Yggdrasil Meaning: Why the World Tree Is Odin’s Horse

At the center of the Norse cosmos stands an ash tree so vast that the worlds of gods, giants, and humans hang from it: Yggdrasil. Oddly, no surviving source tells us where it came from. Was it sleeping in Ginnungagap from the beginning? Did it sprout from Ymir’s body? The myths are silent. And the Yggdrasil meaning, ‘Odin’s horse,’ holds a darker story.

In short, the Yggdrasil meaning is “the Terrible One’s steed,” or Odin’s horse. Yggr is one of Odin’s names, and drasil means ‘horse’. Why a tree would be his horse is told below.

The Evergreen Ash

Yggdrasil is an ash tree. However, unlike its Midgard counterparts, it is evergreen. It connects all of the realms, but the Norse did not provide a clear map of how it connects them. One conception places the realms in the same plane but at different distances from the trunk of the tree. Another aligns the realms vertically along the tree trunk. A third has the realms nestled in the branches of the tree.

Yggdrasil Meaning as a Natural Phenomenon

One scholar has suggested that Yggdrasil represents the Milky Way. The idea has precedent, since Norse mythology also depicts rainbows as the Bifrost bridge. On a clear night, away from the light pollution of the modern age, it’s not hard to see the Milky Way as a tree.

The Overhogdal tapestries from Sweden, woven around 1040–1170, with a large tree among riders and animals that many read as Yggdrasil — Three of the Overhogdal tapestries from Härjedalen, Sweden, woven between about 1040 and 1170. The great tree among the riders and beasts is often read as Yggdrasil. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Roots of Yggdrasil

We may not know a lot about the structure of the mythological Yggdrasil as far as the placement of the realms is concerned, but we do have two differing descriptions of its root system. These two accounts agree that there are three roots, and these roots are fed by three water sources. Grimnir’s Sayings claims that the roots cover the worlds of man (Midgard), giants (Jötunheim), and the dead (Hel). Snorri Sturluson has them covering the gods (Asgard), giants (Jötunheim), and Niflheim. According to Sturluson, one root extends upward to encompass Asgard.

The water sources feeding the roots include Mimir’s Well, which contained wisdom and was guarded by Mimir. Urd’s Well was in the realm of the gods and was called the “spring of fate”; the Norns, a Norse version of the Greek Fates, lived near this well. The bubbling cauldron known as the spring Hvergelmir was at the base of the third root and was the source of all the world’s rivers.

Yggdrasil’s Ecology

The tree is alive with creatures. The dragon Níðhöggr and a tangle of serpents gnaw at its roots. At the top sits an unnamed eagle, with a hawk called Veðrfölnir perched between its eyes. Between them runs the squirrel Ratatosk (‘drill-tooth’), carrying insults up and down the trunk between eagle and dragon. Four stags, Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, and Durathrór, browse its highest branches.

Odin hanging wounded in the World Tree, W. G. Collingwood's 1908 illustration for Hávamál — Odin hangs in the windy tree, in W. G. Collingwood’s illustration for Hávamál in *The Elder or Poetic Edda* (1908). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Yggdrasil Meaning: The Terrible One’s Steed

The tree’s name is a combination of two Old Norse words. “Yggr” is one of Odin’s many names. It means ‘the terrible one’, “the one who strikes awe,” or “the terrifier.” “Drasil” means ‘horse’. Combining the two gives us something akin to “the Terrible One’s Steed” or “Odin’s Horse.” This may be a reference to how Odin uses Yggdrasil to travel the nine realms, giving us an idea of its function.

It may also be a darker joke. In Hávamál, Odin tells how he hung for nine nights on a “windy tree,” wounded by a spear, “given to Odin, myself to myself,” until he seized the runes. The poem doesn’t name the tree, but most scholars identify it with Yggdrasil. Since poets called the gallows “the horse” a hanged man rides, Jackson Crawford calls the name a piece of “Norse gallows humor”: the tree is the horse Odin rode through his hanging.

Other Layers of Yggdrasil Meaning

The tree is sprinkled with white mud from Urd’s well, and it stays green despite the dragon at its roots and the stags at its crown. When Ragnarök comes, Völuspá says, “Yggdrasil shakes, the ancient tree groans.” Much about the World Tree will stay mysterious, but what survives shows how the Norse pictured a universe that was alive, interconnected, and always under threat.

Sources

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price (2020).
Norse Mythology for Smart People, Yggdrasil
Jackson Crawford on YouTube, Yggdrasill the Tree

Yggdrasil: The Terrible One’s Steed