In Germanic cosmology, Midgard (an anglicised form of

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

;

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

Old Saxon Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It ...

Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...

, and Gothic ''Midjun-gards''; "middle yard", "middle enclosure") is the name for

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

(equivalent in meaning to the Greek term , "inhabited") inhabited by and known to humans in early Germanic cosmology. The Old Norse form plays a notable role in

Norse cosmology Norse cosmology is the study of the cosmos (cosmology) as perceived by the ancient North Germanic peoples. The topic encompasses concepts from Norse mythology, such as notions of time and space, cosmogony, personifications, anthropogeny, and e ...

Etymology

The

name is cognate with Gothic (attested in the

Gospel of Luke The Gospel of Luke), or simply Luke (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-vol ...

as a translation of the Greek ),

(in ''

Heliand The ''Heliand'' () is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means ''saviour'' in Old Saxon (cf. German and Dutch ''Heiland'' meaning "saviour"), and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the ...

''),

(in ''

Muspilli ''Muspilli'' is an Old High German poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the ...

''), and

. The latter, which appears in both prose and poetry, was transformed to or ("Middle-earth") in

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

literature. All these forms stem from

Common Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...

, a

compound Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struc ...

of ("middle") and ("yard, enclosure"). In early Germanic cosmology, it stands alongside the term ''

world In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

'' (cf.

Old Frisian Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (today's Northern Fri ...

), itself from a Common Germanic compound ''*wira-alđiz'' ("man-age"), which refers to the inhabited world, i.e. the realm of humankind.Orel, Vladimir E. (2003). ''A Handbook of Germanic Etymology''. Leiden: Brill. pp. 264, 462.

Old Norse

In Norse mythology, ''Miðgarðr'' became applied to the wall around the world that the gods constructed from the eyebrows of the giant

Ymir In Norse mythology, Ymir (, ), also called Aurgelmir, Brimir, or Bláinn, is the ancestor of all jötnar. Ymir is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional material, in the ''Prose Edda'', writ ...

as a defense against the Jotuns who lived in Jotunheim, east of ''Manheimr'', the "home of men", a word used to refer to the entire world. The gods slew the giant

, the first created being, and put his body into the central void of the universe, creating the world out of his body: his flesh constituting the land, his

blood Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood in the cir ...

the oceans, his bones the mountains, his teeth the cliffs, his hairs the trees, and his brains the clouds. Ymir's skull was held by four dwarfs, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, and Vestri, who represent the four points on the compass and became the dome of heaven. The sun, moon, and stars were said to be scattered sparks in the skull. According to the

Eddas "Edda" (; Old Norse ''Edda'', plural ''Eddur'') is an Old Norse term that has been attributed by modern scholars to the collective of two Medieval Icelandic literary works: what is now known as the ''Prose Edda'' and an older collection of poems ...

, Midgard will be destroyed at Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world.

Jörmungandr In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr ( non, Jǫrmungandr, lit=the Vast gand, see Etymology), also known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent ( non, Miðgarðsormr), is an unfathomably large sea serpent or worm who dwells in the world sea, encir ...

(also known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent) will arise from the ocean, poisoning the land and sea with his venom and causing the sea to rear up and lash against the land. The final battle will take place on the plain of

Vígríðr In Norse mythology, Vígríðr or Óskópnir is a large field foretold to host a battle between the forces of the gods and the forces of Surtr as part of the events of Ragnarök. The field is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th ...

, following which Midgard and almost all life on it will be destroyed, with the earth sinking into the sea only to rise again, fertile and green when the cycle repeats and the creation begins again. Although most surviving instances of the word Midgard refer to spiritual matters, it was also used in more mundane situations, as in the

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Germ ...

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones d ...

poem from the inscription Sö 56 from Fyrby: The

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

form or , the

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

or , as well as the Icelandic and Faroese form , all derive from the Old Norse term.

English

The name ''middangeard'' occurs six times in the

epic poem '' Beowulf'', and is the same word as Midgard in

. The term is equivalent in meaning to the Greek term

Oikoumene The ecumene ( US spelling) or oecumene ( UK spelling; grc-gre, οἰκουμένη, oikouménē, inhabited) is an ancient Greek term for the known, the inhabited, or the habitable world. In Greek antiquity, it referred to the portions of the worl ...

, as referring to the known and inhabited world. The concept of Midgard occurs many times in

. The association with ''earth'' (OE ''eorðe'') in Middle English ''middellærd'', ''middelerde'' is by popular etymology; the modern English cognate of ''geard'' "enclosure" is ''

yard The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly ...

''. An early example of this transformation is from the

Ormulum The ''Ormulum'' or ''Orrmulum'' is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by an Augustinian canon named Orm (or Ormin) and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonemic orth ...

: ::''þatt ure Drihhtin wollde / ben borenn i þiss middellærd'' ::that our Lord wanted / be born in this Middle-earth. The usage of "

Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...

" as a name for a setting was popularized by Old English scholar

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

in his ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...

'' and other fantasy works; he was originally inspired by the references to ''middangeard'' and '' Éarendel'' in the Old English poem '' Crist A''.

Old High German and Old Saxon

''Mittilagart'' is mentioned in the 9th-century

'' (v. 54) meaning "the world" as opposed to the sea and the heavens: :: :: ::Sea is swallowed, flaming burn the heavens, ::Moon falls, Midgard burns ''Middilgard'' is also attested in the

'': :: :: ::Over the middle earth; ::And all men He could help

References

{{Norse mythology Locations in Norse mythology Religious cosmologies Earth in religion