Nidhogg: The Dragon Who Has Been Chewing the World Tree Since Forever

Every mythology has its big, loud villains. Norse mythology also has a dragon with the most boring job on earth, and I like him more than most of the loud ones.

Nidhogg lives under the world tree, Yggdrasil, and chews its roots. That’s it. That’s the whole job. No hoard, no princess, no Rolling Stones-style world tour of destruction. Just a very patient animal and a very large tree, and a deadline that doesn’t exist.

I’ve spent about fifteen years reading myths the way other people read the news, and he still makes me grin. So I wrote a track about him.

 
Meet the tenant from hell

The name is Níðhǫggr in Old Norse. Níð is spite, the kind you hold onto for decades, and höggr is someone who hits or bites, so “malice striker” is a fair rough translation. Some scholars lean toward “striker in the dark,” which also works because of where he lives.

That place is Niflheim, the cold, foggy bottom of the Norse cosmos. In the poem Grímnismál in the Poetic Edda, Yggdrasil has three roots. One reaches the gods, one reaches the frost giants, and one hangs over Niflheim, where Nidhogg gnaws it from underneath. Snorri Sturluson says the same in his Prose Edda, and adds a spring called Hvergelmir down there that’s crawling with snakes.

Which brings me to something people always get wrong. Nidhogg is not Jörmungandr. Jörmungandr is the world serpent who circles the ocean and bites his own tail, and he’s Thor’s problem. Nidhogg is the root guy. Different snake, different address.

 
The squirrel problem

My favorite detail in the whole story is a squirrel.

Ratatoskr runs up and down Yggdrasil all day. At the top sits an eagle, and at the bottom sits Nidhogg, and the squirrel carries messages between them. The old texts are pretty clear about what kind of messages. Insults. The eagle sends something rude down, the dragon sends something ruder up, and a rodent with a mean streak keeps the whole thing going.

Norse mythology has invented the first group chat, and it’s a squirrel, and he’s the one starting the fights.

 
What he does to the dead

There is a darker side, and I’m not going to pretend there isn’t. In Völuspá, the great prophecy poem, Nidhogg shows up again on Náströnd, the Corpse Shore. There’s a hall there, far from the sun, with its doors facing north and venom dripping through the roof. Oath-breakers and murderers wade through its rivers, and Nidhogg feeds on the dead.

So he isn’t only gnawing wood. He’s also a kind of cosmic cleanup crew for the people the Norse really didn’t want in the afterlife.

 
The end of the world, and then one more thing

At Ragnarök the world burns, drowns and breaks apart. And then, in the closing stanzas of Völuspá, a dragon flies in from the dark mountains with corpses on his wings. It’s Nidhogg. Then the poem ends. Right there. No explanation.

I’ve read that stanza more times than I’ll admit, and I still feel like someone slammed a book shut in my face. He’s either the last villain, the cleanup crew again, or just proof that the roots he’s been chewing finally gave out. Scholars argue about it. I just think it’s the best spooky final note in all of medieval poetry.

 
Why a track about a dragon who chews

Because the idea of him is great music material. A slow, constant pressure from below that never stops and never hurries is basically what dark fantasy sounds like to me. No big heroic fanfare. Something enormous and patient under the floor, doing its thing.

I spent a lot of hours on this one, and not just stacking sounds. I arranged it, edited it, and layered sound effects until the whole thing felt like the cold air coming up from Niflheim. If you listen with headphones and the lights off, I won’t be responsible for what you decide to check under your bed.

 
Where it fits

I picked a few uses on purpose. It works well behind a D&D session when the party finally goes down into the dungeon, and it’s good for an RPG or MMO grind where you want the room to feel like a bad omen. It also works for reading, writing or studying, if you like a little dread in your background noise. I do.

Nidhogg has also turned up in games more than once, from the Final Fantasy XIV dragon of the same name to a fast two-player fencing game that borrowed him as its mascot. He gets around for a guy who supposedly never leaves his basement.
Listen

If you want more like this, the Myth Tunes channel is full of dark fantasy, Viking and RPG music, and I add something new when it’s ready.

Quick questions

Is Nidhogg evil? He isn’t a “bad guy” in the Marvel sense. He’s a destructive force that the Norse thought of as part of how the cosmos works, like decay.

Where does Nidhogg live? Under the third root of Yggdrasil, over Niflheim, in the cold dark at the bottom of the nine worlds.

Does Nidhogg destroy Yggdrasil? The poems say he gnaws it, but they never say he finishes. The tree survives Ragnarök in some readings, so he may lose that long game.