Yggdrasil · Gods and Their Allies

Ýdalir

The home of the god Ullr, named once in Grímnismál, with no further description.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

5. Ydalir it is called, where Ullr has himself a dwelling made. Alfheim the gods to Frey gave in days of yore for a tooth-gift.

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Grímnismál gives Ýdalir one short line: it is the place where Ullr has made himself a dwelling. It comes in the speaker’s opening list of the gods’ homes, in the same stanza as Álfheimr, which the gods gave to Freyr as a tooth-gift. The stanza before it calls the land holy and says it lies near the Æsir and the elves.

The poem says nothing more about the place: no description of the hall, no deeds, no direction. Snorri’s Gylfaginning, in the translation used here, does not name it, so Grímnismál is the only source for the name.

  • Grímnismál (Poetic Edda), stanza 5
Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The name is generally read as “yew dales”, from ýr, “yew”, and dalir, “dales”, a plural. Yew was the wood of bows, which suits Ullr as other sources describe him, but this poem does not make that link itself.

Ýdalir belongs to the run of dwellings that Odin, speaking as Grímnir, names: Þrúðheimr (Thor), Ýdalir (Ullr), Álfheimr (Freyr), Valaskjálf, Sökkvabekkr and others. The texts do not put these places on any map.

  • Grímnismál (Poetic Edda), stanza 5
Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Ýdalir is named in Grímnismál, stanza 5 in Thorpe’s numbering, and nowhere in Snorri’s Gylfaginning in the translation used here. It is a place name from a medieval Icelandic poem. No excavated site, image or inscription is known for it. The poem is the only place the name survives, so what is known about the hall is limited to the single line quoted above. Grímnismál is a poem in which Odin, in disguise, lists the homes of the gods.

  • Grímnismál (Poetic Edda), stanza 5