A rune stone in Fyrby, S\u00f6dermanland, carries a short, almost casual inscription: “a : mi\u00fekar\u00fei” \u2013 “\u00e1 Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0i,” “in Midgard.” Two sons had the stone raised to boast: they claimed to be the most rune-skilled men “in Midgard.” No gods, no world serpent, no doomsday \u2013 just two sons bragging about their knowledge. The word for the world of humans was apparently so ordinary that it was carved in stone for posterity.<\/p>\n
Midgard, Old Norse Mi\u00f0gar\u00f0r, is made up of two parts: mi\u00f0 means “middle,” gar\u00f0r means “enclosure” or “yard.” Together they yield something like “the fenced-in space in the middle.” The word does not stand alone. In Gothic, midjungards appears, used by the Gospel of Luke to translate the Greek oikoum\u00e9n\u0113, the inhabited earth. The Old Saxon Heliand knows middilgard, the Old High German poem Muspilli speaks of mittilagart, and in Old English middangeard turns up \u2013 no fewer than six times in the epic Beowulf. All these forms mean the same thing: the world in which humans live, set apart from what lies outside it.<\/p>\n
The V\u00f6lusp\u00e1, the great prophetic poem of the Edda, tells how Midgard comes into being. Borr’s sons Odin<\/a>, Vili, and V\u00e9 slay the primordial being Ymir and shape the world from his body. The fourth stanza reports on the raising of the lands and the creation of Midgard. The poem Gr\u00edmnism\u00e1l becomes more specific: from Ymir’s flesh the earth is made, from his blood and sweat the sea, from his bones the mountains, from his hair the trees, from his skull the sky. And from his eyebrows the gods build Midgard, the dwelling place of the sons of men. The world of humans is thus literally made from a dead giant \u2013 not an empty space, but a structure built of flesh and bone.<\/p>\n Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning describes the world as round, surrounded by a deep sea. The J\u00f6tnar, the giants, receive the land along the shore. Further inward, the gods build a fortification against them from Ymir’s eyelashes \u2013 Midgard, more a border structure than a mere continent. Midgard is connected to Asgard, the seat of the gods, by the bridge Bifr\u00f6st; on the outside, it borders J\u00f6tunheim<\/a>, the land of the giants. All of it is held up by the world tree Yggdrasil<\/a>. Out in the ocean that encircles Midgard lies J\u00f6rmungandr<\/a>, the Midgard Serpent. It is so long that it wraps around the entire earth and bites its own tail \u2013 a belt of living venom around the world of humans.<\/p>\nBetween Asgard and J\u00f6tunheim<\/h2>\n
The Downfall That Is a Beginning<\/h2>\n