The Nine Worlds of Norse Mythology
Explore the nine worlds of Norse mythology: Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Muspelheim, Niflheim, and Helheim.
The Norse cosmos is composed of nine worlds, each one home to a particular class of being. The enumeration is given most clearly in the Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda, with confirmations in the Poetic Edda and the late Heimskringla. The nine worlds are not simply different places; they are different modes of being — bright and dark, upper and lower, divine and monstrous, mortal and immortal — and the structure of being is, in a sense, the structure of the tree Yggdrasil on which they are all hung.
This page is an encyclopedic survey of the nine worlds: their location, their inhabitants, their relations, and the symbolic meaning of their number. The first three — Asgard, Midgard, and Jotunheim — are the principal ones for the human drama. The next three — Vanaheim, Alfheim, and Svartalfheim — are the worlds of the second-tier divine beings. The final three — Muspelheim, Niflheim, and Helheim — are the elemental and chthonic worlds of fire, ice, and death.
The Number Nine
The number nine is the most common in the structure of the Norse cosmos. There are nine worlds; there are nine nights of Odin’s self-sacrifice; there are nine mothers of Heimdall; there are nine rings in the Völuspá’s “Lord of the Gallows” stanza; there are nine waves of the great sea; there are nine steps to the high seat of Odin; there are nine hundred warriors in the Einherjar of Valhalla. The significance of the number in Norse tradition is debated, but it is generally agreed that it has a particular ritual and cosmological weight. The most likely origin is the lunar month (28 days, divided into four nine-day weeks) combined with the late Iron Age / Viking Age practice of nine-day feasts and nine-night sacrifices.
The fact that the same number is used to count worlds, mothers, nights, and waves suggests that the number nine is a fundamental structuring principle of the Norse cosmos, a way of organizing the universe into a coherent and multiplicable whole. The nine worlds, in this sense, are not arbitrary; they are the first nine in an indefinitely extendable pattern.
Asgard
Asgard (“enclosure of the Æsir”) is the citadel of the gods in the upper sky. It is the highest of the nine worlds, ruled by Odin, and it contains the great halls of the principal Æsir: Valhalla (the hall of the slain), Hliðskjálf (Odin’s high seat from which he sees all), Breiðablik (the hall of Baldr), Himinbjörg (the hall of Heimdall at the foot of the bridge), and the great hall of Thor.
Asgard is connected to Midgard by the rainbow bridge Bifrost (or Bilröst), and it is defended by the watchman Heimdall, who sounds the Gjallarhorn when the giants march. The walls of Asgard are said to have been built by a giant builder in exchange for Freyja, the sun, and the moon (paid, in the end, with Thor’s hammer). The principal field of Asgard is Iðavöllr, the meeting place of the gods.
Asgard is the home of the warrior-Æsir: Odin, Thor, Týr, Baldr, Heimdall, Vidar, Váli, Höðr, Bragi, and the others. The Prose Edda lists twelve principal Æsir who sit in council together, and the figure of the twelve (which also appears in the Húsdrápa and the Skáldskaparmál) may reflect a Christian influence of the 12th–13th century.
Midgard
Midgard (“middle enclosure”) is the world of human beings, encircled by the great sea in which the World Serpent lies coiled. Midgard is created, in the standard account, from the eyebrows of the primeval giant Ymir, and it is the theater of human history, including the rise of the first man and woman, Askr and Embla. The world of men is the middle world — middle geographically, between the upper and lower realms, and middle morally, as a place where men live, die, and are judged for their deeds.
Midgard is, in a sense, the only world of the human standpoint. The human being is born in Midgard, lives in Midgard, and dies and goes to Helheim or Valhalla at the end of life. The other eight worlds are perceived, in human experience, only through the intervention of the gods (in myths, dreams, and visions) or of the seer (in seiðr and other magical practices). The Norse image of the world, then, is an image of a closed human world surrounded by a vast, structured, and largely inaccessible divine cosmos.
Jotunheim
Jotunheim (or Útgarðr) is the realm of the giants — the Jotnar, oldest of beings, enemies of the gods, and inhabitants of the wild and frozen north. Jotunheim contains Mímir’s Well at its heart (in some versions) and is the place from which the giants will march at Ragnarok.
The names Jötunheimr (“home of the giants”) and Útgarðr (“outyard” or “outer enclosure”) are used somewhat interchangeably in the Eddas and refer both to the general realm of the giants and to specific citadels within it. The most famous of these is the fortress of Útgarða-Loki, the giant who tricks Thor in the tale of Þórs ríma (Thor’s Journey to Útgarðr). Other named locations in Jotunheim include the ironwood forest Járnviðr, the home of the giantess Hyrrokkin; Þrymheimr, the hall of the giantess Skaði; and Mímir’s grove, where the well of wisdom hides.
