Yggdrasil · Cold and the Dead

The Serpents Beneath the Tree

The snakes that Grímnismál says lie under Yggdrasill’s ash, named with their father Grafvitnir.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

34. More serpents lie under Yggdrasil’s ash, than any one would think of witless mortals: Gôin and Môin,—they are Grafvitnir’s sons—Grâbak and Grafvöllud, Ofnir and Svafnir, will, I ween, the branches of that tree ever lacerate.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

“But there are so many snakes with Nidhogg in Hvergelmir that no tongue can recount them.”

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Grímnismál names six serpents under the ash: Góinn, Móinn, Grábakr, Grafvölluðr, Ófnir and Sváfnir. It calls Góinn and Móinn the sons of Grafvitnir, and says that the snakes will ever “lacerate” the branches. Grafvitnir is the father of the first two, not one more gnawer in the list. Níðhöggr is named in the next stanza, which describes the tree rotting at its side while Níðhöggr tears it from beneath.

Snorri uses the idea in Gylfaginning. After describing the three roots, he says that the root over Niflheim, with Hvergelmir beneath it, is gnawed by Níðhöggr, and that there are so many snakes with Níðhöggr in Hvergelmir that no tongue can count them. The poem does not mention Hvergelmir in this stanza.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

This edition’s glossary connects Grafvitnir with the verb grafa, “to dig”, but that is one older translator’s explanation, and the meanings of the other names are not given in the sources used here. The poem lists the serpents by name and says nothing more about any of them.

The list stands beside the four harts and the squirrel Ratatoskr, all creatures of the tree. Only Níðhöggr plays a part in a story, as the one who tears at the root and is carried messages by Ratatoskr, and the other serpents are known by name alone. Snorri does not name them in the passage translated by Blackwell.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

The six names and Grafvitnir occur in Grímnismál, stanza 34 in Thorpe’s numbering, with Níðhöggr in the stanza after it. Snorri’s Gylfaginning knows the serpents as a group that lives with Níðhöggr in Hvergelmir, and in the Blackwell translation it does not give their names. No archaeological or pictorial evidence is known for the serpents of the tree.