The configuration of the Cosmos is rather peculiar in the Norse Myths. Many schematic drawings, like the one below, of how these worlds were thought to be arranged can be found in books and online. It has to be understood though that while arranging the worlds in this way is useful in order to perform magic and to transform the Self a Germanic priestess or a Norse farmer would probably not have pictured them like that. If we look at the sources, we quickly realize that these worlds were never attributed a fixed place with the exception of Midgard, the world of humans, as the name literally means “Middle Earth” which strongly suggest that it was thought to be located in the center with the other worlds somehow grouped around it.
It is important to understand that in the old days the world was not perceived as being split into a spiritual and a material realm but that these aspects were seen as two sides of the same coin. So a member of the Svartalfar (what would in medieval times be called a dwarf) would have his home in Svartalfheim of course but could at the same time inhabit a strangely shaped boulder on your property. It is possible that people thought that such sacred spots, like said weirdly shaped boulder, were places where Svartalfheim actually touched or overlapped with Midgard, therefore making it possible to interact with an inhabitant of this other world through sacrifice and other means.
In this section we will look at the 8 worlds that surround Midgard as well as Yggdrasil, the world tree that supports them all, by looking what we can find in the sources on their characteristics and their inhabitants. The sources used for these short texts are the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. Any references made in relation to the Poetic Edda are based on the translation by H.A. Bellows, references about the Prose Edda on the translation by A.G. Brodeur. These were used because they are part of the public domain and can be accessed via the following links alongside the original Old Norse original text.
Poetic Edda: http://www.voluspa.org/poeticedda.htm
Prose Edda: http://www.voluspa.org/proseedda.htm
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D. L., Switzerland