Jotunheim is structurally important as the outside of the cosmos, the place where the borders of being are most exposed. The gods’ principal adventures take place in Jotunheim or in transit between Asgard and Jotunheim, and the giant is the figure of the excessive, the ancient, the border. The Jötnar’s war with the gods is not just a moral opposition; it is a structural opposition between two halves of the cosmos, the divine and the gigantic, each of which is necessary to the other.
Vanaheim
Vanaheim is the home of the Vanir, the second tribe of gods, who were originally the rivals of the Æsir and who, after a long war, exchanged hostages with them. The Vanir are associated with fertility, prosperity, the sea, and the magic of seiðr, and their leading figures — Njörðr, Freyr, and Freyja — are major deities in their own right.
The Prose Edda describes Vanaheim as the homeland of the Vanir “in the West,” and gives to the light-elves the home of Alfheim as a tooth-gift to Freyr when he cut his first tooth, but it is Vanaheim that is the home of the Vanir proper. The Aesir-Vanir war, in which the two tribes fought, then exchanged hostages, and finally reached an understanding, is one of the key narratives for understanding the relationship between the two principal divine families.
The Vanir are sometimes described as being closer to the world of nature than the Æsir; their cults are recorded in the medieval sources as being particularly associated with Sweden, the south of Norway, and the Danish islands, where the major centers of the cult of Freyr were located. The Vanir are also associated with shamanism in the older scholarship, and the magical practice of seiðr is sometimes read as a Vaniric technique that was later adopted by the Æsir (notably Odin, whose acquisition of seiðr is treated with some ambiguity in the Ynglinga saga).
Alfheim
Alfheim is the world of the light-elves (ljósálfar), one of two elven realms, and the home of beings of great beauty and magical power. In the Prose Edda it is given to Freyr as a tooth-gift, and Snorri connects the light-elves with the shining sky. The light-elves are described in the Gylfaginning as “fairer than the sun to look upon,” and Snorri distinguishes them from the dark-elves of Svartalfheim, who live below the earth and are even blacker than pitch.
The exact relationship between the light-elves and the Vanir, especially Freyr and Freyja, is debated by scholars. Some have argued that Freyr and Freyja were originally elven figures later elevated to full divine status, while others have read the relationship in terms of the Vanir’s association with fertility and the elves’ association with natural abundance. The light-elves of the Eddas are not the same as the huldufólk of later Icelandic folk tradition, although the two are often conflated in popular accounts.
Svartalfheim
Svartalfheim (or Nidavellir) is the world of the dwarves and, in some readings, of the dark-elves (dökkálfar). It is a subterranean realm of smithies and forges, and it is the source of most of the great magical objects of the Norse world — Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, Odin’s spear Gungnir, Freyr’s ship Skíðblaðnir, the ring Draupnir, and the hair of Sif. The names Svartálfheimr (“home of the black elves”) and Niðavellir (“dark fields”) are sometimes used interchangeably in the sources, but scholars have argued that they refer to the same world viewed from different perspectives: the world of the dwarves when seen as a forge, and the world of the dwarves when seen as the home of the dark-elves.
The dwarves are the master craftsmen of the Norse cosmos, and the Prose Edda’s account of their creations is a kind of mythic technology — the catalogue of the great magical objects is at once a poetic catalogue and a sacred history of the gifts of the underground to the gods. The dwarves’ world is a place of fire and metal, of sweat and craft, and it is a place from which the divine is instructed in the arts of power.
Muspelheim
Muspelheim is the world of fire, the southern realm of heat and light, inhabited by the Muspellsynir (“sons of Muspell”), the flame giants led by Surtr, who will set the world ablaze at Ragnarok. The Gylfaginning describes Muspelheim as a world of “brightness and heat” so intense that none but those born to it can endure it, and the flame giants are said to have been sent to Midgard by Odin at the time of the world’s creation — a curious detail that suggests a complex relationship between the gods and Muspelheim, in which the fire of creation and the fire of destruction are the same kind of fire.
The image of Muspelheim is one of the most striking in the Eddas. It is a world that is not of this cosmos, a fire that is not of the sun, and the beings that dwell in it are described as coming from below or from the south to bring the world to an end. The Muspellsynir are led by Surtr, who bears a sword brighter than the sun, and they are the inevitable force that brings the cosmos to its conclusion.
