Norse Dragons: Jormungandr the World Serpent and Nidhogg
Explore the Norse dragons: Jormungandr the World Serpent who encircles the world, and Nidhogg who gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil.
Dragons occupy a central place in Norse mythology. The two most important — the World Serpent Jörmungandr and the dragon Níðhöggr — are fundamental figures in the Norse cosmology of the nine worlds and the Norse eschatology of Ragnarok. A third major dragon, Fáfnir, is the central figure of the Völsunga saga and the heroic tradition. The Norse imagination has a long and rich history of dragon-figures, and the Norse dragon is one of the most important dragon-types in world mythology.
This page is an encyclopedic account of the principal dragons of the Norse world: their origins, their roles in the mythology, their appearances in the Eddas and the heroic poetry, and their significance in the Norse imagination of doom, renewal, and the cosmic structure.
The World Serpent Jörmungandr
The World Serpent Jörmungandr (Old Norse Jörmungandr, “the great monster” or “the enormous beast”) is one of the three monstrous children of Loki and the giantess Angrboða, the other two being the wolf Fenrir and the goddess of the underworld, Hel. According to the Gylfaginning, when the gods of Asgard saw the three siblings, they recognized a threat: the serpent was cast into the encircling sea that surrounds the world, the wolf was bound on the island of Lyngvi, and the goddess was cast into the underworld and given authority over the dead.
The World Serpent lies coiled around the world, his tail in his mouth, and he is sometimes said to bite his own tail (an image borrowed in part from the Greek Ouroboros). The Norse conception of the world as a disk encircled by a sea, in which a great serpent lies, is a foundational image of the Eddas, and the serpent is a constant presence in the human world — though the humans themselves are unaware of him.
The myth of the World Serpent has three principal episodes in the surviving Eddas and skaldic poetry:
- The fishing trip of Thor and Hymir (in Hymiskviða), in which Thor attempts to catch the World Serpent.
- The journey of Thor to Útgarða-Loki (in Þórs ríma), in which the giant Loki tells Thor of a sea-monster and Thor attempts to lift the cat that turns out to be the World Serpent.
- The death of Thor and the World Serpent at Ragnarok (in Völuspá), in which Thor and the serpent kill each other.
These three episodes form a triadic image of the relationship between Thor and the World Serpent: the god attempts to catch the serpent, the god is challenged by the serpent (in disguise), and the god and the serpent kill each other in the final battle. The structure is a familiar one in the Norse eschatology: the antagonistic pair of god and monster, bound together in mutual destruction at the world’s end.
The Fishing Trip of Thor and Hymir
The most famous episode in the mythology of the World Serpent is the tale of Hymiskviða (“The Lay of Hymir”), a poem of the Poetic Edda in which Thor accompanies the giant Hymir on a fishing trip. The poem is principally known for its image of Thor baiting his hook with the head of an ox and catching the World Serpent, who rises from the sea with a great spray of water and stares at Thor with terrible eyes. Thor raises his hammer to strike, but Hymir, terrified, cuts the line, and the serpent sinks back into the sea.
The image of Thor facing the World Serpent from the boat is one of the most striking in Old Norse poetry. The serpent rises from the sea, “writhing in fury,” and Thor grips his hammer. The encounter is a near-miss: a single moment of the encounter is described in the poem, and the moment ends with Hymir’s fearful cut of the line. The episode is, in a sense, a prefiguration of the final battle at Ragnarok, in which Thor and the serpent meet and kill each other.
The fishing trip of Thor and Hymir is a recurring image in Norse art. The Hørdum stone in Denmark, the Altuna Runestone in Sweden (the only known runic illustration of the fishing trip), and the Hymir-related carvings in several Norwegian stave-churches all preserve versions of the story. The most famous of these is the Hørdum stone (also called the Hørdum limestone block), which depicts Thor in the boat with the serpent rising from the sea.
The Journey to Útgarðr
The second major episode in the mythology of the World Serpent is the tale of Þórs ríma (also called Gylfaginning ch. 44–47 in Snorri’s account), in which Thor and Loki travel to the citadel of the giant Útgarða-Loki. The journey includes a stay with the giant Skrýmir, in which Thor attempts to strike the giant’s skull with his hammer, and a series of contests in the great hall of Útgarðr, in which Thor is challenged to lift a great cat, drink from a horn, and wrestle an old woman. In each case, the giant Loki (who is the master of illusions) makes the challenges seem impossible but turns out to be small.
