Jörmungandr: The World Serpent
Discover the Norse world serpent Jörmungandr, his role in encircling the world, his battle with Thor, and his part in the Ragnarok apocalypse.
Jörmungandr (Old Norse Jörmungandr, also called the World Serpent or the Midgard Serpent) is the enormous serpent that, according to the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, encircles the entire world, holding his own tail in his mouth. The son of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, the serpent is one of three monstrous siblings — together with the wolf Fenrir and the half-blue, half-flesh goddess Hel — who are foretold to be agents of the destruction of the world. Jörmungandr is fated to fight Thor at Ragnarok, and the two will kill one another in a final cosmic duel.
The Name and Meaning
The name Jörmungandr is composed of the Old Norse elements Jörmun- (“great,” “huge,” often used as a poetic prefix for something immense) and gandr (“serpent,” “staff,” or “enchanted being”). The first element appears in the name Jörmungrund, a poetic term for the earth, and in the name Jörmunrekr, an Old Norse king whose name means “great ruler.” The second element, gandr, is related to the word for a magic staff or a being that uses magic. The name as a whole is sometimes translated as “great serpent,” “huge monster,” or “the immense staff.”
The name is often confused, in popular and academic usage, with the name Jörmungandr of the figure Jörmungandr who is described in the eddic sources. The figure is sometimes called the Midgardsorm in Old Norse, a term that means “the serpent of Midgard” — the world-serpent. Both names refer to the same figure. The figure is also referred to in skaldic verse by kennings such as “the belt of the earth,” “the encircler of the world,” and “the brother of the wolf.”
The Birth and the Casting into the Sea
The story of Jörmungandr’s birth is told in the Gylfaginning (chapter 34) and the Skáldskaparmál of the Prose Edda. According to Snorri, the trickster Loki took as his mistress the giantess Angrboða, who lived in the land of the giants. She bore him three children: the first was the wolf Fenrir, the second was the world-serpent Jörmungandr, and the third was the half-blue, half-flesh goddess Hel. When the gods learned of the three children, they were troubled by the prophecies that the three would be a great danger to Asgard.
The gods took action. They seized the three children. The wolf Fenrir was kept in Asgard and raised among the gods, eventually to be bound by the silken ribbon Gleipnir with the loss of Tyr’s hand. The serpent was cast into the deep ocean that surrounds Midgard. The goddess Hel was cast down into the underworld, where she would rule over the dead who do not die in battle.
Snorri’s account is the most detailed, but the Völuspá (stanza 44) and the Hymiskviða also refer to the serpent in terms that confirm the basic picture: he is a being of immense size, lying in the ocean around the world.
The Serpent in the Ocean
The most famous description of the world-serpent is in the Gylfaginning (chapter 34): “Odin threw the serpent into the deep ocean, and there it lay at the bottom of the sea, growing so large that it now lies in the middle of the ocean, encircling all the lands, holding its own tail in its mouth.” The picture is of a serpent so large that his body is the world’s perimeter, his head and tail meeting in the deep places of the ocean. The Norse imagination conceived of the world as a disk, surrounded by the sea, and the sea was conceived of as the place where the world-serpent lay.
The image has drawn attention from scholarly interpretation. The 20th-century folklorist E. O. G. Turville-Petre argued that the world-serpent is a Norse form of the Indo-European ouroboros — the serpent that encircles the world, holding its own tail. The 19th-century philologist Jacob Grimm saw the serpent as a symbol of the primeval ocean, the cold and depth that surrounded the world. The 20th-century historian of religion Geo Widengren saw the serpent as a symbol of the world order that is constantly about to break, and the moment when the world ends is the moment when the serpent is set free from his self-binding. All three readings are consistent with the medieval sources, and each illuminates a different aspect of the figure.
Thor’s Fishing Expedition
The most famous myth in which the world-serpent is involved is the fishing expedition of Thor, told in the Gylfaginning (chapter 48) and in the poem Hymiskviða of the Poetic Edda. According to the Gylfaginning, the gods were at a feast in Aegir’s hall when the sea-god Aegir, who needed a great kettle for brewing ale, sent Thor and Tyr to the giant Hymir to fetch one. Hymir, the father of Tyr, was known to possess a huge kettle, but he was reluctant to give it up. The gods traveled to Hymir’s hall, and there they were entertained for a night, the next day they went out to sea to fish.
The Hymiskviða describes the fishing in detail. Thor, with the use of a large ox head as bait, goes out into the deep sea. The world-serpent, Jörmungandr, bites at the bait. Thor hauls the serpent up to the side of the boat, and the two of them stare at each other across the gunwale. The sight is so terrible that Thor, in the words of the Gylfaginning, “struck the serpent on the head with his hammer.” The serpent is not killed, but the boat is half-destroyed by the thrashing, and Thor swims ashore.
The Hymiskviða presents the fishing expedition as a near-disaster. The serpent is so close to the boat that the keel is almost pulled under. Thor strikes with his hammer; the seas are calmed. The fishing expedition is a dramatic moment in the Norse imagination, the encounter of the god of thunder with the being that will one day kill him.
