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Yggdrasil (from Old Norse Yggdrasill) is an immense and central sacred tree in Norse cosmology. Around it exists all else, including the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil is attested in the Poetic Edda compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and in the Prose Edda compiled in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson.
Norse cosmology is the account of the universe and its laws by the ancient North Germanic peoples. The topic encompasses concepts from Norse mythology and Old Norse religion such as notations of time and space, cosmogony, personifications, anthropogeny, and eschatology.
A river that separates the living from the dead in Norse mythology. Hel (heimr) The underworld in Norse mythology. Hvergelmir: A major spring in Norse mythology. Jotunheim: Land of the giants in Norse mythology. [5] Kvenland: A geographical area referred to in several medieval texts as well as in Norse sagas.
The afterlife is a complex matter in Norse mythology. The dead may go to the murky realm of Hel—a realm ruled over by a female being of the same name, may be ferried away by valkyries to Odin's martial hall Valhalla, or may be chosen by the goddess Freyja to dwell in her field Fólkvangr. [29]
In Norse mythology, Andlang (also Ǫndlangr) is described as the second heavenly realm which stretches between the first, containing the halls of the gods, and the third, named Vídbláin. [1] In all there are nine heavens according to Snorri. [2]
A kenning (Old English kenning [cʰɛnːiŋɡ], Modern Icelandic [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a circumlocution, an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech, used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse, Old English, and later Icelandic poetry. This list is not intended to be comprehensive. Kennings for a particular character are listed in that character ...
This drawing made by a 17th-century Icelander shows the four stags on the World Tree. Neither deer nor ash trees are native to Iceland. In Norse mythology, four stags or harts (male red deer) eat among the branches of the world tree Yggdrasill. According to the Poetic Edda, the stags crane their necks upward to chomp at the branches. The ...
There are hundreds of such words, and the list below does not aim at completeness. To be distinguished from loan words which date back to the Old English period are modern Old Norse loans originating in the context of Old Norse philology, such as kenning (1871), [a] and loans from modern Icelandic (such as geyser, 1781).