32–35, Gylfaginning 16).

What did Odin do on the tree?
According to Havamal 138–141 he hung nine nights on the windswept tree, wounded by a spear, sacrificed to himself, without food or drink, and took up the runes from the depth. Whether a real rite, shamanic ideas or Christian influence stands behind it is disputed.

Does Yggdrasil survive Ragnarok?
Yes. In the Voluspa the ash shakes and groans at the end of the world but does not fall; in Snorri two people, Lif and Lifthrasir, survive in "Hoddmimir's wood," usually read as the world tree, and repopulate the new earth.

Sources & further reading

• The Poetic Edda, translated by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford World's Classics) — Voluspa 2, 19–20, 47; Grimnismal 25–35; Havamal 138–141; Vafthrudnismal 43.
• Snorri Sturluson, Edda, translated by Anthony Faulkes (Everyman) — Gylfaginning 15–16, 53.
• Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, translated by Angela Hall — entries on Yggdrasill, Nidhoggr, Ratatoskr and the nine worlds.
• Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, translated by Francis J. Tschan, book IV, chapter 26 and scholion 138 — the tree at Uppsala.
• Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton University Press) — the chapters on the world tree.
• In this magazine: Snorri Sturluson and the Prose Edda · Fenrir · How to read runes · Is the Christmas tree pagan?