Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd

Yggdrasil by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (1847)

At the center of the Norse spiritual cosmos is an ash tree, Yggdrasil (pronounced IG-druh-sill;
Old Norse Askr Yggdrasils), which grows out of the Well of Urd (Old Norse Urarbrunnr). The
Nine Worlds are held in the branches and roots of the tree. The name Askr Yggdrasils probably
strikes most modern people as being awkwardly complex. It means the ash tree of the horse
of Yggr.*1+ Yggr means The Terrible One, and is a byname of Odin. The horse of Odin is
Sleipnir. This may seem like a puzzling name for a tree, but it makes sense when one considers
that the tree as a means of transportation between worlds is a common theme in Eurasian
shamanism.[2] Odin rides Sleipnir up and down Yggdrasils trunk and through its branches on
his frequent journeys throughout the Nine Worlds. Urd (pronounced URD; Old Norse Urr,
Old English Wyrd) means destiny. The Well of Urd could therefore just as aptly be called the
Well of Destiny.

One of the poems in the Poetic Edda, Vlusp or The Insight of the Seeress, describes the
scene thus:

There stands an ash called Yggdrasil,

A mighty tree showered in white hail.
From there come the dews that fall in the valleys.
It stands evergreen above Urds Well.

From there come maidens, very wise,

Three from the lake that stands beneath the pole.
One is called Urd, another Verdandi,
Skuld the third; they carve into the tree
The lives and destinies of children.[3]

These three maidens are the Norns, and their carvings consist of runes, the magical alphabet
of the ancient Germanic peoples.

In addition to the inhabitants of the Nine Worlds, several beings live in, on, or under the tree
itself. The Eddic poem Grmnisml, The Song of the Hooded One, mentions many of them
but, unfortunately, only in passing. An anonymous eagle perches in the upper branches of the

tree. A number of dragons or snakes, most notably Nidhogg, gnaw at the roots from below. A
squirrel, Ratatosk, carries messages (presumably malicious ones) between Nidhogg and the
eagle. Four deer, Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Dyrathror, nibble the highest shoots.[4]

A Model of Time and Destiny

Its important to keep in mind that the image of Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd is a myth, and
therefore portrays the perceived meaning or essence of something rather than merely
describing the things physical characteristics. Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd werent thought of
as existing in a single physical location, but rather dwell within the invisible heart of anything
and everything.

Fundamentally, this image expresses the indigenous Germanic perspective on the concepts of
time and destiny.

As Paul Bauschatz points out in his landmark study The Well and the Tree: World and Time in
Early Germanic Culture, Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd correspond to the two tenses of
Germanic languages. Even modern English, a Germanic language, still has only two tenses: 1)
the past tense, which includes events that are now over (It rained) as well as those that
began in the past and are still happening (It has been raining), and 2) the present tense,
which describes events that are currently happening (It is raining). Unlike Romance
languages such as Spanish or French, for example, Germanic languages have no true future
tense. Instead, they use certain verbs in the present tense to express something similar to
futurity, such as will or shall (I will go to the party or It shall rain). Rather than
futurity, however, what these verbs express could more accurately be called intention or
necessity.

The Well of Urd corresponds to the past tense. It is the reservoir of completed or ongoing
actions that nourish the tree and influence its growth. Yggdrasil, in turn, corresponds to the
present tense, that which is being actualized here and now.

What of intention and necessity, then? This is the water that permeates the image, flowing up
from the well into the tree, dripping from the leaves of the tree as dew, and returning to the
well, where it then seeps back up into the tree.[5]

Here, time is cyclical rather than linear. The present returns to the past, where it retroactively
changes the past. The new past, in turn, is reabsorbed into a new present, whose originality is
an outgrowth of the give-and-take between the waters of the well and the the waters of the
tree.

This provides a framework within which we can understand the Germanic view of destiny. The
residents of the Well of Urd, the Norns, design the earliest form of the destinies of all of the
beings who live in the Nine Worlds of Yggdrasil, from humans to slugs to gods to giants. In
contrast to the Greek concept of fate, however, all beings who are subject to destiny have
some degree of agency in shaping their own destiny and the destinies of others this is the
dew that falls back into the well from the branches of the tree, accordingly reshaping the past
and its influence upon the present. All beings do this passively; those who practice magic do it
actively. (In fact, one could accurately say that, in the surviving accounts of the practice of
magic in ancient Germanic societies, magic is viewed as being precisely the process of gaining a
greater degree of control over destiny.) There is no absolutely free will, just as there is no
absolutely unalterable fate; instead, life is lived somewhere between these two extremes. A
fuller discussion of the ancient Germanic view of destiny can be found here.

Creation as an Ongoing Process

When we consider the elements of time and destiny together, we arrive at a fascinating and
compelling model of the process of creation itself. While Norse mythology does contain a tale
that can be considered a creation narrative, that tale only tells of the initial shaping of the
cosmos. In the image of Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd, we find a continuation of this tale.
Creation is an ongoing process in which everything, from a goddess to a speck of dirt,
participates. In the well-known Christian model of creation, one being (God) made the world
all by himself in a single act that occurred at some specific point in the past. As a result, all
beings are nothing more than his Creation, defined and determined by his omnipotent will.
By contrast, the Germanic model implicitly claims that we are all created creators, carrying
forward the worlds ceaseless reinvention of itself. As the famous naturalist and
conservationist John Muir wrote, I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in
contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have
discovered that I also live in creations dawn.*6+

If you enjoyed this article, check out my book on the worldview at the heart of Norse
mythology, The Love of Destiny: The Sacred and the Profane in Germanic Polytheism.

And if youd like to keep up with my ongoing work here and elsewhere, the best way to do so
is to follow me on Google+: Dan McCoy.

References:

[1] Simek, Rudolf. 1993. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall. p. 375.

[2] Eliade, Mircea. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by Willard
Trask. p. 37.

[3] My own translation. The original Old Norse verses are:

19.
Ask veit ek standa,
heitir Yggdrasils,
hr bamr, ausinn
hvta auri;
aan koma dggvar,
rs dala falla,
stendr yfir grnn
Urarbrunni.

20.
aan koma meyjar
margs vitandi
rjr r eim s,
er und olli stendr;
Ur htu eina,
ara Verandi,
skru ski,
Skuld ina riju;
r lg lgu,
r lf kuru
alda brnum,
rlg seggja.

[4] The Poetic Edda. Grmnisml, stanzas 32-34.

[5] Bauschatz, Paul C. 1982. The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture.

[6] Muir, John. 1938. John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir. p. 72.