12 Sacred Groves & Mystical Forests Revered by Ancient Cultures

6. Glasir, Norse Mythology: Valhalla's Golden-Leaved Grove

Though existing in myth rather than geography, Glasir, "the gleaming," was a sacred grove of golden-leaved trees standing before the gates of Odin's hall, Valhalla, in Norse cosmology. Described in the Poetic Edda as the most beautiful grove among gods and men, its shimmering foliage was a symbol of divine beauty and the eternal. This ingenious literary creation represented a perfect, celestial nature, a sacred ideal aspired to by warriors, embodying the Norse reverence for natural elements even in their imagined afterlives, a testament to nature's central role in their worldview.