The episode of the cat is the most famous. Thor, challenged to lift a great grey cat, grips it around the belly and lifts, but the cat arches its back and, despite Thor’s enormous strength, only barely gets one paw off the floor. The giant Útgarða-Loki then reveals that the cat was the World Serpent in disguise, and that Thor had lifted one of the world’s foundations — an almost impossible feat. The image of Thor lifting the World Serpent (without recognizing it) is a striking one, and it suggests that the god and the serpent are bound together in a relationship that the god cannot easily recognize or control.
The Death of the World Serpent at Ragnarok
The third and final major episode in the mythology of the World Serpent is the death of the serpent and the death of Thor at Ragnarok. The Völuspá describes the encounter in some of its most powerful stanzas:
“The serpent writhes in fury, and the great tree shudders; the wolf is loosed, and the dragon flies; the brother of Býleist goes forth to fight the serpent, and Thor goes forth to fight the wolf; but the world-serpent is slain, and Thor walks nine paces and falls dead.”
The image of the dying Thor walking nine paces from the corpse of the serpent and then falling dead is one of the most poignant in Old Norse poetry. The god of thunder, the protector of the world, the slayer of giants, falls at the moment of his greatest victory. The venom of the serpent has done its work, and the god is no more.
The death of Thor is the death of the world’s protector, and the death of the World Serpent is the death of the world’s outermost enemy. The two deaths are symmetric: each kills the other, and the world loses both the god and the monster. The image of mutual destruction is a fundamental one in the Norse eschatology, and the death of Thor and the World Serpent is its most striking example.
Níðhöggr the Dragon at the Root
The dragon Níðhöggr (Old Norse Níðhöggr, “the striker in malice” or “the malicious striker”) is the great serpent of the underworld, gnawing at the lowest root of Yggdrasil and at the corpses of the dishonored dead at Náströnd. The Völuspá describes him in the famous stanza:
“The dragon flies, the dark dragon, from the dark mountains; the serpent comes, Níðhöggr by name, with the corpses in his wings.”
Níðhöggr is one of the most important dragon-figures in the Norse tradition, and he is distinct from the World Serpent. Where Jörmungandr is a great marine monster, Níðhöggr is an underworld dragon, and where Jörmungandr is the enemy of the gods at the world’s end, Níðhöggr is the constant enemy, gnawing at the root of the cosmic tree from the moment of its creation to the moment of its destruction.
The image of Níðhöggr as a dragon who gnaws at the root of the world is one of the most fundamental in Norse cosmology. The cosmic tree is constantly being eaten from above (by the four stags Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, and Duraþrór), from the sides (by the squirrel Ratatoskr who runs back and forth with insults), and from below (by Níðhöggr). The tree is constantly being consumed, and the constant consumption is the slow destruction of the cosmos, the structural feature of the world that ensures its eventual end.
Níðhöggr is also one of the survivors of Ragnarok. The Völuspá’s closing stanzas describe him as flying out of the dark mountains with corpses in his wings, suggesting that he too survives the catastrophe and continues his work in the renewed world. The image of Níðhöggr in the new world is one of the most striking in Old Norse poetry, and it is the basis for much of the modern interpretation of the Norse myth of the dragon as a figure of the continuing chthonic force in the renewed order.
Níðhöggr and Náströnd
In addition to gnawing at the root of Yggdrasil, Níðhöggr is also the dragon who gnaws at the corpses of the dishonored dead at Náströnd, the strand of corpses along the river of Helheim. The Völuspá describes Náströnd as a hall of the dishonored, with a roof of venom and walls of serpents’ spines, and Níðhöggr is the chief of the serpents that inhabit this place. The image of the dragon as the punisher of the dishonored is a striking one, and it is the basis for much of the later Christianization of the Norse dragon as a figure of the Devil or of Hell.
The image of Níðhöggr as a punisher of the dishonored is connected to the moral dimension of the Norse underworld. While most dead go to a neutral place of mild suffering, the dishonored — the perjurers, the murderers, the corpse-thieves — go to a darker part of the underworld, where they are gnawed by dragons. The moral hierarchy of the Norse afterlife is not as developed as the Christian Hell, but it is present, and Níðhöggr is the enforcer of that hierarchy.
