By Jackson Crawford, University of Colorado, Boulder
According to Norse mythology, the first human man was Ask, or ‘ash-tree’. The Norse believed that humankind is made of the same kind of tree that binds the realms of the mythic cosmos together—with one root among the gods, one among the anti-gods, and one among the dead; and that tree is Yggdrasil.
The Two Pieces of Wood
As the story goes, sometime early after the creation of the earth and its various realms, Odin went walking along the shore with two other gods.
Snorri, in the Prose Edda, says that the gods found two pieces of driftwood. One was ash and the other piece was something called embla, which is often thought to mean the elm.
According to the seeress in ‘Voluspa’, in the Poetic Edda, the gods then had certain gifts to bestow on the two pieces of wood:
They had no breath,
no minds,
no hair, no human voice,
they looked inhuman.
Odin gave them breath,
Honir gave them minds,
Lothur gave them hair
and human faces.
And so the first two members of humankind are molded from the driftwood on the shore of the ocean. The whole rest of humankind would come from these two.
Yggdrasil
According to the poem ‘Voluspa’, the seeress remembered at the very beginning “the seed from which Yggdrasil sprang”. We do not know if this seed was planted deliberately or where the tree came from ultimately, but in what we can call the mythic present of Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is an enormous ash tree whose roots bind the realms.
It is not clear how the tree Yggdrasill ought to be pictured with respect to the different realms. Snorri calls it “the chief place or holy place of the gods”, and goes on to describe it in his Prose Edda:
The gods pass their judgments there every day… This ash tree is the biggest and best of all trees. Its limbs are spread over the whole world and stand over the sky. Three roots of the tree hold it up, and they extend very far. One is with the gods, and the second is with the anti-gods, where the Yawning Gap once was. The third is over Niflheim.
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The Eddic Poem Grímnismál
The Eddic poem Grímnismál also states that there are three roots, but it goes on to say that:
Hel is beneath one,
Jotunheimar beneath another,
Midgard is beneath the third.
This may be roughly what Snorri says, but it’s expressed differently. Jotunheimar is home of the anti-gods. Niflheim can be identified with Hel. And possibly the root that is ‘over’ us in Midgard is the same as the one that is ‘with the gods’ in Asgard.
The Wells Underneath
Snorri goes on to describe the wells beneath the tree’s roots, and how the gods get to Yggdrasil:
And under the root that turns toward the anti-gods is Mimir’s Well, where wisdom and knowledge are hidden within, and Mimir is the name of the one who owns the well. The well is full of wisdom, because Mimir drinks from the well through the horn Gjallarhorn. Odin came there and asked for a drink from the well, but he didn’t get it until he left one of his eyes there as the price.
Urth’s Well
The third root of the ash tree is in the sky, and under that root is the very holy well called Urth’s Well. The gods have their law court there. The gods ride up there every day on Bifrost.
Note that this third root is in the sky, so we seem to have the well under that root located somewhere higher than where the gods themselves live.
At Urth’s Well, Snorri goes on to tell us about the Norns and how they take care of the tree:
There is a beautiful house under the ash tree near the well, and three young women named Urth, Verthandi, and Skuld emerge from this house. These women shape the lifespan of people. We call them Norns. …Every day, they take the water in the well, and with it the clay that lies around the well, and they splash it over the tree so that its limbs will never shrivel or rot.
It is not explained why they do this; we have to wonder if the tree is so exposed to heat, sun, or humidity that withering or decay might be serious problems.
We do read in Grímnismál stanza 35, that
The tree Yggdrasil
endures more pain
than any men guess.
It’s eaten from above by the deer,
on the side by rot,
from beneath by serpents.
The Creatures Living on Yggdrasil
In stanzas 32 to 34 of Grímnismál, we read the names of the creatures living on the tree Yggdrasil:
A squirrel is named Ratatosk,
he runs along
the trunk of Yggdrasil.
He takes the words
of the eagle, tells his insults
to Nithhogg below.
Nithhogg is the serpent that gnaws the root of the tree Yggdrasil that stretches into Hel.
An Ecosystem Around Yggdrasil
The poet of Grímnismál sees yet more of an ecosystem around Yggdrasil, whose foliage is eaten by deer and whose roots are crawling with serpents:
There are four deer
who stretch out their necks
and eat the leaves of Yggdrasil:
Dain and Dvalin,
Duneyr and Durathror.
No fool
has ever guessed how many
serpents lie beneath Yggdrasil.
I think that
Goin and Moin,
Grabak and Grafvolluth,
Ofnir and Svafnir,
sons of the snake Grafvitnir,
will always gnaw that tree’s roots.
So many names might overwhelm a present-day audience. However, all these names were meant more to impress the audience with alliteration, and with the reciter’s knowledge of arcane lore, than to provide context or information per se.
Common Questions about ‘Yggdrasill’
Snorri, in the Prose Edda, says that the gods found two pieces of driftwood. One was ash and the other piece was something called embla, which is often thought to mean the elm.
In what we can call the mythic present of Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is an enormous ash tree whose roots bind the realms.
Nithhogg is the serpent that gnaws the root of the tree Yggdrasil that stretches into Hel.