Niflheim
Niflheim is the world of mist and cold, the northern realm of ice and fog, and the source of the Élivágar, the icy rivers. The Gylfaginning describes it as the oldest of the worlds, predating even the creation of the gods. In Niflheim lies the spring Hvergelmir, from which flow all the cold waters of the world, and around this spring writhe the serpents of whom Níðhöggr is chief. The goddess Hel, daughter of Loki, rules a portion of the cold underworld from her hall in Niflheim, and the figure of the Niflheim dragon that tears at the root of the world tree is a key image of the cold, biting, slow destruction that constantly erodes the world order.
Niflheim and Muspelheim are the two primal worlds of the Norse cosmos, and the meeting of their forces at the edge of Ginnungagap gives rise to the primeval giant Ymir and the whole world-order. Niflheim is the world of the formless, of the primordial mist, of the cool darkness out of which life emerges. In this sense, Niflheim is the matrix of the cosmos, the cold womb from which the world is born.
Helheim
Helheim is the realm of the dead, ruled by the goddess Hel (daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboða), and described in the sources as a cold, gloomy place beneath one of Yggdrasil’s roots. Those who die of sickness or old age go to Helheim, while those who die gloriously in battle are taken to Valhalla by the Valkyries.
The road to Helheim is a long one, traversing rivers and crossing the Gjallarbrú (“resounding bridge”), and the dead who travel it are met at the gate by the maiden Móðgjöð. Within Helheim, the high-walled enclosure surrounds several halls, including Éljúðnir (“rain of sleet”), the high hall of the goddess, and the high halls of the dishonored dead. The dish Hel’s portion is called Hringhorni, and it is from this dish that all food in Helheim is served.
The image of Helheim is one of the most somber in Norse mythology. It is a place of mild suffering, in which the dead endure a colorless existence without the joys of the living or the heroic feasts of Valhalla. The goddess Hel is half-black, half-flesh, and her dish is called “hunger” and her knife “famine.” The very name of the world evokes the hidden (hylja, “to hide”) and the concealed, suggesting that the dead are taken into a place that is no longer accessible to the living.
The World Above and the World Below
The Norse cosmos is vertically structured, with a clearly demarcated above and below. The upper world consists of Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim — the worlds of the gods and the light-elves. The middle world consists of Midgard and Jotunheim — the worlds of human beings and giants. The lower world consists of Svartalfheim, Niflheim, and Helheim — the worlds of the dwarves, the cold, and the dead. Muspelheim is set off to the south, outside the principal axis. This vertical structure is reinforced by the image of Yggdrasil, whose three roots reach into the lower worlds and whose crown extends into the upper worlds.
This vertical organization is not absolute; the worlds are in constant communication through travel, war, marriage, and exchange. The gods go to Jotunheim, the giants come to Asgard, the dead pass into Helheim, the drowned enter the hall of Rán at the bottom of the sea. But the structure of the cosmos is vertical, and the gods’ principal project is the maintenance of the boundaries between the worlds.
The Relations Between the Worlds
The nine worlds are not isolated; they are in constant relation. The relations can be summarized as follows:
- Asgard ↔ Midgard: connected by the bridge Bifrost, and by the exchange of the slain (taken to Valhalla) and the gifts of the gods.
- Asgard ↔ Jotunheim: connected by the gods’ travels (especially Thor’s journeys) and the eventual war at Ragnarok.
- Asgard ↔ Vanaheim: connected by the post-war exchange of hostages (Njörðr, Freyr, Freyja to Asgard; Mímir and Hoenir to Vanaheim).
- Asgard ↔ Alfheim: connected by the gift of Alfheim to Freyr as a tooth-gift.
- Asgard ↔ Svartalfheim: connected by the commissioning of great magical objects from the dwarves.
- Asgard ↔ Helheim: connected by the helreið of the dead to the underworld and the occasional descent of gods (Hermóðr’s ride to Helheim to ransom Baldr).
- Midgard ↔ Jotunheim: connected by the outside and by the dangers of the wild.
- Midgard ↔ Helheim: connected by the death of human beings and their journey to the underworld.
- Niflheim ↔ Muspelheim: connected by the primeval meeting at Ginnungagap, where the cold of Niflheim meets the fire of Muspelheim and gives rise to Ymir.
These relations are not symmetric; some worlds are in constant contact, others rarely so. The relation between Midgard and Asgard is the most important for human beings, for it is the relation that defines the human-divine interface; the relation between Niflheim and Muspelheim is the most important cosmologically, for it is the relation that gives rise to the cosmos itself.