Miðgarðr

“Middle enclosure.” The human world, built from the flesh of Ymir and protected by walls made from his eyebrows. Miðgarðr is where we live—in the middle of a murdered giant’s body, kept safe behind a fence made from his face.

The word survives in Old English as middangeard, which is the origin of Tolkien’s “Middle-earth.”

Miðgarðr is surrounded by a vast ocean in which the world serpent Jörmungandr lies coiled, so enormous it encircles the entire world and bites its own tail. Whoever stands in Miðgarðr, there is a serpent larger than the world beneath the sea, just off the edge of the land.