Ratatoskr

• 1. Introduction

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  Ratatoskr is a squirrel with a job that would seem beneath any creature of legend: running up and down a tree, carrying messages between two bitter enemies. But the tree in question is Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology, and the feuding parties are a great eagle perched at its crown and the dragon Níðhöggr lurking beneath its roots. Between them scurries this small, tooth-named creature, and what it carries is not news or wisdom. According to the Prose Edda, Ratatoskr tells slanderous gossip, provoking eagle and dragon alike. Why would Norse mythology assign such a role to a squirrel? What does that choice reveal about how the ancient Norse understood conflict, the cosmos, and the creatures they observed in the forest?

• 2. What the Name Holds

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  The name Ratatoskr has occupied scholars for well over a century, and no single reading has gone unchallenged. Most modern scholars, including Jesse Byock, Andy Orchard, and Rudolf Simek, translate it as "drill-tooth," while John Lindow prefers "bore-tooth." The two readings point in the same direction: a tooth designed to pierce.

  Guðbrandur Vigfússon read the rata- element as meaning "the traveller," linking it to the legendary drill called Rati mentioned in the Old Norse poem Hávamál. Under that reading, the name becomes something like "tusk the traveller" or "the climber tusk."

  Sophus Bugge took a different path entirely. He proposed that Ratatoskr was borrowed from Old English, where rata- would represent ræt, meaning "rat," and -toskr would derive from tūsc, the Old English word for tusk, related to the Old Frisian tusk. Bugge grounded his argument partly on the absence of -toskr anywhere else in Old Norse.

  Albert Sturtevant pushed back against Bugge on both counts. On the rata- element, Sturtevant pointed to the Hávamál passage where the word Rata, as a form of Rati, describes the instrument Odin used to bore through rock in his quest for the poet's mead. That usage, Sturtevant argued, made rata- a native Old Norse word meaning "the Borer, Gnawer." On -toskr, Sturtevant noted that the Old Norse proper name Tunne, derived from Proto-Norse Tunþē, referred to a person characterized by a peculiar sort of tooth, suggesting a Proto-Germanic ancestor for -toskr. The fact that a word appears only once in Old Norse, Sturtevant concluded, is no proof that it was borrowed; Old Norse has many such one-time native usages, confirmed by equivalents in modern Scandinavian dialects. That argument has carried the day.

• 3. The Two Ancient Sources

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  Ratatoskr appears in two distinct bodies of text, both recorded in the 13th century but drawing on much older traditions. The Poetic Edda was compiled in that century from earlier sources, and it contains the poem Grímnismál, where the god Odin, speaking in disguise as Grímnir, describes the squirrel directly.

  In Benjamin Thorpe's translation of that passage, the relevant lines read: "Ratatösk is the squirrel named, who has run / in Yggdrasil's ash; / he from above the eagle's words must carry, / and beneath the Nidhögg repeat." Henry Adams Bellows translated the same stanza to read: "Ratatosk is the squirrel who there shall run / On the ash-tree Yggdrasil; / From above the words of the eagle he bears, / And tells them to Nithhogg beneath."

  The Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, fills in a crucial detail the Grímnismál stanza leaves implicit. In the Gylfaginning chapter, a figure called High states that at the top of the ash sits an eagle with knowledge of many things, and that between the eagle's eyes perches a hawk called Vedrfolnir. Then comes Ratatoskr: the squirrel runs up and down the ash and tells slanderous gossip, provoking the eagle and Níðhöggr. Snorri's version makes explicit what the poem leaves open: the squirrel is not a neutral courier. It is an agent of discord.

• 4. A Cosmos Under Pressure

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  John Lindow observes that Yggdrasil itself is described as rotting on one side and being chewed on by four harts and Níðhöggr. The tree, in other words, is already under assault from multiple directions. Ratatoskr's verbal hostility adds a layer of social damage to that physical decay.

  Hilda Ellis Davidson, writing about the world tree, noted that the squirrel is said to gnaw at it, furthering a continual cycle of destruction and re-growth. Under that reading, Yggdrasil symbolizes ever-changing existence, and Ratatoskr is one of the forces working both against and within that change.

  Lindow adds a social observation that cuts to the heart of the squirrel's mythological function. In the sagas, a person who stirs up or keeps feuds alive by carrying words of malice between participants is seldom of high status. Assigning that role to a relatively insignificant animal like a squirrel, Lindow suggests, reflects a deliberate choice: the cosmos contains feuds, and those feuds are kept burning by creatures who are themselves minor, unremarkable, easy to overlook.

  Rudolf Simek takes the most minimizing view, suggesting the squirrel probably represents an embellishing detail added to the mythological picture of the world ash in Grímnismál rather than a figure with deep symbolic weight. That debate, between Ratatoskr as meaningful agent and Ratatoskr as decorative flourish, has never been fully settled.

• 5. The Squirrel Observed

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  Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell proposed a naturalistic origin for the myth that is almost disarmingly simple. European tree squirrels, Sciurus vulgaris, give a scolding alarm call in response to danger. Thorington and Ferrell wrote that it takes little imagination to think the squirrel is saying nasty things about you. For people who spent time in forests and heard that chattering cry directed downward from the branches, a squirrel that carried insults between powerful beings above and below would not have seemed far-fetched.

  Scandinavian forests were home to Sciurus vulgaris, the red squirrel, whose territorial and alarm vocalizations are persistent and conspicuous. The leap from that scolding sound to the mythology of a cosmic gossip shuttling between eagle and serpent reflects how Norse myth drew on the observed behavior of real animals to populate an imagined universe.

• 6. Ratatoskr in the Modern World

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  Ratatoskr entered Marvel Comics when writer Ryan North introduced the character in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. In that depiction, Ratatoskr possesses shapeshifting abilities and the power to cause discord, a clear nod to the slanderous role the Prose Edda assigned the original.

  In the video game La-Mulana 2, Ratatoskr appears as a recurring boss enemy who starts weak but grows stronger and gains new abilities in later encounters. Within that game's internal mythology, Ratatoskr is an illusion created by a figure called Hræsvelgr, who is trapped in the Eternal Prison.

  Ratatoskr is a playable character in the online game Smite and an original character in the mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes, where the figure serves as a lead character in the eighth book of that game's story.

  In the 2022 video game God of War Ragnarök, Ratatoskr appears as a prominent side character, with a ghostly version of the same figure appearing in the preceding title God of War as an ally of the character Atreus. Katherine Rundell's novel Impossible Creatures includes characters called Ratatoskas.

  The squirrel has also attracted viking metal bands. Songs about Ratatoskr appear on Ýdalir, the sixth album by the Icelandic band Skálmöld, and on Fimbulvinter, the third album by the Swedish band Brothers of Metal. In the manga and anime series One Piece, a weapon called Ragnir can transform into a squirrel through a Zoan Devil Fruit based on Ratatoskr.