Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil (Old Norse Yggdrasill, "Odin's horse" or "Terrible One's steed") is the great World Ash of Norse mythology, the cosmic tree at the centre of all existence whose branches and roots connect and contain the nine worlds. From its three great roots draw the wells of Urðr, Mímir, and Hvergelmir; in its branches dwell the eagle and the squirrel Ratatoskr; gnawing at its roots is the serpent Níðhöggr; its trunk is the world's axis. Odin hanged himself upon it for nine nights to win the runes. It withstands every storm and even survives Ragnarök, sheltering the human pair Líf and Lífþrasir from whom the new world is reborn.
Myth and origin
Yggdrasil's name is unusual. Yggr ("Terrible One") is one of Odin's many by-names; drasill means "steed" or "horse." The compound "Odin's horse" refers to the gallows: the tree is called Odin's mount because he rode it (i.e., hanged from it) in the great self-sacrifice of the Hávamál. Some scholars have proposed alternative etymologies, but the gallows-tree reading is the consensus. The world-tree archetype is pan-Indo-European and indeed pan-Eurasian, with parallels in Siberian shamanism, the Irminsul of the continental Germans, the Kalpavriksha of India, the Tree of Life of Kabbalah, and many others.
The chief sources are the Poetic Edda—particularly the Völuspá, the Grímnismál, and the Hávamál—and Snorri's Prose Edda (c. 1220), whose Gylfaginning describes the tree systematically: "The Ash is the greatest and best of all trees. Its limbs spread out over all the world and reach across the heavens. Three of the tree's roots support it and reach very, very far." Snorri elaborates the inhabitants, the wells, and the cosmic tensions. The Grímnismál contains the most detailed description of the tree's inhabitants and travails. The tree is paralleled in archaeological finds (the cosmic-tree imagery of the Oseberg tapestry, runestone iconography) and in the long Germanic tradition of sacred groves and pillars.
Attributes and stories
You recognise Yggdrasil as the cosmic tree connecting the nine worlds: Asgard (gods), Vanaheim (Vanir), Álfheimr (light elves), Miðgarðr (humans), Jötunheimr (giants), Svartálfheimr (dwarves), Niflheim (mist), Múspellsheimr (fire), and Helheim (dead). Three roots reach down—one to the well of Urðr where the Norns weave fate, one to Mímir's well of wisdom from which Odin drank at the cost of an eye, one to Hvergelmir, the bubbling spring beside which Níðhöggr gnaws. In the branches sits an unnamed eagle with the hawk Veðrfölnir on his brow. The squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the trunk bearing insults between the eagle above and the serpent below.
Four stags graze on the tree's fresh shoots; the goat Heiðrún and the hart Eikþyrnir browse beside Valhalla; serpents gnaw with Níðhöggr at the roots. The tree suffers constant attack and yet endures, watered each day by the Norns from the well of Urðr to keep it living. Odin's self-sacrifice on it—"nine nights I hung on a windy tree, wounded with a spear, given to Odin, myself to myself, on that tree of which no one knows from what roots it springs"—is the great initiatory moment of Norse mythology, the winning of the runes through suspended ordeal. At Ragnarök the tree shudders and groans, but survives. In its hollow shelter Líf ("life") and Lífþrasir ("life-yearner") survive the destruction and emerge to repopulate the renewed world.
Modern reception
Yggdrasil has become one of the most iconic images of Norse mythology in modern culture. It features in countless novels, games (God of War: Ragnarök, The Banner Saga, Smite), and films, and is one of the most popular tattoo designs in Norse Heathenry. Wagner's Ring features the ash-tree from which Wotan tore his spear-staff (the gesture that mortally wounds the world). Tolkien's Two Trees of Valinor and the White Tree of Gondor draw deeply on Yggdrasil's archetype. The world-tree image has been universalised in modern ecological and spiritual discourse, often cited alongside the Tree of Life and the World Tree of indigenous cosmologies.
In contemporary Heathen practice Yggdrasil is the cosmic frame within which all ritual, divination, and meditation are situated. Modern shamanic and trance practitioners journey the tree as the indigenous Norse shaman did, ascending and descending its branches and roots to visit the nine worlds. Astrologically the tree corresponds to the entire zodiacal wheel and to the axis-mundi of all astrology, with particular resonance to Jupiter (growth, the great benefic tree-planet) and to Saturn (the cosmic structure). It anchors the entire system of the runes. Continue with Odin, Ragnarök, and the mythological deity test.
Symbolic depth
In the tarot, Yggdrasil corresponds most clearly to The World (XXI) as the totality of cosmic being, to The Hanged Man (XII) as the tree of initiatory ordeal, and to The Wheel of Fortune (X) in its turning of the nine worlds. The High Priestess (II) sits between its trunk-pillars. On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Yggdrasil is the closest Northern analogue to the Etz Chaim itself, both being world-trees that map the levels of being.
Jungian readings see Yggdrasil as the Self in its cosmic dimension—the unifying structure that holds together the disparate worlds of psyche (conscious and unconscious, ego and shadow, anima/animus, persona, archetypes) into a single living tree. The constant gnawing at its roots and the squirrel's chatter between eagle and serpent dramatise the ceaseless tension between conscious and unconscious that the Self contains without resolving. Working with this archetype invites you to find your own axis-mundi, the living tree of your own being, and to accept that even your Ragnarök will not destroy what is most essentially you. Return to the main glossary.
Also known as
- World Ash
- World Tree
- Mímameiðr
- Tree of the Cosmos
- Odin's Gallows
- Læraðr