Christian influence. Scholarship on Ragnarök tends to either argue that it is a myth with composite, partially non-Scandinavian origins, that it has Indo-European parallels and thus origins, or that it derives from Christian influence. Physical cosmos Information on Germanic cosmology is only provided in Nordic sources, but there is evidence for considerable continuity of beliefs despite variation over time and space. Scholarship is marked by disagreement about whether Snorri Sturlason's Edda is a reliable source for pre-Christian Norse cosmology, as Snorri has undoubtedly imposed an ordered, Christian worldview on his material. Midgard ("dwelling place in the middle") is used to refer to the inhabited world or a barrier surrounding the inhabited world in Norse mythology. The term is first attested as in Gothic with Wulfila's translation of the bible (c. 370 CE), and has cognates in Saxon, Old English, and Old High German. It is thus probably an old Germanic designation. In the Prose Edda, Midgard also seems to be the part of the world inhabited by the gods. The dwelling place of the gods themselves is known as Asgard, while outside of Midgard, the giants dwell in lands sometimes referred to as Jötunheimar. The ash tree Yggdrasill is at the center of the world, and propped up the heavens in the same way as the Saxon pillar Irminsul was said to. The world of the dead (Hel) seems to have been underground, and it is possible that the realm of the gods was originally subterranean as well. Fate Some Christian authors of the Middle Ages, such as Bede (c. 700) and Thietmar of Merseburg (c. 1000), attribute a strong belief in fate and chance to the followers of Germanic religion. Similarly, Old English, Old High German, and Old Saxon associate a word for fate, wyrd, as referring to an inescapable, impersonal fate or death. While scholarship of the early 20th century believed that this meant that Germanic religion was essentially fatalistic, scholars since 1969 have noted that this concept appears to have been heavily influenced by the Christianized Greco-Roman notion of ("fatal fortune") rather than reflecting Germanic belief. Nevertheless, Norse myth attests the belief that even the gods were subject to fate. While it is thus clear that older scholarship exaggerated the importance of fate in Germanic religion, it still had its own concept of fate. Most Norse texts dealing with fate are heroic, which probably influences their portrayal