Midgard
The 'middle enclosure' of Norse myth, the human world built from the giant Ymir's body and joined to Asgard by Bifrost.
- Appears in
- Poetic Edda; Prose Edda; runestones
- Meaning
- 'Middle enclosure'
- Made from
- Ymir's body; walled with his eyebrows
- Encircled by
- Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent
- Cognate
- Old English middangeard
What is Midgard known for?
Midgard, Old Norse Miðgarðr, 'middle enclosure', is the world of humans in Norse and wider Germanic cosmology. The same idea appears in Old English as middangeard, used in Beowulf, and the word turns up in ordinary use on a Viking Age runestone in Sweden.
In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, the gods kill the primeval giant Ymir and build the world from his body: his flesh becomes land, his blood the sea, his bones mountains. From his eyebrows they make a wall around Midgard to protect humans from the giants. The serpent Jormungandr lies in the ocean around it, and the bridge Bifrost leads up to Asgard.
Midgard is a mythic idea of the inhabited world, not a separate place on a map.
Midgard is the human world at one end of the bridge Bifrost.
Mentioned on these pages
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Midgard'Reference
- Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda: Gylfaginning, trans. A. G. Brodeur (sacred-texts.com)Primary text
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