# Norse Mythology How the Norse myths place gods, giants and the dead around the world tree Yggdrasil, with its three wells, Bifröst, Thor's hammer and the foretold Ragnarök\. By PETE\! Topic: Stories & Mythology [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/0xgPsB1vdgV4) ## Transcript ### 1. Norse Mythology The Norse myths picture the whole cosmos held by one immense ash tree, Yggdrasil\. Gods, giants, elves, dwarves, humans and the dead all live in worlds around its branches and roots\. Drag empty space to turn the tree\. Most of these stories survive in two Icelandic books from the 1200s: the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda\. ### 2. Three roots, three wells The tree has three roots\. One reaches Urðarbrunnr, the well of fate, where the Norns Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld live\. Another reaches Mímir's well of wisdom, and the third reaches the spring Hvergelmir in icy Niflheim\. ### 3. Ice, fire and the first giant Before the worlds there was Ginnungagap, an empty gap between icy Niflheim in the north and fiery Muspelheim in the south\. Where the heat met the rime, the ice melted and formed the giant Ymir\. Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé later killed Ymir and built the world from him: earth from his flesh, sea from his blood, sky from his skull\. ### 4. The nine worlds The poem Völuspá speaks of nine worlds around the tree\. A common modern list is Asgard, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Midgard, Jötunheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Muspelheim and Hel\. No old text gives a map, so this layout is one modern picture\. Humans live in Midgard, the middle world, shown here as the green land around the trunk\. ### 5. Bifröst, the burning bridge Bifröst links Midgard with Asgard, home of the Æsir gods\. The Prose Edda says it has three colours, and its red is burning fire that keeps the frost giants out\. The god Heimdallr lives beside it and guards it\. ### 6. Life in the branches Yggdrasil is busy\. An eagle sits at the top, the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the trunk carrying insults, four stags browse the branches, and the dragon Níðhöggr gnaws at a root below\. A hawk called Veðrfölnir sits between the eagle's eyes\. ### 7. Mjölnir, Thor's hammer The dwarves Brokkr and Sindri forged Mjölnir for Thor\. Loki, as a fly, bit Brokkr at the bellows, so the handle came out short\. Thrown, the hammer always returns to Thor's hand\. Throw it and watch it come back\. About a thousand small hammer pendants survive from the 800s to the 1000s, made of iron, silver, amber and lead\. ### 8. Ragnarök and a green return The myths foretell Ragnarök, a last battle in which many gods fall, Bifröst breaks and the world sinks into the sea\. It is not the end: the earth rises again, green, and two people, Líf and Lífþrasir, come out of the tree to begin again\.