Deity · Norse · c. 1270 CE
Jormungandr
Also called Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr · also recorded as Jormungand, Jörmungand, World Serpent, Midgard-serpent, Jǫrmungandr (per Wikidata)
The serpent that rings the world and bites its own tail — the Norse entry in the chaos-serpent pattern that runs from Tiamat to Leviathan.
Narrow source base
Thrown into the sea as a child, grown until it circles the world and bites its own tail, and killed by Thor at Ragnarok in the exchange that kills them both. The intervening episodes are what make it more than a monster: Thor hooks it on an ox head during a fishing trip and is stopped from landing it, and in a giant's hall the same serpent is disguised as a cat he cannot lift. A world-encircling snake is a shape this compendium meets repeatedly — Lotan at Ugarit, Leviathan in Job, Azi Dahaka in Iran — and the Norse version is the one whose defeat is scheduled rather than achieved, which is the difference between a myth of origins and a myth of the end.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None. The serpent that rings the world is fought at the end of it, not petitioned before.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Prose Edda · c. 1220
- Named there as
- Jörmungandr
- Rank
- World Serpent
- Pantheon
- Norse
- Order
- Norse pantheon
- Base of operations
- None. The serpent that rings the world is fought at the end of it, not petitioned before.
- Era
- c. 1270 CE
- Traditions
- Norse
- Placed in
- The Nine Worlds
Traits
- Domain
- The encircling sea, the end of the world
- Traditional form
- A serpent encircling the world, biting its own tail
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to Jormungandr, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic2
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
2 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Jormungandr, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts, all inside a single century
Thrown into the sea by Odin, grown until it circles the world and bites its own tail, and hooked by Thor on an ox head in the fishing episode — the only time anything nearly kills it before Ragnarok, when they kill each other. Snorri also reports it standing in for a cat in a giant's illusion, which is the same figure treated as a joke.
Encircles Midgard; kills Thor and is killed by him at Ragnarok.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Jormungandr?
Is Jormungandr the same as Lotan?
What rank is Jormungandr?
How else is Jormungandr spelled?
What is Jormungandr said to do?
How old is Jormungandr?
Nearest in the corpus
If Jormungandr is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Odin
Allfather · Norse
Hangs himself on the world tree for nine nights to win the runes — a sovereign god who is also a liar, a sorcerer and a chooser of the slain.
Thor
Thunderer · Norse
The defender who kills giants and will meet Jormungandr at Ragnarok. Whatever the poems give Odin, Thor was by far the more widely worshipped.
Loki
Trickster · Norse
Companion of the Aesir and their eventual destroyer — a figure whose slide toward the demonic is visible within the surviving texts themselves.
Fenrir
The Bound Wolf · Norse
Loki's son, bound by a fetter made of impossible things at the cost of Tyr's hand, and fated to kill Odin when the binding fails.
Freyja
Lady of the Vanir · Norse
Goddess of love and of sorcery who takes half the slain — the other half, not Odin's, which is rarely remembered.
Hel
Ruler of the Dead · Norse
Daughter of Loki, and ruler of the realm that gave English the word 'hell'. Hers is cold, and nobody in it is being punished.
The books behind Jormungandr
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Prose Edda
Snorri Sturluson; tr. Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur · c. 1220 · Old Norse
Read The Prose Edda in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · Wikimedia file page
The Poetic Edda
Anonymous; compiled in Iceland · 13th c., from older oral material · Old Norse
Read The Poetic Edda in full ↗Cover: Public domain · The Elder or Poetic Edda; commonly known as Sæmund's Edda. Edited and translated with… · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.