Yggdrasil · The World Tree and Its Places
The Four Harts
Four deer that eat the tree’s foliage.
In Thorpe’s translation
33. Harts there are also four, which from its summits, arch-necked, gnaw. Dâin and Dvalin, Duneyr and Durathrôr.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Grímnismál, stanza 33 (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
Four harts (a hart is a male deer), named Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór, eat the foliage of the tree, according to Grímnismál and Gylfaginning.
- 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)
Where the sources attest it
The four harts, Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór, are listed in Grímnismál, stanza 33 in Thorpe’s numbering, as gnawing the branches of Yggdrasill from the top. Snorri gives the same four names in Gylfaginning, where they run through the branches and bite the leaves. The two sources agree on the names and the action. A separate hart, Eikthyrnir, stands on Valhalla in Grímnismál and feeds Hvergelmir, and is not one of the four.
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.