Yggdrasil Tree of Life

 

Yggdrasil Tree of Life

With its branches withinside the heavens and its roots withinside the underworld, the Cosmic Tree is a not unusualplace characteristic of religions and mythologies across the globe. Stories of such timber had been recorded withinside the Americas, Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe — and even as the species and specifics may also range from area to area, one component nearly continually preserve true: the Cosmic Tree is crucial to the shape of the universe.

The sacred Norse Yggdrasil — says E. O. James in his traditional archaeological have a look at The Tree of Life (1966) — is perhaps “the Cosmic tree par excellence”. A large ash tree defined in each the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson’s 13th-century Prose Edda, Yggdrasil stands on the absolute middle of the Norse cosmos. Its roots join it with the Nine Worlds, and it's far tended via way of means of the 3 Norns Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld (effective lady figures who more or less correspond to the 3 Fates of Greece), who water it from the paranormal Well of Urðr.

Probably the maximum well-known tale related to Yggdrasil worries Odin, who for you to benefit the expertise of the runes and the want of the Norns hung upside down “9 lengthy nights, / wounded with a spear […] / on that tree of which no guy is aware of in which its roots run”.

In Norse cosmology, there may be no greater critical entity than Yggdrasil. When it dies, the myths inform us, the entire global of the gods dies with it. Nearly each Norse textual content that mentions Yggdrasil emphasizes that the tree isn't best sacred, it's far mortal, and sorely in want of compassion and protection. Odin, withinside the Poetic Edda, says that Yggdrasil “suffers agony / greater than guys know, a stag nibbles it above, however at its facet it’s decaying, and Níðhöggr [a malicious serpent or dragon] rends it underneath”. Elsewhere withinside the Eddas, we’re informed that endless risky serpents slither underneath Yggdrasil; a squirrel is continuously scurrying up and down its trunk, bringing news; and Gullinkambi, certainly considered one among 3 roosters whose crowing will sign Ragnarök (the Twilight of the Gods), nests in Yggdrasil’s top cover like a sentry.

The deep origins of Yggdrasil are mysterious. The English student Hilda Ellis Davidson has plausibly cautioned its mythology evolved from historical north Eurasian shamanic traditions, in line with which a tree growing thru the middle of the sector become idea to behave as a kind of ladder to descend into the underworld or ascend into the heavens. Such a idea is acquainted in lots of cultures, from the Hungarian égig érő fa (topless tree), to the Vedic Indian sacred fig tree referred to as the ashvattha (which Krishna, withinside the Upanishads, says has no starting or end), to its Buddhist descendant, the Bodhi, beneathneath which Gautama reached enlightenment.

Certainly, the culture of holy timber has observed a long lasting function in Scandinavian culture. Warden timber, called tuntre in Norwegian and vårdträd in Swedish, are nevertheless planted in centrals area on many farms today. These timber, if nicely taken care of, are idea to convey appropriate good fortune to the farm and the those who stay there. It’s a notion now no longer to date eliminated from historical lore — which held that the courtroom docket of the gods become “saved underneath a notable ash and it become there they meted out justice”.

To help illustrate how fascinating Viking Yggdrasill truly is, here is the most fascinating design you should take a look :

Viking Yin Yang Yggdrasil Tree of Life

Viking Yggdrasill, Old Norse Mimameidr, in Norse mythology, the world tree, a giant ash supporting the universe.

Viking Yin Yang Yggdrasil Tree of Life