The title of this post is probably a shocker. That’s sort of on purpose. Admittedly there’s some nuance here, but let me start by saying that the idea of “the nine realms of Norse mythology” is one of the biggest misconceptions about Norse myths to have ever graced our modern minds.
The most common list of nine realms we find in blog posts, TV shows, and video games looks like this: Alfheim, Asgard, Hel/Helheim, Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspelheim, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, and Vanaheim.
Astute readers will notice immediately that there’s a problem with this list, which is that Gylfaginning 34 in the Prose Edda places the realm of Hel firmly within the bounds of Niflheim:
Hel he threw into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds, such that she has to administer board and lodging to those sent to her…
So if Hel(heim) and Niflheim aren’t two separate realms, it raises two major questions. The first is obvious: Can we fix the list to be more accurate?
The typical response to this first question tends to result in the following list: Alfheim, Asgard, Hel/Helheim Nidavellir, Jotunheim, Midgard, Muspelheim, Niflheim, Svartalfheim, and Vanaheim. However, this is still a problem. Nidavellir is described by Völuspá 36 (Larrington transl.) as a place containing “a hall of gold, of Sindri’s lineage”. Sindri is a dwarf, therefore Nidavellir is a home of the dwarves. And as it so happens, the word svartálfr is just a synonym for a dwarf (more on this in another post), meaning that Nidavellir and Svartalfheim are still probably just two different names for the same place.
From here we could try and fix our list again, or we could take a look at the second major question raised by our problematic lists, which is this: Where did this list come from in the first place?
The truth is, there is no mythological source material in existence that ever provides a list of nine realms. The sources themselves describe or mention vastly more than nine total locations in the cosmos, and there is no reason at all why we should believe that the traditional nine we always see in popular media are more special in some way than any of the others. In fact this traditional list of nine realms is just a modern guess made by overreaching scholars (such as Bellows 1923) without any solid evidence as to its veracity.
Consider the poem Grímnismál, which purports to provide a list of 12 separate locations (although it actually mentions 13). The descriptions are as follows:
- Þórr rules Þrúðheimr
- Ullr rules Ýdalir
- Freyr rules Álfheimr
- “A god” (probably Óðinn) rules Valaskjálf (which is probably another name for Valhöll. The stanza calls this “a third home” although it is actually fourth in the list.)
- Óðinn and Sága drink together in Sökkvabekkr (“a fourth”)
- Valhöll is located in Glaðsheimr (“a fifth”)
- Skaði lives in her father’s ancient courts in Þrymheimr (“a sixth”)
- Baldr rules in Breiðablik (“a seventh”)
- Heimdallr rules in Himinbjörg (“the eighth”)
- Freyja fixes allocation of seats in the hall at Fólkvangr (“the ninth”)
- Forseti lives in Glitnir (“the tenth”)
- Njörðr rules in Nóatún (“the eleventh”)
- Víðarr owns an unnamed land with high grass and wood
Is there some reason why most of these locations should not be considered part of the nine realms, especially when some of them even end with the suffix heimr? Is it because we should assume they are all within Asgard? If so, then why do we always assume Alfheim is one of the special nine when it is mentioned here among all these other places?
How the sources use the phrase “nine realms”
The phrase “nine realms” comes from the Old Norse phrase níu heimar wherein heimar (singular, heimr) denotes an ambiguously sized location. It’s related to the English word “home”, and it can mean “home”, but it is also used to mean “land of”, as if in English we had chosen to call a place like France “French-home”. In that light, “realm” is probably a better translation than “world”, because it better matches the size-ambiguity we find in heimr, although I’ll be quoting some translations that do use the word “world” in just a moment.
Across all of our Norse mythological sources, variants of the phrase níu heimar are used exactly 3 times. There is also 1 mention of “the ninth world” (níunda heim), and one unrelated mention of “nine heavens” which appears to refer to weather phenomena. Here are those references:
Poetic Edda (Larrington transl.)
Völuspá 2
Ek man jötna ár um borna, | þá er forðum mik fœdda höfðu; | níu man ek heima, níu íviði, | mjötvið mœran fyr mold neðan.
I remember giants born early in time | those nurtured me long ago; | I remember nine worlds, | I remember nine giant women, | the mighty Measuring-Tree below the earth.
Vafþrúðnismál 43:
Frá jötna rúnum ok allra goða | ek kann segja satt, því at hvern hef ek | heim of komit; | níu kom ek heima fyr Niflhel neðan; | hinig deyja ór helju halir.
Of the secrets of the giants and of all the gods, | I can tell truly, | for I have been into every world; | nine worlds I have travelled through to Mist-hell, | there men die down out of hell.
The context in the first reference is that Odin has resurrected a dead seeress who tells him that she remembers nine worlds. The context in the second is that Odin has just asked a jotun named Vafthrudnir why he knows all the secrets “of the giants and of all the gods”. Vafthrudnir replies that it is because he has traveled through nine worlds, which appears to be equated here with “every world”.
Prose Edda (Faulkes transl.)
Gylfaginning 34:
Hel kastaði hann í Niflheim ok gaf henni vald yfir níu heimum, at hon skyldi skipta öllum vistum með þeim, er til hennar váru sendir, en þat eru sóttdauðir menn ok ellidauðir.
Hel he threw into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds, such that she has to administer board and lodging to those sent to her, and that is those who die of sickness or old age.
Gylfaginning 3:
…ok skulu allir menn lifa, þeir er rétt eru siðaðir, ok vera með honum sjálfum þar sem heitir Gimlé eða Vingólf, en vándir menn fara til Heljar ok þaðan í Niflhel. Þat er niðr í inn níunda heim.
…and all men who are righteous shall live and dwell with [Odin] himself in the place called Gimle or Vingolf, but wicked men go to Hel and on to Niflhel; that is down in the ninth world.
Notice that in all cases, this phrase carries a sense of totality. The seeress remembers all things in the world, Vafthrudnir has traveled to all worlds, Hel rules the dead that come to her from nine worlds (in other words, from everywhere), and the ninth world is the final world a dead soul can reach.
Notice also, that this phrase is never used in a definite sense. We never get “the/these/those nine realms”, even in prose. We only ever get “nine realms”, meaning there is no evidence at all that there was ever a discreet list of nine named realms that people were expected to know.
In my opinion, the key to understanding this concept is to recognize how important the number nine is in ancient Norse (and more broadly Germanic) religion and poetry. Ægir has 9 daughters, Heimdall has 9 mothers, Thor takes 9 steps before he dies, Odin hangs from a tree for 9 nights, Draupnir creates a total of 9 gold rings every 9 nights, Volund’s valkyrie wife leaves him after 9 years, Hermod rides Sleipnir for 9 nights toward Hel, etc.
With this in mind, I think it’s likely that there never was a list of nine named realms. Rather, the phrase “nine realms” was probably a bit like “the seven seas” in that it was probably just a poetic way to represent the idea of the entire cosmos, with the land of the dead being called “ninth” because it is the final place everyone eventually goes.