With its branches in the heavens and its roots in the underworld, the World Tree is a common feature of religions and mythologies around the globe. Stories of such trees have been recorded in the Americas, Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe — and while the species and specifics may vary from place to place, one thing almost always holds true: the Cosmic Tree is central to the structure of the universe.

The sacred Heathen Yggdrasil — says E. O. James in his classic archaeological study The Tree of Life (1966) — is perhaps “the World tree par excellence”. A giant ash tree described in both the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson’s 13th-century Prose Edda, Yggdrasil stands at the absolute center of the Heathen cosmos. Its roots connect it with the Nine Worlds, and it is tended by the three Norns Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld (powerful female figures who roughly correspond to the three Fates of Greece)