Map of Norse Myth
The nine worlds of the myth do not fall on a real map, but the belief and sagas of the Viking Age have real coordinates: the blood-sacrifice temple of Gamla Uppsala, the raid on Lindisfarne, the royal hall of Lejre. Tap a marker for the story, tap the legend to filter by story line.
☜ Tap a marker and its story appears here.
Centers of Cult & Sacrifice
Seats of Kingship & Saga
Viking Voyage & Raid
The places that cannot be mapped: Asgard, Midgard, Jötunheim, and the other nine worlds — the Norse cosmos deliberately sets them among the branches of the World Tree Yggdrasil, not on the earth’s surface. The coastline data is shared with "European History" (Natural Earth, longitude -11° to 63°, latitude 30° to 71°); place coordinates use standard identifications from Viking-Age archaeology and the sources.
Places on this map
Gamla Uppsala
The most important holy site of Norse paganism. By the account of Adam of Bremen, a golden temple stood here to Odin, Thor, and Freyr, where a great festival was held every nine years and nine kinds of male creature — humans among them — were sacrificed and hung in the sacred grove. Three vast royal burial mounds survive to this day.
Ribe
One of the oldest surviving towns in Scandinavia, an early Viking hub of trade and craft. A skull fragment unearthed here is carved with a runic charm invoking Odin and another deity for protection — a precious piece of hard evidence for the daily practice of Norse pagan belief.
Connected figures: Odin
Jelling
The turning point of Danish kingship and faith. The Jelling stones raised by King Harald "Bluetooth" carry the declaration of Denmark’s conversion to Christianity, marking the official retreat of the old gods — the key node where Norse mythology passed from living faith into recited saga.
Lejre
The legendary seat of the Danish royal Skjöldung dynasty. The mighty mead-hall of the Old English epic Beowulf and of the Norse sagas — "Heorot," the hall of the hart — is widely thought to point here. Excavation has uncovered the remains of an enormous Viking-Age feasting hall.
Connected figures: Ragnar Lodbrok
Oseberg
Here was unearthed the best-preserved of all Viking longships — the Oseberg ship, a lavish ship-burial of two women with sumptuous grave goods. It bears out the saga belief in "burial by ship, sailing to the other world," and lets us today imagine how the aristocracy under the old gods faced death.
Trondheim (Nidaros)
The old Norwegian capital, once called Nidaros. Nearby Lade was a center of pagan sacrifice and chieftain power, and the place where the "blood-feast" (blót) of the sagas was held. The tug-of-war between conversion and relapse among the Norse kings here forms the stage of many a king’s saga.
Lindisfarne
In 793 the Vikings raided the monastery here, an event widely taken as the opening of the Viking Age. Norse raiders who held Odin and Thor for gods struck a Christian holy place, shaking all of Western Europe — the head-on collision of two worldviews began on this small island.
Connected figures: Odin
Hedeby
One of the largest trade hubs of the Viking-Age north, linking the North Sea and the Baltic. Slaves, furs, silver, and exotic treasures were gathered and dispersed here, where Norse belief met the outside world — an Arab traveler once recorded the Vikings’ rites and burial customs at this very place.
Normandy
The Viking chieftain Rollo led his people to settle here, and the Frankish king granted him the land — from which "Normandy" (land of the Northmen) takes its name. Norse belief in the old gods gradually merged into the Christian world here, yet left a lasting mark on language, law, and the seafaring bloodline.
Kyiv
Swedish Vikings (the Rus) who went south down the Russian rivers set up a stronghold here, the hub of the "eastern Varangian route." Norse warriors ranged as far as Constantinople, carrying the belief in Odin’s gods and the runes deep into Eastern Europe, far from Scandinavia.