So, I’ve been on a bit of a kick lately, diving into old stories, and today I figured I’d share what I pieced together about how the Norse folks thought the world came to be. It’s not like I’m an expert or anything, just sharing what I managed to dig up and how I understood it.
I started by just trying to find the very beginning. It seems like before anything else, there was this massive, empty space. They called it Ginnungagap. On one side, super cold, icy fog from a place called Niflheim. On the other, fiery sparks from Muspelheim. I pictured these two clashing in the middle of that big nothingness.
From the drips of melting ice, the first being formed. This was a giant, and I saw a couple of names for him, Aurgelmir, but more often, Ymir. This Ymir guy was pretty important, because he was like, the ancestor of all giants. The stories I read said he just kind of… sweated out more giants? Like, a male and a female grew from under his arm, and his legs somehow got together and produced a six-headed son. Pretty wild, right?
While Ymir was coming into being, there was also this huge cow, Audhumla. She fed Ymir with her milk. Audhumla herself survived by licking salty ice blocks. As she licked, she uncovered another being, Buri, who was the first of the gods. Buri had a son, Borr, and Borr, well, he and his wife Bestla had three sons: Odin, and his brothers Vili and Vé. These three are the ones who really got the ball rolling on making the world as we know it, or at least, as they knew it.
Building the World
Okay, so here’s where it gets a bit intense. Odin and his brothers, Vili and Vé, decided they needed to create a proper world. And to do that, they, well, they killed Ymir. I know, pretty brutal. But his body was apparently the raw material they needed.
I spent a while trying to get this straight. They dragged Ymir’s massive corpse into the middle of Ginnungagap. Then they started to build.
- From Ymir’s flesh, they made the earth. This earth they called Midgard, which was to be the realm of humans.
- His blood became all the oceans, rivers, and lakes. So much blood, it must have been.
- His long bones were used to form the mountains.
- His teeth and any shattered bits of bone became rocks and pebbles, and even sand, I guess.
- This next part is pretty cool: they took Ymir’s skull and set it up to form the sky.
- And his brain? They tossed that up into the sky, and it became the clouds.
It’s a pretty graphic way to think about creation, using all the parts of this slain giant. But that's how I understood it from what I read.
The First Humans
So, with the world basically formed, Odin, Vili, and Ve were walking along the seashore. They found two tree trunks that had washed ashore. Some versions I saw named Odin, Hoenir, and Lothur for this part, but many stick with Odin, Vili, and Ve. Anyway, these gods took these tree trunks and gave them life, creating the first man, named Askr (from the ash tree, I think), and the first woman, Embla (maybe from an elm tree). And from Askr and Embla, all of humanity is supposed to have descended.
So yeah, that’s my little journey through understanding the Norse creation story. It started with a void, then giants, then gods who made the world from a giant, and finally, humans from trees. It’s a lot to take in, and quite different from other creation stories I’ve heard. Definitely a fascinating way to explain how everything came to be!
