Asgard (Ásgarðr)

Then the sons of Bor built in the middle of the universe the city called Asgard, where dwell the gods and their kindred, and from that abode work out so many wondrous things, both on the earth and in the heavens above it.

In Gylfaginning the sons of Borr build a city in the middle of the universe called Ásgarðr, where the gods and their kin live. Odin’s seat Hlidskjalf is there, and the gods meet in the hall Gladsheim on the plain Iðavöllr. Grímnismál names the separate dwellings of individual gods, among them Þrúðheimr, Ýdalir and Valaskjálf. A later story in Gylfaginning tells how a builder was hired to make a wall around it.

The sources do not say where Ásgarðr lies in relation to the other worlds, beyond “in the middle”.

The Old Norse name Ásgarðr joins áss, a god, to garðr, an enclosure, so it reads roughly as the enclosure of the Æsir. The sources do not agree on where it lies. Snorri's Prologue and Gylfaginning identify it with Troy, and Ynglinga saga makes it the capital of Asaland in Asia, east of the river Don, a link Wikipedia’s article attributes to a confusion between Asia and Æsir. Elsewhere it is placed beyond the rainbow bridge, in the middle of the world, or across the sea.

The poems themselves name Asgard only twice, in Hymiskviða and Þrymskviða. Some scholars doubt that the old stories ever fitted one consistent map; one suggestion is that the realms were joined by passages not normally open to travellers, which would explain the shifting locations.