YGG'DRASIL, the name given in Scandinavian mythology to a tree, the greatest and most sacred of all trees, which was conceived as binding together heaven, earth, and hell. It is an ash, whose branches spread over all the world, and reach above the heavens. It sends out three roots in three different directions: one to the asa-gods in heaven, another to the frost-giants, the third to the underworld. Under each root springs a wonderful fountain, endowed with marvelous virtues. From the tree itself drops a honey-dew. Among its branches and roots, several animals sit or run about: an eagle, a squirrel, four stags, a serpent, all having their own proper names. The serpent, Nithhaggr, lies at the under-world fountain and gnaws the root of Yggdrasil; the squirrel, Ratatoskr, runs up and down, and tries to breed strife between the serpent and the eagle, which sits aloft.
Of this old-world myth too impe.ffeet an account has survived to enable us to read its meaning. Some writers in the middle ages bring it into connection with the cross. It is striking to find Virgil (Georg. ii. 2.91) describing the ash as sending its branches as high Into the air as it sends its roots into the earth — iEseutus in primis, gum quantum vartire ad auras ACtnerias, tautum radice in tartara tendit. • Remarkable coincidences, although of a fragmentary kind, are also found in eastern traditions.
Jacob Grimm sees an intimate connection betweenithe world-tree Yggdrasil and the frmeoseule, of which numerous traces arc to be found in the records of German antiquity. This is described by Rudolf of Fuld as a great trunk of a tree set upright, and worshiped in the opcu air; the name Irminsut, he explains as meaning the universal or all-sus taining pillar (Ger. Stule, pillar). Such a tree-idol was destroyed by Charles the great in his conquest of the Saxons iu 772, at a place called Heresburg, in Westphalia, which was a chief seat of the pagan religion of the Saxons. The word irmin, Aug.-Sax. eormen, was frequently compounded with other words in the earlier stages of the Teutonic lan guages, in the sense of universal, greatest of all. As the primitive nature-worship tended more and more to the personification of particular powers, these trunk-idols were associated with particular divinities, and perhaps had an image set upon them, or were cut into some rude resemblance, as in the case of the Greek pillar-images called kerma (see HERMES). The coincidence of the names irmin and hermce, which may, however, be casual, has not failed to be remarked. The Christmas treosof modern Germany may be some kind of offshoot of the old notion of Yggdrasil.