Yggdrasil · Fire
Muspelheim (Múspellsheimr)
The hot, bright world of fire, in the south.
In Blackwell’s translation
…there was in the southern region (sphere) the world called Muspell. It is a world too luminous and glowing to be entered by those who are not indigenous there. He who sitteth on its borders (or the land's-end) to guard it is named Surtur. In his hand he beareth a flaming falchion, and at the end of the world shall issue forth to combat, and shall vanquish all the gods, and consume the universe with fire.
- 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 Muspell 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, Múspellsheimr lies in the south of the creation, too bright and glowing for anyone not born there to enter. Surtr sits at its border to guard it, with a flaming sword, and at the end of the world he will go out to fight the gods and burn the universe. Sparks from it, meeting the frost from Niflheimr in Ginnungagap, begin the making of the world.
At Ragnarök the “sons of Muspell” ride through the broken sky, as Gylfaginning says, and Völuspá has Muspell’s people come over the sea on a ship from the east.
- attributed to Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning (13th century), the creation passage and the passage on Ragnarök
- Völuspá (Poetic Edda), stanza 50 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ)
Names and background
The origin of the name is uncertain. Wikipedia’s article offers a possible source in a form glossed as world-destroyers or wreck of the world, but relies only on two 19th-century works for this, so it should be treated cautiously. The realm is known mainly from the Prose Edda, where it is a place of fire guarded by Surtr, and it features in both creation and destruction: sparks from it melt the ice of Niflheim, and the sons of Muspell ride over Bifröst at Ragnarök.
The article's claim that it lies in the southern east part of Ginnungagap is tagged citation needed, and its own creation account just says south.
- Wikipedia contributors, Muspelheim (opens in a new tab)
Where the sources attest it
Snorri’s Gylfaginning describes Múspellsheimr as a bright, hot region guarded by Surtr, set against the cold of Niflheim. In the Poetic Edda the name Múspell occurs in Völuspá, stanza 50 in Thorpe’s numbering, where the people of Múspell come over the sea at Ragnarök with Loki, and in stanza 51 Surtr comes from the south. The poem gives the fire-people and Surtr in the final battle; the realm as a place from the start of the world is in Snorri.
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.
Later reception
Muspelheim appears in Marvel comics and films (Thor: The Dark World, 2013; Thor: Ragnarok, 2017) and in games including God of War and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Dawn of Ragnarök).