Yggdrasil · Described Without a Place on the Map
Hoddmímis Holt
The wood where two people hide through Ragnarök and from whom humankind begins again.
In Thorpe’s translation
45. Lif and Lifthrasir; but they will be concealed in Hoddmimir's holt. The morning dews they will have for food. From, them shall men be born.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Vafþrúðnismál, stanza 45 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
What the sources say
Vafþrúðnismál says Líf and Lífþrasir will be hidden in Hoddmímir’s holt (wood), that morning dew will be their food, and that from them men shall be born. Gylfaginning says the same: during the fire of Surtr a woman named Líf and a man named Lífþrasir lie hidden in Hoddmímir’s wood, and their descendants will soon spread over the whole earth.
The sources do not say where the wood is, so it has no dot on the map.
- Vafþrúðnismál (Poetic Edda), stanza 45 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ)
- attributed to Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning (13th century), the passage on the world after Ragnarök
Names and background
The name is usually glossed as Hoard-Mímir's wood, and it is linked in Wikipedia’s article with Mímameiðr (Mímir's tree) and Mímisbrunnr (Mímir's well). It appears in two 13th-century texts, Vafþrúðnismál and Gylfaginning, as the hiding place of the two who survive the fire and winter.
Most scholars take it as another name for Yggdrasil, but with variations. John Lindow and others suggest the three places may be one, or imagined close together. Carolyne Larrington notes that the sources never say what becomes of Yggdrasil at Ragnarök, and Rudolf Simek argues the name is a figure for the world tree, not a literal wood.
Simek compares ideas found outside the Eddas: a Bavarian legend, known from F. R. Schröder’s 1931 retelling, of a shepherd who lives inside a tree and whose descendants repopulate the land after a plague, and the figure of Örvar-Oddr in Ǫrvar-Odds saga, rejuvenated after living as a tree-man. He uses them to argue that humanity springing from trees is an old Germanic idea. Wikipedia’s article does not date them, so they are comparisons and not early evidence.
- Wikipedia contributors, Hoddmímis holt (opens in a new tab)
Where the sources attest it
Hoddmímis holt, “Hoddmímir’s wood”, is where two people survive Ragnarök. Vafþrúðnismál stanza 45 (Bellows’s numbering) names it; Bellows thinks it is probably the ash Yggdrasill, sometimes called Mímir’s tree because Mímir waters it from his well, and takes Hoddmímir to be another name for Mímir, citing Völuspá 27 and Svipdagsmál 30. Snorri tells the story in Gylfaginning: Líf and Lífþrasir hide in the wood during Surtr’s fire, live on morning dew and become the parents of a new humankind. He quotes a stanza about them.
Whether the wood is the tree or a separate place is a scholarly reading that the sources do not settle. No archaeological evidence is cited.
- Vafþrúðnismál (Poetic Edda), 45
- Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation) (opens in a new tab) (1916), Gylfaginning LIII Rights: Public domain. Chapter numbers follow this edition.