Yggdrasil · The World Tree and Its Places
Ratatoskr
A squirrel that carries messages up and down the tree.
In Thorpe’s translation
32. Ratatösk is the squirrel named, which, has to run in Yggdrasil's ash; he from above the eagle's words must carry, and beneath to Nidhögg repeat.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Grímnismál, stanza 32 (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
Ratatoskr is a squirrel that runs up and down the tree carrying words between the eagle at the top and Níðhöggr below (Grímnismál and Gylfaginning). Gylfaginning says the words he carries are envious ones.
- Grímnismál (Poetic Edda)
- 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 usually read as drill-tooth or bore-tooth, the second element being toskr, tusk. Guðbrandur Vigfússon thought the first element meant traveller; Sophus Bugge argued the name was an Old English loan meaning rat-tooth, pointing out that -toskr occurs nowhere else in Old Norse. Albert Sturtevant rejected that, saying Rata- is a native word for a boring tool (it appears in Hávamál), and later scholars such as Byock, Orchard, Simek and Lindow follow him. The sources also differ in tone. Grímnismál has the squirrel carry messages between the eagle and Níðhöggr, whereas Snorri has it spread slander that stirs them up.
- Wikipedia contributors, Ratatoskr (opens in a new tab)
Where the sources attest it
Ratatoskr is named in Grímnismál, stanza 32 in Thorpe’s numbering, as a squirrel that runs up and down the ash Yggdrasill, carrying the eagle’s words to Níðhöggr below. Snorri retells this in Gylfaginning, where the squirrel carries envious words between the eagle and the dragon. Both sources give the animal a messenger’s role. The poem is the earlier witness for the name; Snorri adds the framing of the squirrel as a source of strife between the two creatures. No other medieval text in the sources consulted describes it, and there is no known pictorial or archaeological evidence naming it.
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
Ratatoskr appears in Marvel Comics (a shapeshifting troublemaker created by Ryan North), the games Smite, God of War Ragnarök, La-Mulana 2 and Fire Emblem Heroes, Katherine Rundell's novel Impossible Creatures, and songs by two Viking metal bands.
Related
- Níðhöggr Ratatoskr carries messages to and from Níðhöggr