Glanz & Gravur – Norse laser engravings
Blog / The Nine Worlds

Niflheim – the World of Mist and Ice

The Nine Worlds Niflheim, the world of mist and ice

Far in the north of the world-order, in icy remoteness, lies Niflheim – the ‘mist-home’. Here reign cold, frost and everlasting twilight. It is one of the two primal worlds, and from its meeting with fire life first arose.

The name comes from Old Norse nifl – ‘mist, fog, darkness’ (cognate with German Nebel). Niflheim is the cold counterpart to fiery Muspelheim; between the two yawned, at the beginning, the primal void Ginnungagap.

The wellspring of all streams

In Niflheim rises the spring Hvergelmir (‘the roaring kettle’), from which all the rivers of the world flow – including the icy Élivágar. When their spray met the fire of Muspelheim, the rime melted and formed the primal giant Ymir. Beneath one of the roots of the world-tree Yggdrasil lies Hvergelmir, and there the dragon Nidhögg gnaws at the root among countless serpents.

“Hvergelmir it is called, whence come all waters, / and take their way from thence.”after Grímnismál 26, translation in the Bellows tradition (public domain)
Sources. Niflheim is described almost solely by Snorri (Gylfaginning); in the older Edda poems it is rather Niflhel that appears – the deepest, darkest world of the dead. Whether Niflheim and the death-world Helheim were originally the same, and Snorri only separated them, is disputed. The borders of the cold world are deliberately misty in the sources.

Myth & meaning. Niflheim and Muspelheim form the cosmic primal pair: ice and fire, stiffening and consuming. From their tension – not from either alone – life arises. This thinking in opposites that condition one another runs through the whole of Norse myth: without frost no Ymir, without Ymir no world.

Laser-engraved slate plaque of the Nine Worlds by Glanz & Gravur
The cold mist-world within the frame of worlds – the nine worlds as a laser-engraved slate plaque. Slate plaques in the shop →

Read more with us

Ginnungagap – the yawning void · Muspelheim – the fire world · Ymir · Yggdrasil · Helheim.

Sources & literature

Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning (c. 1220). Grímnismál, Völuspá (Poetic Edda), English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology.

Visit the Shop More posts