Yggdrasil

[suki]

The World Ash. Nine woods, nine leaves, and three herbs each for Ratatosk and Vidofnir, with three final herbs to placate Nidhogg.

in the imp: wintergreen, burnt ash, and green herbs. lovely.

wet on skin: same.

dry down: the wintergreen has faded back quite a bit, leaving a peculiar perfume-y scent that attracts and repels me at the same time. attracts with it's herb notes, repels in that it reminds me of old lady perfume.

in all: on someone else's skin, i could see this complex blend being fabulous. on me? not so much. :shrug:

[fairnymph]

In the bottle: Light peach coloured oil. Delicately sweet, planty like new leaves. Quite light and soft, a bit like a wet forest. I'm not really getting any woods, or strong herbs.

 

Wet: Still quite sweet, fruitily so, but the herbs are coming through more now, giving it a more unisex feel, with a bit of sharpness and soap amongst all the greenery. Faint suggestion of oak.

 

Dry: Not much of a change, other than that the herbs and sweetness are balanced now. I'm wondering if the sweetness is some orange-citrus? I do think there may be something citrusy here. Otherwise, the herbs are so seamlessly blended, I can't pick individual notes out - but the whole mix is really lovely and garden-y.

 

Later: It seems to sweeten back up, in a way that I find a bit cloying and almost makes me suspect frankincense. The oak has come out a bit too, and possibly some birch, but the woods in this are quite light on the whole and again, hard to pinpoint as they mix.

 

Summary: A sweet, complex blend of virtually indistinguishable herbs, backed by delicious oak, and lighter woods with a vague suggestion of frankincense. Slightly dry, foresty, outdoorsy. Unisex to masculine. Fabulous throw and great lasting power.

 

I feel like this would be good on male cohort if I were wearing The Blood Garden - maybe the oak?

[Nimthiriel]

Initial impression:

Ooh, woody potpourri to my nose!

First on:

It goes almost... bubblegum-like on me. o_O

 

Dry:

After about 15 mins, it's woody and herbal on me. Something like cedarwood and thyme. The woody notes get more varied as it ”ages” on my skin. Unfortunately, I find it a tad too dry for my taste.

 

Finally:

Once again, lovely to try, but passing it on.

[gingiemay]

Wet in imp - Strong herbal/spruce/pine scent. Borderline pine fresh cleanser but not too fake piney smelling.

 

Wet on skin - less piney fresh, more of the herbal with the undercurrent of pine.

 

Dry on skin - Piney and soapy. Very little herbs. Kind of sad, because it smells better in bottle than skin! I was hoping for more of a woody-fresh scent.

[vikitty]

Smells like air freshener. Off to the swap pile it goes!

[djsiberia]

wet/in imp: this is interesting. i wasn't expecting it to smell sweet.

 

i can't decide what it smells like...earthy, herbal, and dusty. oh! it's also starting to remind me of cheap store bought perfume.

 

 

this is so not me.

[tacey]

Yggdrasil

 

The World Tree, and yes, this could be her (it? him?). It's not a leafy green tree in summer, like I expected, but it is quite clearly a winter-sleeping tree, overgrown with dormant herbs, resting before spring.

 

I'm new to scent, so myrrh is the only note I recognize, but I think they're all here -- there's a sense of separateness to the scent, although nothing unbalanced.

 

Very quiet, gentle scent. A new style for me, but I like it very much.

[goblinshark]

In the imp: winterfresh gum and tree bark??

 

Wet on skin: I smell like The Freshmaker. Plus a bit of pine, a little singed around the edges.

 

Drydown: I did not expect this to be mint + bubblegum, but there you have it! I'd love for my breath to smell like this all the time, but I don't know about the rest of me. Also, VERY strong!! I let my dog sniff my wrist and he was like "HAYULL NO >:[". Maybe my dude will like it, he seems to be able to pull off every BPAL scent that I cannot.

[Iceblink]

Green, herbal, woody. A bit air-freshener-like and not too strong. Not creeping me out like I thought it might after reading House of Leaves.

