Throughout Norse mythology Nidhogg spends his time variously glutting himself on the corpses of the dead from Hvergelmir (the spring from which all the rivers of the world flow), gnawing on the roots of Yggdrasil, and trading taunts and insults with the eagle that lives in the uppermost branches of Yggdrasil by means of a giant squirrel. The roots of Yggdrasil lie in Niflheim, the world of the dead, and so Nidhogg is sometimes thought of as connected to death, and has commonly been presented in modern fiction as a servant of Hel (the goddess of the underworld). ![]() Nidhogg, according to the Voluspa, is a dragon that lives under the roots of Yggdrasil (the world tree that connects the nine worlds of Norse mythology) and eats the corpses of the dead. Nidhogg flying of Niflheim drawn by vendetta535 Both are shown to be evil or dangerous in some form, and both present a distinct danger to man, the gods, or both. Both Nidhogg and Jormungand are closely connected to the Ragnarok, and thus with the Norse ‘end of time’. Fafnir is also the only significant dragon in Norse Mythology who is not actually a dragon, but more on that later. Of these dragons, only Fafnir does not have any clear connection to Ragnarok (for those who don’t know Ragnarok is the final battle/end of time/beginning of the new world that defines much of Norse mythology). There are three dragons primarily represented in Norse mythology, Nidhogg (or Nidhoggr), Jormungand (or Jormungandr), and Fafnir. In Norse mythology dragons similarly represent great forces of evil, but they represent forces of ending, as opposed to forces of beginning. In this they also often represented origins or beginnings, and were in some way connected to the primordial chaos that predated the world. They were not exactly evil in the modern sense, but in the sense that they embodied all that was dangerous to the order that human society had created. ![]() You will remember that Mesopotamian dragons, by and large, represented the natural, dangerous, and chaotic forces of the world. You will remember the brief discussion of Apep, Tiamat, and Kur. In my last post in this series I started discussing the history of dragons. Nidhogg in the roots of Yggdrasil drawn by Ruth Tay
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