Níðhöggr

Norse · numen · primordial · numen

The world tree is not healthy and is not supposed to be. A dragon eats the root, deer eat the leaves, the trunk rots, and the tree stands anyway — a cosmology in which the structure of everything is maintained by being continually damaged. Níðhöggr is the damage at the bottom, and níð, the word in his name, is the Norse legal term for the insult that strips a man of his standing.