Yggdrasil · The World Tree and Its Places
Hvergelmir
A spring beneath the root over Niflheim, where Níðhöggr and many snakes live.
In Blackwell’s translation
…was Niflheim formed, in the middle of which lies the spring called Hvergelmir, from which flow twelve rivers, Gjoll being the nearest to the gate of the abode of death.
- I. A. Blackwell (translator), The Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson (the Prose Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Gylfaginning, the creation passage on Niflheim Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
What the sources say
In Gylfaginning, Hvergelmir lies beneath the root of the tree that reaches over Niflheim. The creature Níðhöggr gnaws that root, and many snakes live there with him.
- attributed to Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning (13th century), chapters XV-XVI (Brodeur translation)
- Wikipedia contributors, Yggdrasil (opens in a new tab)
Names and background
The name is glossed as a bubbling, boiling spring (Andy Orchard). The two Eddas differ in how much they say. In Grímnismál it is the spring into which liquid drips from the stag Eikþyrnir, the source of all waters, followed by long lists of rivers, some running to the gods’ homes and at least two to Hel. Snorri adds that it lies in Niflheim, is one of three springs at the roots of the tree, and is full of snakes and the dragon Níðhöggr. The two Eddas also count the rivers differently, and the details about Niflheim, the snakes and Níðhöggr appear only in the Prose Edda.
- Wikipedia contributors, Hvergelmir (opens in a new tab)
Where the sources attest it
The well is named in the Poetic Edda in Grímnismál, stanza 26 in Thorpe’s numbering, where drops from the horns of the hart Eikthyrnir fall into it and it is called the source of all waters. Stanza 31 of the same poem places Hel under one of the three roots of the ash. In Snorri’s Gylfaginning Hvergelmir lies in Niflheim and the Élivágar rivers flow from it; the dragon Níðhöggr gnaws the root of the ash there. The poem and the prose therefore agree that Hvergelmir is a source of waters, but only Snorri puts the dragon at its roots in this passage.
Snorri’s Prose Edda survives in several medieval manuscripts, chiefly Codex Regius, Codex Wormianus and the Uppsala manuscript, so the Gylfaginning accounts rest on those copies rather than on a single text.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
- Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation) (opens in a new tab) (1916) Rights: Public domain. Chapter numbers follow this edition.