The Creation of the World from Ymir’s Body

At a Glance

• Central figures: Ymir, the first frost-giant and ancestor of all jotnar; Odin, Vili, and Ve, the three sons of Bor who slay Ymir and build the world from his body; Buri and Audhumla, who begin the divine lineage.
• Setting: Before the earth exists - in Ginnungagap, the void between Niflheim and Muspelheim; from the Norse cosmogonic tradition preserved in the Prose and Poetic Eddas.
• The turn: Odin and his brothers decide Ymir must die; they kill him, and his blood floods the void and drowns almost all the giants.
• The outcome: The world - land, sea, sky, stars, and Midgard itself - is built from Ymir’s body; Ask and Embla, the first humans, are raised from tree trunks on the shore.
• The legacy: Bergelmir and his wife escape the flood, ensuring the jotnar survive - and with them, the feud that will not end until Ragnarok.

Before there was anything, there was Ginnungagap - a void, wide and empty. Niflheim lay to the north, frozen, wrapped in mist. Muspelheim burned to the south. When the ice of Niflheim drifted into the sparks of Muspelheim, the frost melted and dripped, and from the dripping came Ymir.

He was the first. The greatest of giants and the ancestor of all jotnar. He did not ask to exist. He simply was.

What Audhumla Uncovered

The same thaw that made Ymir also made Audhumla, a great cow. She licked the salt from the ice for food. Ymir fed on her milk. As Audhumla worked at the ice, a shape appeared beneath her tongue - a man, frozen inside the block. She licked for three days. On the first day hair appeared. On the second, a head. On the third, a full man stepped free: Buri, the first of the gods.

Buri fathered Bor. Bor married Bestla, a giantess. From Bor and Bestla came three sons - Odin, Vili, and Ve.

Meanwhile Ymir slept. As he slept, a man and a woman grew from the sweat of his armpits. A six-headed giant pushed up from between his feet. These were the first jotnar after Ymir himself, raw and violent, filling the void with noise and disorder.

The Killing of Ymir

Odin and his brothers grew strong. They looked at Ymir and at the world the jotnar were making of it, and they made a decision. Ymir had to die. Not because of any single wrong he had done - but because the world they meant to build could not be built around him.

The battle was not quick, and it shook the foundations of what little existence there was. But at last the three brothers pulled Ymir down and killed him.

Then the blood came.

It poured from Ymir’s body in torrents, filling Ginnungagap, and the jotnar drowned in it - almost all of them. Two survived: Bergelmir and his wife. They escaped to the edge of the world and settled there. The line of giants did not end with Ymir’s blood. It continued, and it remembered.

Building the World

With Ymir dead and the flood of blood stilling into seas, Odin and his brothers began. They used what was there.

Ymir’s flesh became the land - the plains, the hills, the valleys. His bones went up as mountains and cliffs. His blood settled into the oceans, the lakes, the rivers. His skull was raised overhead and became the sky, held in place at its four corners by dwarves: Nordri, Sudri, Austri, and Vestri. His brain was thrown up and scattered into clouds. His teeth cracked apart into stones. His eyebrows were laid down as a great wall around the middle realm - Midgard, the world meant for men.

To light it all, the gods took sparks from Muspelheim and set them in the sky. The sun. The moon. The stars. They fixed paths for the sun and moon to travel, and the counting of days began.

Ask and Embla

The world was shaped but empty. The gods walked it and found two trees on the shore - lifeless, not yet anything. Odin breathed life into them. Vili gave them thought and the ability to move. Ve gave them faces, speech, hearing, sight.

The trees became Ask and Embla. Man and woman. The first of the race that would fill Midgard.

The Feud That Remains

The world that existed after Ymir’s death was not peaceful. It was ordered, but it carried within it the unresolved weight of what had been done to make it. Bergelmir and his wife, alive at the margins, had not forgotten. The jotnar they sired had not forgotten. The gods had their hall and their men and their arrangement of sky and land, but the giants were still there - beyond the walls, beyond Midgard, patient.

The feud between gods and jotnar is not resolved by the creation of the world. It runs through all the years that follow, through Thor’s hammer-work and Odin’s scheming, through every story the Aesir have to tell. It will run until Ragnarok, when the fire of Muspelheim returns and the sea rises and the sky that was once Ymir’s skull comes down again.

The world was made from a body. It will end like one.