What Is Midgard?
Explore Midgard, the world of humans in Norse mythology, its creation from Ymir's body, its place among the nine worlds, and the gods' care for it.
Midgard (Old Norse Miðgarðr) is the world of human beings, the central and most familiar of the nine worlds in Norse cosmology. According to the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, the gods built the world of humans out of the eyebrows of the primeval giant Ymir, surrounding it with a wall that protects humanity from the chaotic forces that surround it. Midgard is the focus of the Norse gods’ attention: it is here that the gods intervene most directly, that the Æsir–Vanir War is fought, that the great hero Sigurd is born, and that Ragnarok begins. The name “Midgard” itself — literally, “middle enclosure” — places humanity at the center of the cosmos.
The Name and the Concept
The Old Norse name Miðgarðr is composed of mið (“middle”) and garðr (“enclosure,” “fence,” “yard”). The name is sometimes translated as “middle earth,” “middle enclosure,” or “middle yard.” The concept is one of bounded, central space, surrounded by other worlds and protected from the threats of the outer regions.
The name has important analogues in other Germanic languages: the Old English Middangeard, the Old High German Mittilgart, and the Gothic Midjungards. The oldest of these is the Old English form, which appears prominently in the Old English poem Beowulf (line 92) and in the Dream of the Rood, where the “Middle-Earth” is used as a poetic name for the world of humans. The conceptual continuity between the Old Norse and Old English uses is striking, and it confirms the depth of the cosmological idea in the older Germanic imagination.
The Creation of Midgard
The creation of Midgard is described in the Völuspá (stanzas 4 and 9) and in the Prose Edda’s Gylfaginning (chapter 9). According to the medieval account, the primeval giant Ymir was the first being in the world, born from the rime and fire of Niflheim and Muspelheim. The gods — three of them, Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé — killed Ymir and formed the world from his body. The sky was made from his skull, the seas from his blood, the mountains from his bones, the trees from his hair, and the heavens from his brain. The earth was formed from his flesh, and the wall of Midgard was built from his eyebrows.
The vividness of the creation myth is one of its most striking features. The Norse imagination conceived of the world as a giant corpse, with the cosmos structured around the parts of a slain being. The wall of Midgard, made from the eyebrows of Ymir, is part of this dead-giant cosmology. The world is a place built from the body of the original being, and humanity lives inside that body.
The Völuspá (stanza 4) gives an alternative account: the gods found two tree-trunks on the shore and shaped them into the first human beings. Ask (Ash) and Embla (Elm) are the first two humans, and the gods gave them breath, wit, blood, and fair countenance. The combination of the two creation narratives — the body of Ymir and the two tree-trunks — is characteristic of the Norse mythographic tradition, which preserves multiple accounts of the same event.
Midgard and the Sea Around It
The sea surrounding Midgard is, in the surviving sources, the home of the world-serpent Jörmungandr. According to the Gylfaginning (chapter 34), Odin threw the serpent into the deep ocean that surrounds the world, and the serpent grew so large that he now encircles the world, holding his tail in his mouth. The image of the world surrounded by a serpent is one of the most striking in Norse cosmology, and it implies a world that is not only enclosed by a wall but also encircled by an enormous being.
The serpent is one of three children of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, the others being the wolf Fenrir and the goddess Hel. All three are placed outside the world — Jörmungandr in the sea, Fenrir on land, Hel in the underworld — and all three are destined to play a role in the destruction of the world at Ragnarok.
The serpent’s position in the sea is also the source of one of the most famous myths in Norse mythology: Thor’s fishing expedition, in which the god of thunder goes out to sea to fish for the serpent. The story is told in the Gylfaginning (chapter 48) and in the poem Hymiskviða of the Poetic Edda, and it is one of the most vivid in the entire mythological corpus. The image of the world-serpent biting at the side of a small boat, with Thor pulling at his line, is a powerful symbol of the way in which the gods’ struggle with chaos is enacted in human space.
The Place of Humans in Midgard
In the surviving sources, the people of Midgard are described in two main ways. The first is as the descendants of Ask and Embla, the first two humans, who are described as having been given breath by Odin, wit by Hoenir, and blood and fair countenance by Lodurr (a god of unknown identity, sometimes identified with Loki or with one of the other gods). The second is as the children of the seeress of the Völuspá, who is described as having seen the whole history of humanity from the beginning.
The Norse gods intervene in Midgard through several mechanisms. The Valkyries, the female warriors of Valhalla, ride out from Asgard to choose the slain in battle. The **Einherjar](../creatures/the-einherjar-warriors-of-valhalla.md), the chosen warriors of the slain, are brought to Valhalla by the Valkyries to fight and feast until Ragnarok. The **Norns](../cosmology/who-are-the-norns.md) shape the fates of humans as they sit at the base of Yggdrasil, drawing water from the well of Urd and writing fate on wood. The dísir and fylgjur, the female spirits of the family, attend on individual human lineages and protect them.
