Exploring the Norse worlds, 9 or 7?

How many Norse worlds exist, from a personal shamanic perspective?

The idea of nine worlds comes from two Eddic poems. In Völuspá the seeress says she remembers nine worlds, and in Vafþrúðnismál the giant claims to have travelled through nine worlds down to Niflhel. However, I don't know of an Old Norse source that lists them.

The familiar nine (Asgard, Vanaheim, Alfheim, Midgard, Jotunheim, Svartalfheim, Niflheim, Muspelheim and Hel) is a modern reconstruction, pieced together mostly from Snorri's Prose Edda by nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers.

Scholars point out gaps including, Vanaheim is barely mentioned in the sources. Hel and Niflheim blur into each other.

Nine is also a sacred number throughout the lore (nine nights on the tree, nine mothers of Heimdall), so it may be symbolic rather than a literal count. As a result, some modern practitioners work with a looser map, often a simple three-tier cosmos of upper, middle and lower realms that is closer to wider northern shamanic practice.

Instead of trying to piece things together from snippets of old lore, let's look at this from a more shamanic, experiential, and personal perspective.

A core shamanic symbol, seen across cultures, is the axis mundi: the channel linking earth and sky. Many Northern European practices use the four directions, or the four points of the compass, to represent the elements as they open or close sacred space. If we were to conceptualise that as an image, it would look like the hagal rune.

This leaves us with seven core places, though of course many of those places could branch off and lead onwards to others.

I don't believe there is one definitive way of understanding this as a "map" of the lands. I'm sharing the way of understanding that I was taught, and that helps me navigate as a shaman. But with any runic knowledge, so much is extrapolated information that we have to question and test everything.

Everyone who questions the runes, tests how they work, and shares their understanding in a way that invites discussion is bringing something important. It's not about right or wrong; it's about seeking to understand.

So let's start with the great opposites: fire and ice. Let's place Muspelheim (or Surtheim, after Surt, the fire giant who guards it) at the root, the molten core of our planet, and combine Niflheim and Hel into one at the top: the icy heights.

I am aware that the tales speak of journeying down to Hel, nestled in the roots of Yggdrasil. But I see every point as connected to every other, so direction matters less than the energies involved. What really matters here is the opposing forces of fire and ice. I imagine the lines working rather like this:

Midgard, unsurprisingly, goes in the middle.

The two other great races, perhaps older and wilder than the Aesir, go on opposite points: Vanaheim and Jotunheim.

That leaves the Aesir at one point, and the Alfheims (svart and ljós) at the other.

Why pair the Aesir and the elves? The old poems do it again and again. Völuspá and Þrymskviða both ask how it goes with the Aesir and how it goes with the elves, as though the two belong together, much as we might say "gods and spirits." I also see them as balancing energies. The Aesir are the powers of order, law and sovereignty, the gods who shape and rule. The elves are the hidden powers, closer to the land and to the ancestors; people made offerings to them, and some kings were remembered as elves after death.

So, from this perspective, there are seven worlds: fire and ice, the Aesir and the elves, the Vanir and the giants, with Midgard at the centre where all the lines meet. Try the map for yourself. Test it, question it, and see what it shows you.

Feel free to share ideas and thoughts, I am sharing this as a thought process, a working model- not a definitive concept.