Where is yggdrasil located

Buy as a Print. Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing. Medium Images. Style Illustrations. Norse mythology 2. Source Various. Want this image on your wall? Buy Print. If You Liked This…. Find Out More. The third well is that of the wise being Mimir , and it and its root lie in the realm of the giants. However, some of the elements he includes may have been drawn from legitimate sources that are now lost to us.

But what about the Nine Worlds themselves? How are they arranged around Yggdrasil? The Old Norse sources never tell us — and, for that matter, they never tell us which worlds comprise the Nine in the first place. Nevertheless, there are some clues in the sources that might enable us to construct a tentative and partial schema of where some of the Nine Worlds would have been generally thought to be located. They seem to have been arranged along two axes, one vertical, the other horizontal. The horizontal axis would be based on the distinction the Vikings made between the innangard and utangard.

As for the other worlds: who knows? In any case, we can see how vital to the Norse worldview Yggdrasil was felt to be by the number of earthly trees the Vikings treated as representations of the great world-tree. This magic is embodied in the marvelous account of the Norse World Tree. According to the legends, Yggdrasil is a gargantuan living ash tree with branches extending above the heavens and a trunk strongly latched into the ground by three great roots.

Here, the gods assemble and meet, seek sustenance from its life-giving branches, and watch over the worlds. Radiating from this center span the nine realms of existence, including Asgard, the home of the gods and the hall of Valhalla, and Midgard, the land of the human mortals.

An anonymous eagle sits in the top of its branches in constant conflict with an evil serpent, Nidhogg, who tries to unbalance the tree by chewing through one of its roots. This ever-green ash tree has been found in various texts, including the famous Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda. The latter is an unnamed collection of anonymous poems which contains the text from Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius , the prime source of Norse mythology.

The Prose Edda is a collection of books written by 13th century Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson.