The northern countries that make up Scandinavia, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Norway are home to the Norse mythologies; stories that truly reflect the harsh conditions of this part of the world; A dark, ice-gripped universe in which giants and gods wage war against each other in an ongoing cosmic battle that will only cease with the end of the world, the Day of Ragnarok.
Like the Hindu cosmogony, the Norse creation story is a cyclical one, and after the conflagration of the Day of Ragnarok the cycle will begin again.
Intricate Viking woodwork (Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0)
The Eddas and Snorri
Our main sources of Norse mythology are two books known as the Eddas, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. Compiled by an unknown author somewhere towards the end of the thirteenth century CE, the Poetic or Elder Edda consists of two parts: the first is made up of the mythological poems, while the second part contains the heroic stories or lays.
Title page of an 18th century manuscript of the Prose Edda, showing Odin, Heimdallr, Sleipnir and other figures from Norse mythology. (Public Domain)
The Prose or Younger Edda was written around 1220 CE by the Icelandic poet and chieftain, Snorri Sturluson. Sturluson was also an historian and an accomplished politician, having twice held the position of ‘lawspeaker’ in the Icelandic parliament, The Althing. He died in 1241 CE at the hand of an assassin, on the orders of King Haakon IV of Norway, after defying him one time too many. Snorri's fate has often been compared to that of the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero, who was executed after being declared an enemy of the state of Rome.
Statue depicting Snorri Sturluson. By Gustav Vigeland at Reykholt, Iceland. (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Much of the following creation story comes from Arthur Brodeur’s 1916 translation of Sturluson’s original Icelandic.
Norse Creation Myth
King Gylfe, the king of what was to become present day Sweden, wanted to learn how the group of gods known as the Æsir where able to achieve everything they set out to do. To this end he disguised himself as an old man and set out for Asgard, the home of the Gods. When he arrived at the city he beheld a great hall, where he was met by a man juggling seven swords. King Gylfe, now calling himself Ganglere, asked for lodging for the night and was taken through many rooms to stand before the king of the hall.
Illustration of Asgard, home of the Aesir, atop Yggdrasil, a great tree connecting nine worlds. (Public Domain)
He saw three high-seats, each above the other, and three men sat thereon,-one on each. And he asked what might be the name of those lords. He who had conducted him in answered that the one who, sat on the nethermost high-seat was a king, and his name is Hárr (high), but the next is named Janhárr (equally high), and he who is uppermost is called Thridi (third).
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Gylfe, or Ganglere as he was now known, asked who was the first among the gods and was told that it was the All-Father, who lived everywhere, throughout all the ages, and that it was he who created heaven and earth and mankind…
….and given him a soul which shall live and never perish though the body shall have mouldered away, or have been burnt to ashes. And all that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place called Gimli, or Vingolf; but the wicked shall go to Hel, and thence to Niflhel, which is below, in the ninth world.
Ganglere then asked where the All-Father was before he created heaven and earth and what was the beginning of everything.
It was Time's morning
When Ymer lived:
There was no sand, no sea,
No cooling billows;
Earth there was none,
No lofty heaven,
Only Ginungagap,
But no grass.
The Dark Abyss
In the beginning, before heaven and earth were formed there existed only the abyss Ginnungagap (literally the ‘yawning gap’), a vast shapeless nothingness. In the southern part of the void, the first world was called Muspell, a land of fire guarded by the Fire-Giant Surtr. It was believed when the end of the world comes, the giant Surtr will vanquish all the gods and consume the universe with fire.
Surt fares from the south with the scourge of branches,
The sun of the battle-gods shone from his sword;
The crags are sundered, the giant-women sink,
The dead throng Hel-way, and heaven is cloven…
The Devil Giant with the Flaming Sword (1909) by John Charles Dollman. (Public Domain)
To the north, beset by cold and ice, and wind and rain, the spirit of the mighty god, Fimbultyr watched over Niflheim, the Mist-World. In the middle of Niflheim was a well or fountain from which sprang the twelve Ice-Streams. With the extremes of Niflheim to the north and Muspell to the south, Ginnungagap, in the middle, was a mild, temperate place. When the Ice-Streams met the fires of Muspell, Fimbultyr decreed that the melted drops of vapor become life, and so the giant Ymir was born in Ginnungagap.
Giants and Chaos
Ymir wasn’t a God, he was a Rime-Giant, he was Chaos. From Ymir were descended the Frost Giants as is written in the Voluspa:
All the witches spring from Witolf,
All the warlocks are of Willharm,
And the spell-singers spring from Swarthead;
All the ogres of Ymir come.
At the same time Audhumla the cow came into being and she nourished Ymir with her milk. By licking the ice covered rocks she created the stone-giant Bur, or Buri, who was the father of Bor who married Bestla, a daughter of one of the Jotun, a race of giants detested by the Æsir.
Ymir suckles from the cow Auðumbla while she licks Búri from the ice in a painting by Nicolai Abildgaard (1790) inspired by the Prose Edda. (Public Domain)
Bor and Bestla had three sons, Vili, Ve and Odin, and it was this Odin who was to become the ultimate ruler of heaven and earth, the mightiest of the gods. The brothers were increasingly worried by the number of Jotun being produced by Ymir, and decided the only answer was to slay him, so they attacked the giant and the blood that gushed out of Ymir’s body was so much that it drowned all of the Rime-Giants except one, Bergelmir, who escaped with his household aboard a ship to a place of safety. From them came the race of Frost Giants.
