that the gods feasted upon its fruits, and that souls were born among its branches. It was characteristic of this World Tree that its life was renewed continually: thus it became a symbol of the constant regeneration of the universe, and offered to men the means of attaining immortality. Sometimes it was symbolized in shamanistic ritual by a post with steps cut in it, a ladder, or a small birch tree, up which the shaman climbed to indicate his ascent to the heavens. When he entered into his state of ecstasy, he was believed to pass through a series of heavens, one above the other, until at last he penetrated in his flight into the highest realm of the gods. So in Norse mythology the beliefs about the nature of the world of the gods are inextricably linked with the powerful symbol of the World Tree. This marked resemblance to the beliefs of the Finno-Ugric and other eastern peoples is very significant for our understanding of the religious thought of the heathen peoples of the north.
At certain points in the Edda poems we find the inference that the realm of the gods was not at one level in space, but viewed as a series of worlds, one above the other. The seeress in Voluspa begins by remembering nine worlds, ‘nine in the Tree’. On Odin’s seat Hli?skjalf the god could sit out and look over ‘all the worlds’, suggesting that this seat may have been in the tree itself.1 Clearly these worlds must not be thought to lie close together; only in the visionary gaze of Odin or of the inspired seeress could they thus be glimpsed as one. The plan of a small neat universe which might be suggested by Snorri’s description is soon destroyed by the picture given many times of a long and perilous journey from one world to another over mountains and desolate wastes of cold and darkness, or of a tedious and fearsome road down to the abode of the dead. Long before astronomy revealed to men the terrifying extent of the great starry spaces, the idea of vastness and of distances to tantalize the mind was already present in heathen thought. In Norse mythology also, as in that of many other peoples further east, we find the image of a bridge that links the worlds. This may be fragile and steeply poised above the abyss, as thin as a needle or a sword-edge, so that only the man with tremendous mantic power may cross it. When Hermod rode to seek Balder, he rode over the Gjallarbru, the ‘echoing bridge’, and the hoofs of Sleipnir rang out loudly upon it. We hear also of the bridge Bifrost, a rainbow span of three colours, or sometimes called a bridge of flame, which linked earth and heaven. Over this the gods rode each day, and Snorri connects it with the Milky Way, the road of stars across the sky. This bridge was to be shattered by the enemy hosts at Ragnarok.
We hear also of a great gate, called by various names (Helgrind, Nagrind, Valgrind), which cut off the realm of the living from that of the dead, and over which Sleipnir leapt when he bore Hermod down to Hel. When the dead return to visit the earth, this gate is said to stand open for their passage. There is also mention of rushing waters to be crossed. But while we have thus the impression of boundaries and barriers and great distances, the idea of the World Tree as a fixed and eternal centre persists through the confusion, an image of tremendous power.
This image indeed appears to have once dominated the religious thought of much of Europe and Asia. The main lines can probably be traced to ancient Iranian and Mesopotamian religions, and the conception is one which has had wide and lasting effect on literature and art. Even the creatures which are said to inhabit Yggdrasill can be paralleled in the myths and legends of other regions. The eagle at the top and the serpent at the foot have been traced back to prehistoric monuments. In south Borneo, where the tree represents the cosmos in its entirety, the feminine principle is represented by the serpent, and this battles continually with the masculine principle, the eagle. Their strife is said ultimately to destroy the tree, but it always springs up anew. Hostility between the serpent and the bird is also found in pre-Homeric Greece. Thus when we learn from the Edda that the tree constantly suffers attack, both from the serpent at the foot and from the hart that gnaws its branches, we are dealing with a conception that is very old and widespread throughout Europe and Asia:
The Ash Yggdrasill endures anguish,
more than men know.
A hart gnaws it on high, it rots at the side,
while Ni?hoggr devours it below.
We are told in the same poem, Grimnismal, that a squirrel, called Ratatosk, runs up and down the tree, carrying messages – presumably hostile ones – between serpent and eagle. The battle between a serpent and an eagle is something which does indeed take place in nature; it was filmed with considerable effect by Walt Disney in The Living Desert. Its value as a symbol is obvious: the eagle, bird of heaven, and the serpent, creature of the earth, are fundamentally in opposition. The shaman, like the squirrel, can act as a link between them, for man, if he fully realizes the possibilities of his dual nature, can partake both of earth and heaven.
