Enter Ratatoskr
Who will win the battle for Yggdrasil? House Eagle? House Dragon? Not if the Machiavellian Littlefinger, er I mean Ratatoskr, has his way. House Squirrel ftw!
If you read my previous blog post, “Resurrecting Nidhoggr”, you (hopefully) have some sense of how my process was working with regards to this piece. On a more surface level, I didn’t want the piece to only be a representation of Nidhoggr, and decided that I wanted to incorporate the story of this squirrel into the work due to his inextricability from the Nidhoggr mythos.
That being said, picking up where I left off, I’d like to mention the squirrel Ratatoskr (“Drill-Tooth”). This squirrel lives in the branches of the tree Yggdrasil and, like the other inhabitants of the tree, gnaws and nibbles at it every day. Unlike the other inhabitants (most of whom spend the vast majority of their time slowly destroying the tree by eating bits of it), Ratatoskr also takes on another role.
Once again, I drew inspiration from eddic poetry, this time from the Bellows translation of the Grimnismol. Specifically, from stanzas 31 and 32:
31. Three roots there are | that three ways run
'Neath the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
'Neath the first lives Hel, | 'neath the second the frost-giants,
'Neath the last are the lands of men.
32. Ratatosk is the squirrel | who there shall run
On the ash-tree Yggdrasil;
From above the words | of the eagle he bears,
And tells them to Nithhogg beneath.
Ratatoskr is again mentioned in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, specifically in the Gylfaginning (The Beguiling of Gylfi), as the squirrel who spends his time running up and down Yggdrasil delivering trash talk between the eagle in the branches near the top of the tree and the dragon (Nidhoggr) at the root:
XVI. Then said Gangleri: "What more mighty wonders are to be told of the Ash?" Hárr replied: "Much is to be told of it. An eagle sits in the limbs of the Ash, and he has understanding of many a thing; and between his eyes sits the hawk that is called Vedrfölnir. The squirrel called Ratatöskr runs up and down the length of the Ash, bearing envious words between the eagle and Nídhöggr; and four harts run in the limbs of the Ash and bite the leaves. They are called thus: Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Durathrór. Moreover, so many serpents are in Hvergelmir with Nídhöggr, that no tongue can tell them…
And, yet again - this time in Amos Simon Cottle’s “The Song of Grimnir” (1797):
The Squirrel who with nimble skill,
Sports thro' the ash of Yggdrasil,
The mandates of the Eagle brings,
That plumes aloft his spreading wings,
To where Nidhogger far beneath,
Coils in many a shining wreath.
Okay, he’s pretty fearless, delivering “malicious words” to two of the denizens of the tree who might very well eat him, and he likes to gossip in order to stir up the drama, got it. In a literal sense, Ratatoskr may be a diminutive, seemingly harmless squirrel, but he is actually kind of like the Littlefinger of Norse mythology, keeping that hate alive between the eagle and the dragon. He gets equated with Heimdall quite often due to his being a messenger, but a more apt parallel is probably drawn with the god Loki.
Allegorically, perhaps Ratatoskr is Discord attempting to provoke a clash between Knowledge and Order (the eagle) and Chaos (the dragon), in an effort to bring down the World Tree (the reality that binds the nine realms together) and bring about Ragnarök (destruction and rebirth) himself. Who knows why he’s hell-bent on doing that - maybe he just wants to watch the world burn.
Ratatoskr, detail from a 17th century Icelandic manuscript
Ratatoskr finished and secured onto the root
Ratatoskr sitting on the table, prepping to get back to work taunting Nidhoggr
Ratatoskr and Nidhoggr having a little chat