[sqwook]

Love, love, love.

 

Wet: Clear, green, sweet.

 

Dry: Really indescribable and - great. Energizing. This smells to me like a sunny day in a forest, green grasses underfoot, dappled sunshine filtering through overhead leaves, beams of sunshine lighting the nature trail. These are not dry deep somber woods, they are living green woods.

 

Note: I have an imp from a swap that I fell in love with, and a new bottle I purchased from the lab. The imp is sweeter and lighter, and has less bite. The bottle has an almost-evergreen note that can just quite be picked out and identified, whereas the imp is one indescribable blend of golden-green goodness. Maybe it mellows as it ages? The bottle's still great, though.

[TooMuchTemptation]

Grrr I typed this whole beautiful review, which got eaten when I clicked submit!

 

I can't recreate what I wrote, so here's the short version.

 

In the vial I smell the pickle-ish scent that I got from Ivanushka. On my skin, it's herbal and astringent, but I think it also has sassafras which sweetens it and gives it a minty quality. There's a hint of dirt there as well. It reminds me of Val Sans Retour a bit, but deeper, earthier and sweeter. The greenery is similar, but where Val is light and lemony, Yggdrasil is herbaceous and astringent, with the same grassy-sweet underpinning. It has a lovely foresty quality that makes me see the association that people make with Ivanushka and Buck Moon. While Buck and Ivanushka are gently animalistic to my nose, Yggdrasil is all vegetation. It's the deep forest the animals live in.

 

If someone had asked me if I liked forest blends, I would probably have said no, but the more I sniff them, the more in love I become.

 

Edit so that my sentences make sense.

Edited October 16, 2008 by TooMuchTemptation

[llhorian]

Tried this on for the second time now. First time I liked it but wasn't sure yet. Now I'm really starting to appreciate it. As more have said it's a complex one, hard to pinpoint the notes.

It's warm and woodsy, sandalwood for one and other fragrant woods that complement it in a wonderful harmony. A light hint of sweetness?

I'd say this is a very nice one for the guys who want to wear something warm, neutral to male and especially mysterious and hard to define.

For some reason hints of Tristran and Satyr come to mind. It seems to share things with Tristran.

[gnl]

In the bottle: Niiice. Cedar, but not the POW woodchips that Depraved turned into on me. A cedar that's blended with herbs.

 

Wet: Everything blends even more, so that the cedar isn't as distinct. More evergreen. Very woodsy, either way. There's a hint of something in there that I can't figure out. I want to say it's something fruity, but...

 

Dry: Dries down to something very very light. It's not gone, and it's not powdery. More like there's a hint of woods where before there was a whole tree.

 

Verdict: Very nice. I'm not sure it's wet stage is something you'd really want to smell like all day, so even the fact that it fades is a good thing.

 

4/5

[teacrumb]

Herbal, woodsy, clean, and sweet. It's beautiful, but too sweet on me.

[mayze]

I've been going through my old imps, and Yggdrasil was in the Do Not Like section. I can't remember what it was like when it was fresh, but in the imp now it's smells completely like herbs. Green, bitter herbs that I really don't like. I applied it anyway because I had wonderful results with aged Dorian, and wow. The herbs go away very quickly, leaving behind a light, clean woody scent that I love. It's so familiar and comforting, but I can't place the scent. Whatever it may be, I love it now. I'm definitely going to retry all my old imps.

Edited November 4, 2008 by Mei

[rayvn1]

This is utterly bizarre. I get no wood or tree at all, only sweet tropical flowers. Wiiiiiierd...

 

I think I'll try this one again later, because the nose is not agreeing with the scent description in any way, shape or form.

 

edit - a month or so later aaaaand.... now I get some of the herbs and wood and no flowers, must have been a strange moment in my monthly chemistry.

Edited January 14, 2009 by rayvn1

[stillalive]

what the heck... freezer burn? ewwww..... glad this one is for the boyfriend and not me... It's kind of a woody freezer burn, and it dries down to something a bit better, but... not my scent!