The meaning of the name Yggdrasill has not been finally determined. The usual interpretation is ‘horse of Ygg’, for Ygg is one of the names of Odin. One would expect to find the genitive form of the name, Yggsdrasill, in this case, but apart from this difficulty, it is an interpretation fruitful in meaning. The tree could be the horse of Odin in the sense that he hung upon it as a sacrifice (see p. 144). To ride on the gallows is found as a familiar expression in Old English and Old Norse, and in one of the King’s sagas the dream of a great horse is taken as a portent of death by hanging. Besides Yggdrasill, the Tree has other names: L?ra?r, ‘shelterer’, Hoddmimir, ‘treasure of Mimir’, Mimamei?r, ‘pole of Mimir’. It seems clear that the World Tree is referred to in each case, and that it is visualized as affording both shelter and nourishment. The spring at its foot is connected with Mimir (see page 167) and also with Urd, the Norn of destiny. Snorri at one point speaks of three springs, one under each main root of the tree, but it seems more likely that there is one spring only, like that below the tree beside the temple at Uppsala, and that this spring, like the tree itself, had many names.
It is said that the ash is sprinkled with aurr from the spring; the meaning of this word is uncertain, but de Vries1 takes it to mean clear, shining water. We are told that dew comes from the tree, and that when the hart feeds on its branches, her milk becomes shining mead which never gives out, and is used to provide drink for the warriors in Valhalla. It is said also that a man and woman are hidden in the tree during the terrible winter which devastates the earth when the end of all things draws near. They are nourished on morning dew, and Rydberg made the suggestion that another obscure name given to the tree, Mjotvi?r, should really be Mjo?vi?r, ‘mead tree’, because of this conception of its life-giving liquid. Here again we have something in common with the milk-giving tree of the Finno- Ugric peoples, a symbol which must go back ultimately to Mesopotamia, and be of great antiquity.
Another aspect of the tree is that it is the source of new life. Not only do a man and a woman come forth from it to re-people the earth, but the Norns, who are said to dwell beneath it and water it from the spring, are connected with the birth of children. It is said in the poem Svipdagsmal that the tree has the power of healing, and that its fruits are burned in the fire and given to women in childbirth, ‘that what is within may pass out’. This seems to agree with the widespread shamanistic idea that the tree is the source of unborn souls. Some of the Finno-Ugric peoples believe that the souls of the unborn congregate on its boughs, and that the destinies of men are written on its leaves, so that when a leaf falls, a man dies. This particular symbolism plays a very important part in the initiation dreams of shamans in many different regions of northern and central Asia.
Such close resemblances between the Scandinavian picture of the World Tree and the recorded beliefs of the Finno-Ugric people from more recent times are so striking that they can hardly be explained by a common European heritage of pre-Christian belief. Admittedly certain ideas connected with the tree seem to be very old, and we know too that the Germanic peoples had the idea of a World Pillar, associated with the cult of the supreme sky god. In a Saxon Chronicle of about 970 written by Widukind, there is a description of the setting up of a column in honour of Mars, to celebrate the victory of the Saxons against the Thuringians. He states that the name of Mars was Hermin. Another chronicle, written about thirty years after the event it describes, records how Charles the Great destroyed the temple and the sacred wood of Irminsul of the Saxons. Irminsul is mentioned again by a ninth-century writer, who states that it was the ‘column of the universe, upholding all things’. It is thought that Irmin was another name for the sky god, Tiwaz, among the Saxons, and that the World Pillar, which upheld the sky, was associated with his worship.1 However the clarity and detail of the picture of Yggdrasill is such as to suggest that new inspiration concerning the World Tree had come into Scandinavia from the east during the Viking age. The penetration of the Viking settlers down the rivers of Russia to the Black Sea opened the road to Byzantium and the East, and there must have been links between the Swedes and the Asiatic tribes, with their shamanistic lore.
The image of the tree that occupied the centre of the world did not wholly die out. It was replaced by the conception of the Christian cross, believed to stand at the mid point of the earth when it was raised at Calvary, at
