Norse PantheonRealm
Midgard
The realm of humanity (Earth), encircled by the world serpent Jormungandr and connected to Asgard by the Bifrost bridge.
About Midgard
The middle yard
Midgard is the human world, walled with Ymir's eyebrows in Snorri's creation account, encircled by the sea where Jormungandr lies. The Poetic Edda uses Midgard as the inhabited middle against Utgard and the gods' garths. It is not a country with a capital. Thor is its defender; the poems send him out of it to fight giants. There is no Midgard cult. The word is a cosmology, the place people already live.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Poetic Edda, Grimnismal / Voluspa tradition via Gylfaginning
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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