The Viking cosmos

In the beginning, there were two realms:  Niflheim, the land of frost and mist, and Muspellsheim, a sea of violent flames.  In between was Ginnungagap, a vast abyss.  In this immense void, amid the ceaseless encounter between light and dark, fire and ice, lay the origin of all life. In the melting snow – shaped by the cold but brought to life by the heat – the first creature came into being, a giant named Ymir.  As the ice melted further, another creature was formed, an enormous cow, Audumla.

Odin was a direct descendant of these primal forces. His parents were Bor, son of Bure, a man formed by Audumla licking salt -covered stones, and Bestla, a Jotun (or rime giant, a child of Ymir). When the number of rime giants increased, a terrible battle broke out with all of the gods, or Aesir, who were descendants of Bure.  Odin and his brothers emerged victorious, and the deluge of blood from the battle was so great that all the enemies of the Aesir (except one Jotun couple) drowned.  Audumla disappeared, apparently washed over a precipice.

The Aesir placed Ymir’s body like a lid over Ginnungagap, creating the world.  His blood became the sea, and his flesh became the land.  His knuckles formed cliffs and peaks. His teeth and broken splinters of bone became stones and boulders. His hair turned into trees and grass.  The gods threw the gaint’s brains high into the air, creating clouds, and the sky was made from his skull, which loomed like a vaulted dome over all that had been created. The gods then trapped sparks from the fiery Muspellsheim; they still sparkle brightly inside what was once Ymir’s skull.

Order and reason entered the world when the gods selected four dwarfs – originally worms that had crawled out of the giant’s corpse – to hold up the sky and guard the four corners of the world.  They named the dwarfs North, South, East and West. The gods then formed the sun with sparks from Muspellsheim and set the moon on its proper trajectory.  To ensure they would be on time, both were given a celestial chariot with swift horses and two children to act as drivers.  As the sun and the moon sped across the sky, they were relentlessly chased by two huge, vicious wolves who snapped at their heels, trying to devour them.

Humanity was created from two wooden logs that Odin and his brothers Vilie and Ve found on a beach. Odin blew life and souls into the logs, while Vilie gave them thought and movement and Ve endowed them with speech, hearing, and sight.  Infused with warmth and color, the driftwood was transformed into Ask (Man) and Embla (Woman), the ancestors of all mankind.