In medieval Icelandic literature, the gods are described as taking an active interest in human affairs. The Saga of the Ynglingar, the first saga in the Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, begins with the creation of the world and the establishment of the gods as kings of the Swedes. The gods rule Sweden as kings until they are replaced by mortal kings, who are the descendants of the gods. The transition is euhemerized — the gods are presented as the first kings of a human kingdom — and the saga is a key to the medieval Icelandic understanding of the gods’ role in Midgard.
The Wall of Midgard
The wall of Midgard, made from the eyebrows of Ymir, is the principal defensive structure of the world. According to the Gylfaginning, the gods built the wall in the time after the creation of the world, and the wall serves to keep out the giants, the chaotic forces of Jotunheim, and the monsters that live outside the world. The wall is, in the Norse imagination, both literal and figurative: it is the structure that protects the world of humans, but it is also the moral boundary that separates civilization from chaos.
The myth of the building of the wall of Asgard, told in the Gylfaginning (chapter 42), is a related but distinct story. That wall, the wall of Asgard, was built by a giant in exchange for the goddess Freyja, the sun, and the moon. The two walls — the wall of Asgard and the wall of Midgard — are thus both defensive structures, but they have different stories. The wall of Asgard is a divine structure, the wall of Midgard is a cosmogonic one. The two together enclose the ordered world.
Midgard and the Nine Worlds
In the system of nine worlds, Midgard is the fourth and the central. The other worlds are Asgard (the home of the Aesir), Vanaheim (the home of the Vanir), Alfheim (the home of the light elves), Svartalfheim (the home of the dwarves), Jotunheim (the home of the giants), Muspelheim (the home of the fire giants), Niflheim (the home of the cold and mist), and Helheim (the home of the dead). Midgard is the only world in which humans live, and the Norse imagination conceived of the world of humans as the central, pivotal realm of the cosmos.
The relationship between Midgard and the other worlds is one of dependency. The world of humans is protected by the gods in Asgard, by the wall built from Ymir’s eyebrows, and by the vigilance of Heimdall at the Bifröst. At the same time, the other worlds are dependent on Midgard: the gods are described as taking an interest in the affairs of humans, and the heroes of the great sagas, like Sigurd the Volsung, are descended from the gods.
The Survival of Midgard at Ragnarok
The fate of Midgard at the end of the world is a major theme of the Völuspá and the Prose Edda. According to the surviving sources, the end of the world begins in Midgard, where the Fimbulvetr (the great winter) descends. Three successive winters with no summers in between bring about the collapse of the moral order, and brothers turn on brothers, fathers on sons, mothers on daughters. The collapse of Midgard is the prelude to the final battle between gods and giants.
The Völuspá (stanza 58) describes the new earth rising green from the sea, and a new Midgard being formed. The Einherjar survivors, Víðarr and Váli, and the surviving gods gather in the new world. The new Midgard is, like the new Asgard, the renewed version of the world that was.
Midgard in the Sagas
The medieval Icelandic sagas describe the gods as taking a particular interest in the people of Midgard. The gods are described as giving gifts to favored humans, as being angry at humans who offend them, and as rewarding human piety. The Þórsdrápa of Eilífr Goðrúnarson describes Thor as the defender of Midgard, and the Völuspá describes the world as the place where the gods have established their power.
The most thorough treatment of Midgard in the saga literature is in the Ynglinga saga, which describes the gods as the first kings of a human kingdom in Sweden. The saga is part of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, a history of the Norwegian kings. The euhemerized account of the gods as kings of Sweden is one of the most important medieval sources for the medieval understanding of the gods’ role in Midgard.
Midgard in Modern Culture
The term Midgard has had a major influence on modern culture, most famously in the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, who took the Old English cognate Middangeard as a poetic name for the world of humans in his fiction. Tolkien’s use of “Middle-earth” in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is one of the most famous adaptations of an Old Norse concept in modern literature, and it has, in turn, made the older term newly visible to modern audiences.
The term is also used in many fantasy video games, novels, and other works. The image of the world as the central enclosure of the cosmos, surrounded by other worlds, is a powerful one in modern imagination, and it has been the inspiration for many works of fiction.
Midgard and the Future of the World
The fate of Midgard, in the Norse imagination, is bound to the fate of the gods. As the world of humans is built on the body of Ymir and protected by the wall of the gods, so the world of humans is destroyed when the gods themselves are destroyed. The new world, however, is described in the Völuspá as a place where the surviving gods will walk, and a new Midgard will be established. The image is one of repeated cycles: a world built on a body, a wall built on a body, and a new world built on the ashes of the old.
The cosmology of Midgard is, in this sense, an open-ended one. The world is not eternal, but the cycles are recurring. The image of the new earth rising from the sea is one of the most powerful in the entire Norse mythological corpus, and it is the final image of the Völuspá: a green world, a fair one, and a new home for the survivors of the gods.