Fáfnir the Dragon of the Völsunga Saga
The third major dragon of the Norse tradition is Fáfnir, the dragon of the Völsunga saga who sits on a hoard of gold and silver, including the cursed ring Andvaranaut. According to the saga, Fáfnir was originally a man, the son of the dwarf Hreiðmarr, and he killed his father to obtain the cursed gold. The curse of the gold caused Fáfnir to change into a dragon, and he retreated to a lair in the Gnita-heath, where he sat on the hoard and guarded it.
The hero Sigurd (the Norse equivalent of the German Siegfried) is sent by the dwarf Regin to kill Fáfnir, and he does so by digging a pit in the path of the dragon, lying in wait, and thrusting his sword Gram upward into the dragon’s belly as it crawls over him. Sigurd then roasts the dragon’s heart and eats it, gaining the ability to understand the language of birds. The birds warn him of Regin’s treachery, and Sigurd kills Regin and takes the gold. The rest of the saga is the rest of the Andvaranaut cycle: the curse of the ring follows Sigurd, his wife Guðrún, and their descendants through several generations, until the curse is finally resolved.
The image of Fáfnir as a dragon of the hoard is one of the most famous in Norse literature, and it is the template for the dragon of treasure in many later European traditions. The image of Sigurd thrusting his sword up into the belly of the dragon as it passes over him is a striking one, and it is the basis for the dragon-slayer archetype that runs from Sigurd to Beowulf to Saint George.
The Curse of Andvaranaut
The ring Andvaranaut is the cursed treasure at the heart of the Völsunga tradition. According to the Völsunga saga and the Eddic poem Reginsmál, the ring was taken by Loki from the dwarf Andvari, who lived in a waterfall in the form of a pike. Andvari cursed the ring (and all the gold that Loki took from him) to bring death and ruin to whoever possessed it. Loki gave the ring to Hreiðmarr as part of the ransom for the killing of Hreiðmarr’s son Otr, and the ring eventually passed to Fáfnir, then to Sigurd, then to Guðrún, and then to the descendants of Sigurd, who were eventually destroyed by the curse.
The image of the cursed gold is a recurring one in Norse literature, and the Andvaranaut cycle is the most developed version of it. The cycle is the basis for the Nibelungenlied of the German tradition, the Þiðreks saga of the Scandinavian tradition, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle of the modern operatic tradition. The image of the dragon on the hoard, the cursed ring, the hero who slays the dragon, and the eventual destruction of the hero and his kin is one of the most powerful in European literature.
Other Dragons in Norse Tradition
In addition to the World Serpent, Níðhöggr, and Fáfnir, the Norse sources attest a long list of other dragons and serpents, including:
- Glaur — the dragon of Sigrgarðs þáttr, who is killed by the hero Sigrgarðr with the help of a magic sword
- The unnamed wyrm of the Hrólfs saga kraka and other heroic sagas
- The Hróðrs dragon of Sigrgarðs þáttr
- The flying dragons of the late medieval Icelandic and Norwegian folk tradition
- The dragons of the river in the Konungs skuggsjá and other medieval texts
- The basilisk and the lindworm of the later folk tradition, derived from medieval Latin bestiaries
The Norse dragon is a complex figure, drawing on both native Norse tradition and the medieval Latin bestiary tradition. The image of the winged dragon that breathes fire is derived in part from the medieval Latin tradition, and the image of the sea-serpent that swallows ships is derived in part from the older Norse tradition of the World Serpent.
The Dragon in Comparative Perspective
The Norse dragon has been extensively compared to the dragons of other Indo-European traditions. The Vritra of the Indian Vedic tradition, the Typhon of the Greek tradition, the Python of the Greek tradition, and the Tiamat of the Mesopotamian tradition are all dragons or serpentine monsters who are the enemies of the gods and who are defeated by the gods in a great battle. The Norse version of this pattern is distinctive in its cyclical structure: the World Serpent is not simply defeated by Thor, but the two kill each other, and the cosmos is destroyed in the process. The Norse dragon is, in this sense, a figure of the end rather than a figure of the pre-creation chaos.
The Norse dragon has also been extensively compared to the Christian Devil in the medieval and early modern tradition. The image of the dragon as the enemy of God and the enemy of the world is a feature of the Christian tradition, and the Norse dragon was assimilated to this image in the conversion period. The Norse Níðhöggr, in particular, was identified with the Christian Devil, and the image of Níðhöggr gnawing at the corpses of the dishonored at Náströnd was read as an image of Hell.