[toomuch]

I like it. Very much wood, but not like cut fireplace wood. It's like wood infused with life. A perfect match to the name. It's a bit strong for me to wear though I think I'd love it on a man. I'm thinking maybe a room scent, especially when I want to think of being in a cabin in the woods.

[voodoocatwoman]

This scent changes rapidly. It starts out as a green wood and herbal fragrance and quickly blooms. It turns to a sweet wood, almost floral. I like it.

[Coldfire]

 

 

 

 

Imp: green and wood! So far so good!

Wet on Me: On me I love this Sam I am. I like it better than green eggs and ham!

Drying Down: I love wood. If I could I would live in the woods.

This smells like the woods. Like the trees on a late summer day.

There is even some green in there that wants to share!

Dry: this is the perfect scent for a forest loving earth mama like me.

It’s not any one tree or green scent..but the scent of standing in the middle

of a clearing in a forest all lush and pretty, just waiting for magick to happen.

Magick happened on my wrist with this one.

 

[Seismogenic]

I generally like the idea of smelling like natural places, including different brands of forest. The combination of many types of leaves and woods absolutely appealed to me about Yggdrasil. Many thanks to Voodoocatwoman, my awesome winter Switch Witch, for sending me this imp!

 

In the imp: Effervescently woodsy green. Perhaps even a bit minty.

 

Wet on skin: Pretty much the same as in the imp. Herby green, dusty wood, light and almost sparkly. Now that I think about it, I suspect wintergreen is involved, rather than mint.

 

Drydown: Freshly dry, I still get shimmery wintergreen in here, over the top of light green leaves. There's a little bit of dusty content under there, which is likely from wood, though it doesn't smell outright like wood right now. I suspect there might be white sandalwood, alas, because my nose got a little tingly when I sniffed closer. At one hour in, though, the wintergreeny note has disappeared, and the whole scent has smoothed into a soft, dry, woody base with just the hint of grayish green.

 

Five hours later: A very soft woody note, close to the skin and indistinct as to what type of wood it is.

 

End of the day: Gone.

 

Overall: The initial combination of sparkly wintergreen with leaves and woods was very nice, and fit the idea of a magical tree to me. The wintergreen disappeared all too quickly, and the leafy notes didn't stick around for all that long either; past the one hour mark, Yggdrasil became mostly soft nondescript wood. There certainly isn't anything bad or objectionable about it, but I was hoping for the branches and the leaves. If the longer drydown of this stayed like the initial hour or so of wear, it would be an absolute keeper, but as it goes, there are other gray-green forest scents I like better.

[catatonic1242]

In the imp: Sweet, gentle, minty herbs. I'm getting something pepperminty out of this.

 

On, wet: Yep, still peppermint, but in an herbal sense rather than like gum.

 

On, dry: I like this. It's not terribly strong, but it is nice and herbal, very clean (to my nose) and still kind of minty fresh. I could see wearing this to spruce up a rainy day.

[magikalbrownies]

i smell like irish spring..soapy and powdery when applied.

 

this is definately for a dude.

 

overall: no...

[Kimbernunk]

Overpowering at first - very strong and woody and herbal/minty.

 

It dried down to a very piney scent, with some strong mint (probably wintergreen) in the background. I like it, but it's not a runaway winner with me - if the pine were more balanced with other woods I could see liking it better.

 

It might be a really nice autumn room scent.

[PersephonesChild]

Oh, this is amazing! In the imp is was definitely woods-- though rather inert woods, like a table. On my skin, it's real, live, living trees, with some twigs stripped of bark to reveal their fresh, green smell. I particularly note a light, wintergreenish scent-- it's Sweet Birch, one of my favorite trees! I'm so excited that that's one of the woods included (and for all you out there getting a minty scent, that's what you're smelling!)

 

It dries down later to be somewhat dusty-- sort of like osmanthus. The fresh on my skin stage is by far my favorite point, but it's hardly offensive at any stage. What a wonderful find this was!