Yggdrasill, the World Tree

Its branches spread over the whole world, and even reach above heaven. It has three roots very wide asunder. One of them extends to the Æsir, another to the Frost-giants in that very place where was formerly Ginnungagap, and the third stands over Nifelheim, and under this root, which is constantly gnawed by Nidhogg, is Hvergelmir.

Both Eddas describe Yggdrasill as an immense ash. The name is usually understood as “Odin’s horse”, from Yggr, a name of Odin, though other explanations have been proposed. The tree is described in the poems Völuspá and Grímnismál and in the Gylfaginning part of the Prose Edda.

Three roots hold the tree up, according to Grímnismál and Gylfaginning, but the two sources say different things about what lies by each root. The sources do not give one consistent picture of the tree, so this site’s drawing sets the places out for readability and does not claim to show where anything lies.

The usual reading of the name is Odin's horse: Ygg(r) is one of Odin's names and drasill means horse, perhaps because hanging a man on a gallows could be spoken of as riding it. Not everyone agrees. Some scholars take the name to mean the tree itself, or the tree on which Odin's horse is tied, though both ideas rest on a form that is never attested. Other proposals are a tree of terror, or a yew pillar. Anatoly Liberman suggests the name first belonged to Odin's horse and was later reinterpreted as the world tree.

The poems and Snorri also disagree on where the roots lie: Grímnismál puts them beneath Hel, the frost giants and humanity, while the Prose Edda places them among the Æsir, the frost giants and Niflheim.