Ymir is attacked by the brothers Odin, Vili, and Vé. (Public Domain)
The brothers took the body of Ymir to the middle of the Yawning Gap and there made the Earth from his body. His flesh formed the land, his blood became the seas and rivers, his bones the mountains, his teeth the gravel and stones, and finally they took his skull and made it the heavens with four corners, and at each corner there was a dwarf named for the four cardinal points. They took the glowing embers and sparks that spewed out of Muspell and set them in the heavens as the Sun, the Moon and the stars and it was said that it was then that the days and nights and the seasons were marked out.
The sun knew not where she had housing;
The moon knew not what Might he had;
The stars knew not where stood their places.
Thus was it ere the earth was fashioned.
The Giant Serpent, Jormungand
Ganglere was further told that the Earth is round and encircled by the sea, wherein lived Jormungand, the Midgard serpent, with a body so large it encircled the whole of Midgard.
“Thor in Hymir's boat battling the Midgard Serpent", Jormungand. (1788) (Public Domain)
On the other side of the ocean lived the giants. From Ymir’s eyebrows the brothers fashioned an enclosure to ensure their safety from these giants. Finally, they threw Ymir’s brains into the sky where they stayed as clouds. The Prophecy of Volva in the Poetic Edda says;
Then Bur's sons lifted the level land,
Mithgarth the mighty there they made;
The sun from the south warmed the stones of earth,
And green was the ground with growing leeks.
The sun, the sister of the moon, from the south
Her right hand cast over heaven's rim;
No knowledge she had where her home should be,
The moon knew not what might was his,
The stars knew not where their stations were.
Here Bellows has translated the Home of the Gods as ‘Mithgarth’, as opposed to the more well-known Midgard, he does the same with Odin (Othin) and others in his version of the Poetic Edda.
Of Earth and Man
From Sturluson’s Edda comes the creation of the Earth;
Of Ymir's flesh the earth was fashioned,
And of his sweat the sea;
Crags of his bones, trees of his hair,
And of his skull the sky.
Then of his brows the blithe gods made
Midgard for sons of men;
And of his brain the bitter-mooded
Clouds were all created.
Ganglere also asked the big question: After having done Heaven and Earth, the Sun and the Moon and all the rest, where did mankind come from?
And so Hárr told him that as the divine brothers were walking on the beach they came across two pieces of wood from which they fashioned the first man and woman. Odin gave them life and spirit, while Vili gave them reason and the power of motion, and the third brother, Ve, gave them features, speech, hearing and sight. The man was named Ask, the woman Embla, and they were the progenitors of all the humans who lived in Midgard.
The sculpture "Ask och Embla" (Ask and Embla) by Stig Blomberg 1948, Sölvesborg, Sweden. Ask and Embla were the first human beings in Norse creation myths. (Henrik Sendelbach/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Odin and his brothers then made for themselves the city of the gods called Asgard. It is interesting to note that Snorri says of Asgard, that men called it Troy. Asgard is linked to Midgard by the magical rainbow bridge Bifrost.
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Great Celestial Order
Ganglere asked many questions about how the universe was ordered.
It was said there was a giant from Jotunheim who had a dark and beautiful daughter called Nott, and she bore a fair and dazzling son named Dagr. The All-Father set them in the heavens where, in a constant chase, they would ride after each other through the sky—Night first, followed twelve hours later by Day. He heard the story of the two children, Mani and Sol, who were also sent to the heavens by the gods. Sol would drive the horses that pulled the chariot of the Sun, while Mani was set to guide the Moon along its course. And Ganglere learned of the two wolves, Skoll, who chases the Sun, ever fearful of being caught and devoured. And of Hati, who just as fiercely chases the Moon.
Nott and Dagr: Night and Day. (Public Domain)
‘Whence come these wolves?” asked Ganglere.
“A hag,” replied Hárr, “dwells in a wood, to the eastward of Midgard, called Jarnvid, (the Iron Wood,) which is the abode of a race of witches called Jarnvidjur. This old hag is the mother of many gigantic sons, who are all of them shaped like wolves, two of whom are the wolves thou askest about. There is one of that race, who is said to be the most formidable of all, called Managarm: he will be filled with the life-blood of men who draw near their end, and will swallow up the moon, and stain the heavens and the earth with blood. Then shall the sun grow dim, and the winds howl tumultuously to and fro.”
"The Wolves Pursuing Sol and Mani" (1909) (Public Domain)
And Ganglere learned of the dwarves and how they came from the maggots that crawled out of Ymir’s body, and of the Elves of Light who made their home in Alfheim. He learnt of the gods and goddesses of the Æsir and their war with the Vanir; he was told of the other realms that made up the Nine Worlds, as well as the heavens above and beyond this one.
"The Ash Yggdrasil" (1886) (Public Domain)
These nine worlds were all to be found in the branches of the great Ash tree that supports the universe, Yggdrasil. Midgard was the world of humans and was the only place that was tangible to us. Asgard was the realm of the Æsir, Vanaheim was home to the other group of gods, the Vanir. Jotunheim was where the giants dwelled, Niflheim was the primordial world of ice, while Muspelheim was home to fire. Alfheim belonged to the elves, and Svartalheim was where the dwarves resided. Finally, there was Hel, the realm of the dead. All these worlds, except Midgard, were invisible, magical places that intersected with the world of man.
Thou wilt, Valfather, that well I relate
Old tales I remember of men long ago.
I remember yet the giants of yore,
Who gave me bread in the days gone by;
Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree
With mighty roots beneath the mold.
Top Image: A scene from the last phase of Ragnarök, after Surtr has engulfed the world with fire (by Emil Doepler, 1905) (Public Domain)
By Ted Loukes
References
Voluspa, trans., Anderson, Rasmus B., 1884
The Poetic Edda, trans., Bellows, Henry A., 1936
Sturlson, Snorri, The Prose Edda, trans., Brodeur, Arthur G., 1916
