marvel - What makes up Midgard?

Marvel Universe describes Asgard as:

a small planetary body that serves as home to the Norse gods such as Thor, and their ruler, Odin. It exists in another dimensional plane and is about the size of the United States.

There is currently no completed entry for Midgard, but the Asgard article addresses it briefly.

Another of these worlds that is in a different dimensional plane is the world of Midgard, or Earth.

and

Midgard, or “Middle Realm”, is home to humans and does not seem to be affected by the motion of the other worlds of Asgard. Jotunheim is the world of the Giants and is also on its own dimensional plane hidden from Asgard or Earth’s. The only thing that prevents passage between Midgard and Jotunheim is Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent.

The term "dimensional plane" mentioned evokes the concept of parallel dimensions/universes, a concept not foreign to Marvel Comics.

What defines Midgard and its boundaries? Is Midgard just the planet Earth? Our entire Solar System? The entire Milky Way? An alternate universe?

Answer

For Marvel Comics, Midgard is the entire single Universe that was once separated from Asgard. Matter in the Asgardian realm was more molecularly dense as are the natives of that realm. The common parlance used by most Asgardians seems to imply that Earth, specifically, is considered to be Midgard, proper.

Marvel, while co-opting the Norse mythos' Nine World's concepts, did not clearly define (any more than the ancients did) what the boundaries for these realms might have been.

Since the fate of the Asgard Realm is currently unknown, the Asgardians are currently displaced and living in Midgard.

Considering the ancient Norse had a very limited worldview, Midgard, back then would have comprised only the Earth as they knew it. Each of the Nine Realms was considered to be a place like Earth, housing only a single race or groups of similar races.

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Midgard (an anglicised form of Old Norse Miðgarðr; Old English Middangeard, Swedish Midgård, Old Saxon Middilgard, Old High German Mittilagart, Gothic Midjun-gards; literally "middle enclosure") is the name for the world (in the sense of oikoumene) inhabited by and known to humans in early Germanic cosmology, and specifically one of the Nine Worlds in Norse mythology.

Comments

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