The Nine Realms

The Nine Realms, known to their inhabitants as the Norse World and to foreigners as the Northlands, were the worlds of the Norse gods and the many races who lived along the branches of the World Tree, Yggdrasil. They numbered nine: Midgard, Alfheim, Asgard, Vanaheim, Niflheim, Muspelheim, Helheim, Svartalfheim, and Jotunheim, bound together by the tree and joined by the Realm Between Realms, an in-between space among them. It was to these realms that Kratos and his son Atreus came after Greece, and it was here that the prophecy of Ragnarok ran its course.

Origins from Ginnungagap#

The realms existed among the branches of Yggdrasil, a tree said to lie beyond time and space and therefore to have no beginning. But there was a time when no realms existed, only the void called Ginnungagap, in which fire and ice met. Where they touched they created what would become the Spark of the World, and from that meeting came a mystic water carrying the life-blood of something new. From this water rose Ymir, the first of the Jotnar, a being of pure creation and chaos who was mother and father to all that followed, for every god, man, and beast first came from his flesh.

Seeking to dominate the rest of creation, the Aesir killed Ymir, with Odin spilling his blood with the spear Gungnir under the pretext of bringing order. From Ymir's flesh Odin shaped the realm of Midgard, where humanity would live alongside most of the animals, and so the worlds of the Norse cosmos took their familiar form.

The realms of gods and mortals#

Asgard was the centerpiece of the gods' civilization, ruled by Odin and sealed off from the rest of the world, the final home of the greatest fallen warriors until Ragnarok came. Vanaheim was the most mysterious of the realms, an ethereal expanse of colorful forests and shining lakes home to the Vanir, the Aesir's great rivals, whose mastery of magic made the realm impossible to enter without their permission. Jotunheim, the ancestral home of the giants, held the tallest mountains of all the realms and, after Odin's genocide, an endless landscape of giant corpses; once the giants retreated there, no one could enter again.

Midgard was the middle ground among the realms, a vast and cold land of forests, mountains, and waterways dominated by the great Lake of Nine, at whose center stood Tyr's Temple. Alfheim was a realm of lush forests and tranquil waters torn by an endless war between the Light Elves and the Dark Elves over its great Light. Svartalfheim was the homeland of the cunning, inventive dwarves, off-limits to all but their own kind, where their greatest works were forged.

The harsher realms and the afterlife#

Niflheim was a small but deadly realm of magical mists, once home to a breakaway colony of dwarves led by the craftsman Ivaldi, where a maze rearranged itself with every entry and a cursed fog born of Odin's wrath drained the life of any who lingered. Muspelheim was a land of primordial fire and blistering heat, an expanse of lava flows and volcanic ash where a tribe of fire giants slumbered, ruled by Surtr, whose famous sword stood embedded in the realm's highest volcano awaiting Ragnarok.

Helheim, also called Hel, was the primary Norse afterlife, a freezing realm where those who did not die honorably in battle came to be tormented by illusions of their greatest regrets. Unlike Valhalla, which received only those who fell honorably in combat, Helheim housed the vast majority of the dead, and Hel-Walkers roamed it freely.

The age of the Aesir and its end#

For centuries the Aesir under Odin held political and economic dominion over the Nine Realms, sealing some away, conquering others, and ruling through fear, information, and the endless armies of the Einherjar. That grasp was broken at Ragnarok. When Kratos and his allies raised the realms in revolt and brought down Odin, only Asgard was destroyed; the fire giant Surtr, transformed into Ragnarok itself, shattered it, and its burning remnants fell across the other worlds.

The other eight realms survived. With the death of Odin and the fall of Asgard, the Aesir's centuries-long reign ended, and the realms achieved full independence and freedom at last, free to thrive after generations under the All-Father's rule.