Ygdrasil is a most sublime and finished myth. It is a symbol uniting all the elements of mythology into a poetical system. The tree symbolizes, and extends its roots and branches into, the whole universe. Its roots are gnawed by serpents, and stags bite its branches, but the immortal tree still stands firm and flourishes from age to age. The Norsemen’s whole experience of life is here presented in a picture that either in regard to beauty or depth of thought finds no equal in all the other systems of mythology. Thomas Carlyle says: I like too that representation they (the Norsemen) have of the tree Ygdrasil: all life is figured by them as a tree. Ygdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep down in the kingdom of Hela, or Death; its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole universe. It is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit three Nornas (fates),—the Past, Present, Future,—watering its roots from the Sacred Well. Its boughs, with their buddings and disleafings—events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes,—stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word? Its boughs are histories of nations; the rustle of it is the noise of human existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of human passion rustling through it; or storm-tost, the storm-wind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Ygdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; the infinite conjugation of the verb to do. Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all,—how the word I speak to you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila, the Mæso-Goth only, but from all men since the first man began to speak,—I find no similitude so true as this of a tree. Beautiful altogether, beautiful and great. The machine of the universe! Alas, do but think of that in contrast!
The name Ygdrasil is derived from Odin’s name, Yggr (the deep thinker), and drasill (carrier, horse). Ygdrasil, therefore, means the Bearer of God, a phrase which finds a literal explanation when Odin hangs nine nights on this tree before he discovered the runes. Thus the Elder Edda:
I know that I hung
Nine whole nights,
And to Odin offered,
On that tree,
From what root it springs.
On a wind-rocked tree,
With a spear wounded,
Myself to myself,