‘…The ash Yggdrasil endures hardship, more than men know. This is attested in the poetic Edda ( Grimnirsmal) which comments upon the ravages suffered by the Yggdrasil: ‘In Hvergelmir there are so many serpents with Nídhöggr that no tongue can count them…’ ‘…the third reaches down to Niflheim, and under this root is the well Hvergelmir but Nídhöggr gnaws at this root from below…’ Hvergelmir is described as the well which receives the ‘dew’ which falls from Yggdrasil, otherwise from the sprouting antlers of the stag who grazes the topmost branches of the tree at Valhalla. Snorri’s Gylfaginning (prose Edda) says this of the roots of Yggdrasil: There are a number of significant ‘dragons’ or ‘serpents’ who appear in the ‘Edda’ literature of the medieval Scandinavian world… The first is Níðhöggr (‘Malice-striker’) who curls around one of the roots of Yggdrasil at the well of Hvergelmir (‘bubbling/boiling pool’) and who represents the force of putrefaction at the roots of the world-tree. ‘Worms’ such as caterpillars and larvae also expressed the apparently magical and mysterious power of metamorphosis, a connection also prefigured by the ‘rebirth’ of snakes who shed their skins.
Fertile soil was always rich in earthworms… For this reason ‘worms’ or ‘serpents’ became associated with the classical ‘element’ of ‘Earth’ and the regenerative powers of putrefaction. Snakes seemed to prefer to rest in holes in the ground, and to rely on the heat of the sun to animate their bodies. They also appear in the bodily waste of humans and animals. Worms burrowed and intruded through the soil forming tunnels, and performed the same function in rotting flesh. Another empirical observation about serpentine, wriggling creatures was that they also ‘appeared’ in stagnant water (the larvae of mosquitoes and aquatic insects) and colonised the smelly putrefying mud-flats of estuaries and on the banks of rivers. The painful aspects of disease were seen as poisons, and ‘worms’ or ‘serpents’ were a key natural class which were known to deliver such venoms to the human body. During the 17th and 18th centuries, for instance, the attack of Gout in the foot was attributed in the Scottish Hebrides to a worm called ‘Fillan’, no doubt on account of the worm-like congested blood and lymphatic vessels that surround the afflicted joint of the big toe… The idea of putrefaction was an important aspect of this idea: the empirical observation that rotting meat appears to generate maggots and worms, and that disease such as infection and cancer seems to be a form of bodily putrefaction are strongly related. The idea that disease was caused by ‘worms’ was a prevalent feature of ancient and medieval medicine: From the fungal infection known as ‘ringworm’ to the idea that worms in the teeth caused toothache, all of these were common themes in ancient Atlantic medical beliefs. In a wider sense it could as a category include all stinging and venomous creatures such as scorpions and spiders.
From earthworms, to snakes, to maggots and aquatic fly larvae, to eels and millipedes – ‘worms’, ‘wyrms’, or ‘serpents’ all occupied the same functional class.
The ancients viewed ‘serpents’ and ‘worms’ as a whole class of creatures – not just a ‘species’ as we in modern times would conceive it, but a morphological and philosophical grouping which included many types and forms. Serpents and dragons are a particular feature of northern European mythology that deserve some investigation in this blog.
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