Ratatoskr

Summary

Ratatoskr is a squirrel that lives on Yggdrasil, the tree that holds the Norse worlds, running up and down between an eagle at its top and Níðhöggr, the dragon gnawing its root below. In Grímnismál the disguised Odin says: "Ratatoskr is the squirrel's name who shall run on Yggdrasil's ash; the eagle's words he shall carry down and tell to Níðhöggr below." Grímnismál 32.

Snorri describes the tree and its creatures in Gylfaginning. An eagle sits in its branches who knows many things, and between his eyes sits a hawk called Veðrfölnir; the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the ash and carries "words of envy" between the eagle and Níðhöggr. Four harts run in its branches and bite off the leaves, named Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór, and in the spring Hvergelmir with Níðhöggr there are more serpents than any tongue can count. In the poem Odin says that the ash endures more hardship than men know: a hart bites from above, its side rots, Níðhöggr tears from below. Yet it stays green, because the norns who live by the well of Urðr take water and clay from it every day and pour them over the tree, so that its branches neither dry nor rot.

The idea the story turns on is that enemies live on the tree that joins the worlds, and the enmity between its top and its bottom lasts only because someone carries words between them. The eagle in the sky and the dragon at the roots never meet, so the squirrel links them, and what he carries is not useful news but envy, words that feed the enmity. Harm comes to the tree from many sides: the harts eat the leaves, the serpents gnaw the roots, and the squirrel carries the talk that keeps its two ends at war. Arabic has a name for his work, namīma, tale-bearing, and the Qur'an speaks of "a slanderer, going about with calumnies".

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read the squirrel's name. Ratatoskr is two words: rata, the genitive of rati, and toskr. Cleasby and Vigfusson say that rati is "prop. the traveller", the word also used for the auger with which Odin "made his way" into the mountain where the mead of poetry was hidden, and that toskr is "a tusk, tooth". We read rata from Arabic rāda, yarūdu: in Lane rāda is "he came and went; went to and fro", camels rādat "went to and fro in the place of pasture", and the rāʾid is "one who is sent before a people to seek for herbage and water"; the proverb runs "the rāʾid will not lie to his family"; rāʾid is also said of "one who goes before with some abominable deed or design", and of the handle of the hand-mill by which it is turned. The r is r, and Norse t answers d by Grimm's law, which turned d into t in Germanic, as Latin duo is English two. We read toskr with Arabic dassa: in Lane dassahu is "he hid it in the earth", the dasīs is "one whom a people send secretly to bring them news; the spy of a people", and indassa fulān ilā fulān yaʾtīhi bil-namāʾim is "such a one came secretly to such a one, bringing him calumnies". On this reading Ratatoskr is "the scout who slips in secretly": he comes and goes on the tree and carries words of envy to each side.

Linguistic Root

Cleasby and Vigfusson give rati as originally vrati, "but the v is dropped even in old Runic inscriptions", "prop. the traveller", surviving in the squirrel's name, "Rata-töskr = Tusk the traveller, the climber Tusk", and in the name of the gimlet by which Odin "made his way" into the mountain. Orel gives Germanic *wratōjanan, Gothic wraton, "to travel", and Norse rata, "to wander about", and calls it "unclear". Cleasby and Vigfusson give toskr as "a tusk, tooth", like English tusk, "only remaining in the pr. name Ratatoskr", and Orel derives it from *tunþskaz, built on *tunþuz, "tooth". The Norse dictionary adds that the word íkorni, "squirrel", in the stanza is outside the metre, and suggests that the old Scandinavian name of the animal was toskr itself, "from its sharp teeth".

Lane's r-w-d has three senses that meet the story: coming and going; the rāʾid sent before a people with a message that is believed; and the rāʾid "who goes before with some abominable deed or design", whence "fever is the rāʾid of death". D-s-s has two: hiding in the earth, which is what a squirrel does with its food, and a man's coming secretly with calumnies. The first comparison follows Grimm's law in the project's sound-change laws: r is r, and d becomes t in Germanic. The weak point is in both words: Gothic puts the w before the r, Arabic after it; and Orel takes the s of toskr from a Germanic suffix on the word for tooth, so dassa answers the suffix, and the k is not read.

Key Mythic Narratives

Rati the auger

The same word names a tool in the story of the mead of poetry. In Hávamál Odin says: "I let Rati's mouth make room and gnaw through the rock; above and below lay the giants' roads, so I wagered my head." Rati the auger gnaws the rock and opens a way from outside the mountain to its inside, as Ratatoskr runs on the tree from its top to its bottom.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Norse myths reads the eagle at the top of the tree and the dragon Níðhöggr at its foot as the upper winds and the forces of the earth in constant struggle, and the squirrel carrying messages between them as the water cycle: rain comes down and water rises by evaporation. It makes the whole tree an image of an ecosystem joining sky, earth and water in one cycle.

The project's Norse Semitic-reading essay reads the name of the eagle's adversary, Níðhöggr, as nadda + hawaja, "the raging rebel", who gnaws the tree's root for ever. On that reading the squirrel carries words to the rebel below, and the words are envy, so they feed the rebellion instead of calming it.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The picture of a bird at the top of a tree and a serpent at its root is old in Mesopotamia. In the story of Etana a poplar grows in the shade of Adad's temple, with an eagle at its top and a serpent at its foot; they swear friendship before Shamash, then the eagle eats the serpent's young. In Inanna's tree Anzud's chick nests in the branches and a snake lives at the root. The difference is that in Mesopotamia the eagle and the serpent meet, swear oaths or live side by side, and then betrayal follows; in the North they never meet, and a messenger carrying envy goes between them. The whole picture is one form of the world tree. Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld 27–45.

In India too the eagle and the serpents are enemies: Garuḍa is the foe of the Nāgas. But the squirrel that carries talk between the two enemies has no counterpart in the texts cited here; it is the most particular thing in the northern picture.