Asgard

The king came up the road wearing an old man’s face, and the first thing that beat him was the light. The hall ahead was roofed with gold shields laid over one another like shingles, and he could not make out the top of it. Gylfi had travelled in disguise to learn how the Æsir always got their way, and he had most of his answer before anyone inside spoke to him.

The place he had walked into was Ásgarðr. The name is two plain words: áss, one of the Æsir, and garðr, a yard, a fence, an enclosure. The same second element sits inside Miðgarðr, the middle enclosure where people live, and Útgarðr, the outer one, where the giants do. It is a farmyard word. Whatever later centuries made of the idea, the Norse called the home of their gods a walled patch of ground, and the wall turns out to matter more than most of what stands behind it.

Snorri Sturluson, writing in Iceland around 1220, gives the fullest description. The sons of Borr shape the first man and woman from two trees on a beach, settle them beneath Miðgarðr, and then build a city for themselves in the middle of the world. At its centre lies a level place called Iðavöllr, the Ida-field, and the first thing raised on it is the court where the twelve seats stand alongside the high-seat that belongs to Allfather alone. The hall around them is gold inside and out, one unbroken sheet of it, and is called Glaðsheimr. Beside it goes up a second and fairer house, Vingólf, which belongs to the goddesses. Then, before anything else, a forge: hammer, tongs, anvil, and out of those every other tool. They worked gold so freely that their cups and plates and household gear were all made of it. Snorri calls that stretch the Age of Gold, and notes in the same breath that it ended when women came out of Jötunheim.

More halls stand around it in the surrounding heaven. Breiðablik, where nothing fairer is built. Glitnir, walls and posts and pillars of red gold under a roof of silver. Himinbjörg at the bridge-head, where the bridge meets the sky. Valaskjálf, thatched by the gods in sheer silver, and inside it Hliðskjálf, the seat from which Allfather looks out over every land at once and sees what every man is doing.

The daily rhythm of the place involves leaving it. The gods’ holy ground is not inside the walls but out at the ash Yggdrasil, by the Well of Urd, and every morning the Æsir ride up over Bifröst to hold judgement there. Thor does not ride. He goes on foot and wades two cold rivers to reach the assembly, because the bridge he would have to cross is on fire.

The wall came late and came dear. A wright turned up offering to build the gods a stronghold proof against hill-giants and rime-giants, one that would hold even if they came in over Miðgarðr, and he wanted Freyja for it, and the sun and the moon as well. The Æsir agreed on the condition that he finish in a single winter with no man’s help, and, on Loki’s advice, allowed him his stallion Svaðilfari. The horse hauled stone by night and did more of the heavy work than the builder did, and with three days of winter left the wall wanted only its gateway. So the gods sat down in their judgement seats, worked out whose idea the stallion had been, and told Loki to fix it. That evening a mare came out of the wood and whinnied at Svaðilfari, and the stallion tore the traces apart and went after her, and the builder went after the stallion, and nothing got built that night. When his temper broke and showed what he was, Thor came at once and paid him with the hammer instead of the sun. The gods cheated. Their wall exists because they broke an oath they had sworn with strong witnesses, and Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse, was the foal Loki bore out of that same night’s work.

For all that, the walls are not much comfort. When Thor loses his hammer, Loki’s argument for putting him in a bridal veil is short and effective: the giants will be living in Ásgarðr by morning if he does not get it back. Loki himself leads Iðunn out through the gate to be carried off by an eagle, and when the giant Þjazi comes after her he drops down inside the walls and is killed on the spot. Gylfi simply walked in. The stronghold is entered again and again, usually by invitation, usually because somebody inside wanted something.

The oldest surviving catalogue of the gods’ dwellings does not use the name at all. Grímnismál runs through twelve of them, Þrúðheimr and Ýdalir and Valaskjálf and Sökkvabekkr and the rest, and never gathers them under a single walled town. That tidy arrangement, the city plan with the field at its heart, is largely Snorri’s, built out of scattered verse by a Christian antiquarian two centuries after the conversion.

He also had a second answer, and it was not mythological. In Gylfaginning he remarks that men call the city Troy. In Ynglinga saga he puts Asgard in Asia instead, the chief town of a land called Ásaland east of the river Tanais, a great place of sacrifice with a chief in it named Odin, and lets the whole pantheon migrate north from there as human kings. Anthony Faulkes has shown how ordinary that move was in its own century: the Franks, the Britons, the Normans and the Danes had all been given Trojan ancestors by then, and Snorri was fitting his gods into a fashion, not recording a memory. His phrase for the original place, once the migration is under way, is Ásgarðr inn forni, the Elder Asgard.

Whichever version is being told, the ending is the same, and it is built into the approach. Bifröst is made of three colours and more craft than anything else the gods produced, and it will still break when the sons of Múspell ride out and put their horses across the rivers. Gylfi asked why they did not simply build it so it could not break. The answer he got was that nothing in this world can be relied on once Múspell’s sons go harrying.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Asgard?

Asgard is the walled stronghold of the Æsir, the principal gods of Norse mythology. The name combines áss, meaning one of the Æsir, with garðr, meaning an enclosure or yard, and it holds the gods’ halls, their forge and the court of twelve seats set on the field called Iðavöllr.

Who built the wall around Asgard?

An unnamed builder, later revealed to be a giant, contracted to raise it in one winter in exchange for Freyja, the sun and the moon. He nearly finished, thanks to his stallion Svaðilfari, so Loki turned himself into a mare to lure the horse away, and Thor killed the builder with his hammer rather than pay. Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse, was the foal Loki bore afterwards.

How do you get to Asgard?

The bridge Bifröst runs from earth up to the gods’ country, and people on the ground see it as the rainbow. Snorri says it is made of three colours and is very strong, but that it will break when the sons of Múspell ride across it at the end of the world. Thor cannot use it and wades two rivers instead, because the bridge burns beneath him.

Why did Snorri Sturluson say Asgard was Troy?

Snorri offered a historicising explanation in which the gods were originally human rulers who were worshipped after their deaths. In Gylfaginning he identifies their city with Troy, and in Ynglinga saga he relocates it to Asia, east of the river Tanais, and has the Æsir migrate north from there. Medieval writers had already supplied the Franks, Britons, Normans and Danes with Trojan ancestry, so the claim followed a well-worn pattern.

Which halls stand in Asgard?

Snorri names Glaðsheimr, the gold hall holding the twelve judgement seats, and Vingólf, the hall of the goddesses. Nearby stand Breiðablik, Glitnir with its red gold pillars and silver roof, Himinbjörg at the head of the bridge, and Valaskjálf, which contains the high-seat Hliðskjálf. The older poem Grímnismál lists twelve divine dwellings without ever placing them inside a single walled town.

Related Entries

Æsir, Odin, Thor, Loki, Freyja, Heimdallr, Svaðilfari, Sleipnir, Yggdrasil, Einherjar, Valkyrie, Jötunn, Vanir, Eikthyrnir, Ragnarök