Midgard
The title of this article is ambiguous. For other meanings, see Midgard (disambiguation).
Midgard is a Germanic term for the world or earth. The word has survived in this or similar meanings as Gothic midjungards, Old Norse miðgarðr, Old English middangeard, Old Saxon middilgard and Old High German mittil(a)gart and was used in both sacred and profane language. Midgard, literally "middle court" or "middle garden", strictly speaking means the dwelling place of humans in the middle of the world. The gods (Aesir) live in Asgard.
In contrast to the vertical world view of the world tree Yggdrasil, in the Norse imagination Miðgarðr (west) and Útgarðr (east) describe a horizontal, circular world view as two poles related to each other. This corresponds to the settlement structure of the North up to the time of the Industrial Revolution, in which the farmstead forms the centre of the world.
The basic word garðr, which in medieval Scandinavia mainly stood for "farm", originally meant an enclosure, a border wall or fence, whereby the world is divided into two opposing areas: an inside and an outside. The enclosed inside is the area of human life, where culture is possible under the protection of the gods, while the demons and giants live outside.
In Eddic literature, Miðgarðr is thus not only the world of men, but also that of the gods. Miðgarðr is created by the gods, who build their castle Ásgarðr in it. Afterwards they assign Miðgarðr to the first humans Askr and Embla as their dwelling place. Miðgarðr is also sometimes used to refer to the wall or fence that protects the human world from the giants.
Reception in modern times
J. R. R. Tolkien, in his work The Lord of the Rings, which is heavily influenced by Germanic mythology and Beowulf, referred to the world comparable to Midgard as Middle Earth. The German author Wolfgang Hohlbein called one of his novels, in which he freely exploited components of Norse mythology, Midgard.
Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen use midgard in their contemporary cosmology The View from the Center of the Universe as a term to clarify the position of man in the universe. Man as mediator between macrocosm and microcosm has the task of opening up this connection with his consciousness.
Willibald Hentschel gave his human breeding plans the name Mittgart. Around Hentschel as founder there was a "Mittgart-Bund" and "Mittgartsiedlungen" for human breeding.
Another völkisch publishing house in the Weimar Republic called itself Mittgart-Verlag, with headquarters in Haan-Ellscheid, founder Guntram Erich Pohl. Here was published Neues Leben. Monatsschrift für nordisch-deutsches Wesen.
Max Robert Gerstenhauer wrote Mittgart's Verfall und Wiederaufstieg. Volume 1. Armanen Publishing House, 1937.
The oldest German role-playing game bears the name Midgard. The word is also often used to describe the virtual game world of computer games, including Dark Age of Camelot, Rune, Age of Mythology, Ragnarok Online.