The expedition is also important in another way. The Hymiskviða describes Thor’s reaction as he looks at the world-serpent. The serpent is “writhing in anger,” and the god of thunder, the lord of storms, faces the lord of the deep. The two are cosmic opponents: thunder and sea, lightning and water, the god of the sky and the god of the depths. The fishing expedition is the first of the two duels between the two — the second will be at Ragnarok.
The Killing of the Midgard Serpent in the Gylfaginning
In the Gylfaginning’s account of Thor’s journey to Útgarða-Loki, the great grey cat that Thor attempts to lift is, in fact, the world-serpent in disguise. Snorri describes how Thor, attempting to lift the cat, succeeds only in arching the cat’s back. Útgarða-Loki then reveals that the cat was the world-serpent, and that Thor had lifted one of its paws high enough to nearly detach it from the world. The picture is of a god so strong that he can lift one paw of the world-serpent, but not so strong that he can lift the world.
The episode is one of several Norse accounts of Thor’s near-confrontation with the world-serpent. The fishing expedition and the Útgarða-Loki tale are the two most explicit. In both, the world-serpent is presented as a being of cosmic significance, and Thor as the being who, alone of the gods, can face him.
The Battle at Ragnarok
The world-serpent’s final appearance is at Ragnarok. According to the Völuspá (stanza 56) and the Gylfaginning (chapter 53), the serpent emerges from the ocean at the end of the world, thrashing in fury, and the ship Naglfar sails across the sea carrying the Muspell’s people — the fire giants led by Surtr. The serpent and the wolf Fenrir and the trickster Loki are all free.
In the final battle, the serpent and Thor face each other. According to the Völuspá (stanza 56), Thor kills the serpent but, taking nine paces backward, falls dead from the venom of the serpent. The two are bound in mutual destruction. The Gylfaginning (chapter 53) gives a slightly different version: the two kill one another.
The mutual destruction is one of the central events of Ragnarok, the second of the three great events involving the children of Loki and Angrboða. Fenrir devours Odin; Jörmungandr and Thor kill each other; Hel is emptied of the dead. The three are the three great events of the end of the world.
The Serpent in the Post-Ragnarok World
The Völuspá (stanza 60) describes the new world after the destruction. The serpent is not mentioned by name. Some scholars have argued that the world-serpent, like Yggdrasil, survives the destruction, and that the new world is a new arrangement of the old elements. Others have argued that the serpent is destroyed and that the new world is a different place. The surviving sources do not decide.
The interpretation of the world-serpent’s fate is part of the larger interpretation of the post-Ragnarok world. If the new world is a renewal of the old, the serpent may return in some form. If the new world is a new creation, the serpent is gone. The Norse imagination may have left the question deliberately open.
The Serpent in the Continental Sources
The Norse world-serpent has analogues in the continental Germanic sources. The Old English poem Beowulf (c. 8th century) does not have a world-serpent, but it has a fire-breathing dragon that is killed by the hero. The 9th-century Old Saxon Heliand does not contain a world-serpent. The world-serpent is, in the surviving records, primarily a Norse figure, attested in the Icelandic eddic and skaldic sources.
The Norse world-serpent is also related to the early medieval European motif of the leviathan, the sea-monster of the Book of Job and the medieval Christian imagination. The Norse figure is independent of the Jewish and Christian figure, but the parallel is suggestive: both are enormous, both are in the deep, and both are agents of the end of the world. The reading is one of many modern interpretations, and it reflects the way in which the Norse sources have been read in the context of the larger European mythology.
Jörmungandr in Modern Culture
The world-serpent has had a significant impact on modern popular culture. The image of an enormous serpent encircling the world, holding its own tail, is one of the most vivid in the Norse mythological corpus, and it has been used in many works of fiction. The figure of Jörmungandr appears in the God of War video game series, in many fantasy novels, in the Vikings television series, in the Thor films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in many other works of modern fiction. The world-serpent is, in this sense, one of the most recognizable Norse mythological figures in modern popular culture.
The figure has also been the subject of academic study. The 20th-century scholar Jan de Vries argued that the world-serpent is a Norse form of an Indo-European cosmological motif, and that the serpent’s role in the destruction of the world reflects a more general Indo-European myth of a serpent that encircles the world and that is destroyed at the end of time. The reading is widely cited and is a useful entry point into the comparative study of Indo-European mythology.
The Serpent and the Old Norse Worldview
The world-serpent is one of the great cosmic figures of the Norse imagination. The world is described as a bounded place, surrounded by the deep, and the deep is the home of the world-serpent. The serpent is at once the limit of the world and the being that will one day be released to fight the god of thunder. The image of the serpent, holding its own tail, is the image of a world that has just enough to contain itself, and the moment the serpent releases itself, the world ends.
The Norse world is, in this sense, a world held in check. The serpent is the limit; Thor is the force that holds the limit in place. The two are in an eternal confrontation, and the moment the serpent is freed, the world ends. The image of the world encircled by the serpent is the image of a world on the edge of a release that has not yet happened, and the moment of the release is the end of the world.