For @FolkloreThurs and their day of #villains in #myth and #folklore , here’s a thread on everyone’s favourite Norse trickster.

Ratatoskr the squirrel!

#FolkloreThursday #squirrel #norse #myth #LokiWho

Ratatoskr, or drill-tooth, lives in the world-tree Yggdrasil, to which all the Nine Worlds of Norse cosmology are linked. Like more mundane squirrels, Ratatoskr spends its time scampering through Yggdrasil’s many branches.

Yet Ratatoskr does so with purpose as its task is to ferry the news gathered by the eagle which sits in the high branches of the world-tree down through the Worlds and even down to Níðhöggr, the great serpent of malice who gnaws endlessly at Yggdrasil’s roots.

However, as anyone who’s walked through forests where squirrels make their home will know, Ratatoskr is easily distracted with chatter and #gossip.

Inevitably, fact and fiction become confused in Ratatoskr’s stories and even, as it says in the Gylfaginning of the Prose Edda, some “slanderous gossip” creeps in.

(Image, Daniel Mackie)

This confusion angers Níðhöggr, causing the serpent to gnaw more viciously, and distracts the eagle from its vigil.

Ratatoskr is a small god but one whose actions, whether malicious or unwitting, cause great ripples through the world.

(Image, Sergei Arzamastsev)

Is Ratatoskr a villain? It’s hard to say. Unintended harm is still harm. The squirrel’s name of ‘drill-tooth’ is equally ambivalent; is more damaged caused by chewing at Yggdrasil itself or by the false words which come with Ratatoskr’s chattering?

...and yet. The Norse myth of Ragnarök is a true apocalypse in that it marks the end of one time and the beginning of another. It is death and rebirth, rather than eternal stasis.

Ratatoskr’s idle gossiping plays as much a part in Ragnarok as Fenrir’s slavering jaws.