Buch lesen: «Treasury of Norse Mythology: Stories of Intrigue, Trickery, Love, and Revenge»

THE COSMOS

The cosmos consisted of separate worlds arranged on three levels. In the middle level many creatures made a home. Humans had Midgard. Frost giants had Jotunheim.

The gods needed a home, too. Now up on the top level of the cosmos there was only one world at this point: Alfheim. That’s where the light elves lived, happy souls. So the sons of Bor chose to build a world for the gods up there, beside Alfheim. They named the world of the gods Asgard. It had spreading green meadows and splendid meeting halls.

By now the deities had multiplied and they had welcomed into their group various other creatures, friendly giants and elves. Odin was looked at as the father god; they called him Allfather. And the deities of this huge family called themselves the Aesir. They built a flaming rainbow bridge called Bifrost that spanned the distance from Midgard up to Asgard. Between Bifrost’s flames and the high rock wall that surrounded the world, others were blocked from invading Asgard. But Bifrost’s flames welcomed the Aesir; they simply shimmered in three colors under the gods’ galloping horses as they passed across into their new dwelling.

The Aesir built a hall from a single slab of gold, called Gladsheim, and it served as their court. They built a hall specifically for the goddesses, called Vingolf. They built a home with a forge and made hammers, tongs, anvils, all manner of tools, and furnished it well with goods of stone and wood and metal. The dishes they ate from were gold.

Odin built his own hall, Valaskjalf, and thatched it with sheer silver. He sat there on a high seat called Hlidskjalf, from which he could look out over all the worlds in the cosmos.

Those worlds now included one more: Vanaheim. The gods had split into two groups, the Aesir, who inhabited Asgard, and the Vanir, who lived in Vanaheim. The Aesir saw themselves as the true rulers of the cosmos. Given that attitude, it was no surprise that the feelings between the Aesir and the Vanir were less than friendly. So Odin watched Vanaheim with special care.

Odin ruled from his high seat, a helmet on his head and a raven on each shoulder. At his feet crouched two wolves, Geri and Freki, ravenous beasts who ate whatever food Odin dropped for them, which was abundant, since Odin himself lived only on wine. But these two wolves were also rumored to feed on nasty things—maybe even the corpses of men.

Center of the Cosmos

An ash tree stands in a field.

The center of the Norse cosmos was an ash tree named Yggdrasil, a legend that may have its origin in the Arctic Sami people. They build a house with hide stretched across poles. So, a tree was the center of the home. That Yggdrasil was an ash tree makes sense. Ash resists splitting, so it makes good bows and tool handles. It’s springy, so it makes good mountain-walking sticks. It burns well, even when freshly cut. And it’s very hard, so it doesn’t wear out quickly.

And there were many corpses to feed on, for humans were more fragile than gods. On the third and lowest level of the cosmos was the realm of the dead. It took nine days to ride northward and downward from Midgard to get there. It was the deep and frozen northern land of Niflheim. A hateful monster presided there, all pink down to her hips and then greenish black and decayed from hip to toes, with a huge, bloody-muzzled dog, Garm, baying at her side. She went by the name Hel, and many called her realm by her name. In those days, to die was to go to Hel.

Beyond these six worlds, there were three more, whose locations are murky, as is that of Vanaheim. Fire giants dwelled in the smoky landscape Muspell. Dwarfs had the mountain caves in the land called Nidavellir. Near them was Svartalfheim, the land of the dark elves. They were crabby, mysterious beings, as different from the light elves as the moon is from the sun.

Rising up through the center of it all was a mighty ash tree called Yggdrasil. Its branches shaded all the nine worlds, and it dripped a sugary dew that swarms of bees made honey from—the very first honeydew. Three gigantic roots held it up, one that went through low Niflheim, one that went through Jotunheim on the middle level, and one that went through the highest land, Asgard. Gnawing at the cold root in Niflheim was the dragon Nidhogg. The squirrel known as Ratatosk ran up and down Yggdrasil, carrying words of envy and insult between the dragon below and the eagle that circled its talons around the tree’s limbs. Four stags leaped through the highest boughs, nibbling at the leaves. And a goat called Heidrun chewed on its tender shoots. Yggdrasil groaned in agony, yet stood tall with nobility. It was the noblest of trees. It looked out over everything, and the knowledge of the worlds seeped into it.

The ash tree Yggdrasil rose in the middle level of the cosmos, but it stretched its roots down to the bottom level and its branches up into the top level, making a whole that would stand strong only so long as the tree stood strong.

All the animals romping and feeding on Yggdrasil seem ordinary except for the dragon Nidhogg. Serpentine dragons slither through the Norse myths, embodiments of the lurking dangers of the natural world.

With all this abuse, surely the magnificent tree would have withered but for the efforts of three Norns. Norns were giantesses who ruled the destinies of humans. There were many of them, some malevolent, some beneficent. They were the ones responsible for one man’s son dying of illness and another’s surviving that same illness, for one woman perishing in her first childbirth and another producing a dozen offspring and still planting and plowing with strength. They were present at the birth of every child and no one could escape the fate they assigned. Whenever anything strange happened, anything weird, everyone knew it was the work of the Norns. Three of these Norns, lovely maidens all, took to caring for Yggdrasil. One was Urd—Fate. One was Verdandi—Being. One was Skuld—Necessity. They watered Yggdrasil daily with the purest water from the sacred spring of destiny, and they whitened the bark with clay from that very spring, to make it shine as clean and new as the lining of an eggshell and to protect it from rot and decay.

Three special Norns tended Yggdrasil. They gave the tree water from a sacred spring and coated its bark with that spring’s clay to keep it from decaying with age.

Yggdrasil served every kind of creature in every world of the cosmos. This most central tree made a whole of the cosmos, and so it was the most sacred place of all. Everyone knew that when Yggdrasil finally would shake, everyone would curl in fear, for the end of everything as we know it would be at hand. Indeed, that may be why the hideous dragon Nidhogg tormented the tree—to put an end to what otherwise would be eternal. In the meantime, though, just the sight of Yggdrasil calmed the most frantic heart.