The Edges of the Medieval World

The Picture of the World in Old Norse Sources

THE PICTURE OF THE WORLD IN OLD NORSE SOURCES Else Mundal To begin I will give a short survey of the Old Norse picture of the world in different written sources, such as mythological sources, Christian literature and saga literature. Special importance will, however, be attached to some geographical observations and descriptions found in a few texts describing sailing and distances at sea and descriptions of geography found in the Norwegian work Konungs skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror) from around 1250.1 The picture of the world in mythological texts may vary.2 One typical picture is that Ásgarðr, the home of the gods, is placed in the centre of the world, and in the centre of Ásgarðr is the ashtree Yggdrasill and the well called Urðarbrunnr. The sky overarches the earth, and under the earth is the underworld. In some texts the gods, and their homes, are placed in the sky, and are not at the same level as the humans. In other texts the men live in Miðgarðr, which is situated around Ásgarðr, and the gods and the humans are placed on the same level. On the outskirts of the world, especially in the North and the East, are the places of the giants. In the beginning of mythic time, the earth – the dry land – was lifted up from the sea by the gods. When this act of creation is described in the poem Vûluspá, st. 4, the word for ‘land’, is bjûð which also means ‘tabletop’. This clearly indicates that the earth is seen as flat. Around the earth lays the great sea, and in that sea lives the worm Miðgarðsormr who was so big that he encircled the whole world. 1 An overview of the discussion of when Konungs skuggsjá was written is found in Sverre Bagge, The Political Thought of The King’s Mirror (Odense: Odense University Press, 1987), 12 ff. 2 The fullest description of the mythic world is found in Gylfaginning in Snorri’s Edda [Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Snorri Sturluson. Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning (London: University College, 1988)]. This source is in many ways problematic since it was written more than 200 years after Christianization. On the discussion of the world picture in Old Norse myths, see Jens Peter Schjødt, “Horizontale und vertikale Achsen in der vorchristlichen skandinavischen Kosmologie,” in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic PlaceNames , ed. Tore Ahlbäck (Åbo: Almquist and Wiksell, 1990), 35-57; Else Mundal, “Forholdet mellom myteinnhald og myteform,” in Nordisk hedendom. Et symposium, ed. Gro Steinsland et al. (Odense: Odense University Press, 1991), 229-244. ELSE MUNDAL 40 One point I want to make is that we should be very careful not to draw firm conclusions about the Old Norse picture of the world on the basis of mythological texts. The flat earth where gods, humans and giants move on the same level is more or less the same picture that we still find in fairytales today. That picture is not representative of the picture of the world in our culture, and I think we should take care not to take the picture of the world in Old Norse myths too literally, either. Christianization brought a new picture of the world to Scandinavia, but in many ways one not very different from the picture in the Old Norse myths. The flat earth, heaven above and hell below has much in common with the Old Norse mythic picture; the major difference is that the underworld in the Christian texts is a place of punishment . Christianization, however, moved the centre of the world. Ásgarðr with Yggdrasill and the Urðarbrunnr in the mythological texts cannot easily be places in the geography of the human world – when Snorri in Ynglinga saga in Heimskringla places Ásgarðr in the human geography, he combines the mythic picture of the world with the picture he knew from the learned literature of his time. In the minds of the heathen Scandinavians, the home of the gods must, however, have been connected to their own world in the North. In a skaldic stanza from around the year 1000 the skald Eilífr Guðrúnarson describes how Christianity gains ground at the expense of the old religion, and says that the new god, Christ, is the strong king of Rome who sits in the South by the Urðarbrunnr .3 The old centre of the world, the well of Urðr, has...