Episode 2: Odin and the Death of the First Giant

By the time Odin and his brothers entered the story, Ymir had already been alive for generations. He had emerged when the first frost melted in Ginnungagap, and the creatures born from his body had begun the family of the frost giants. Odin, Vili, and Ve belonged to a younger generation. Their father, Bor, was the son of Buri, whom Audhumla had uncovered from the ice; their mother, Bestla, was a giant’s daughter. The brothers had roots in both families, though that connection would not keep the peace between them.

The old account does not tell us what finally brought them into conflict with Ymir. It gives no description of a quarrel, no preparations for battle, and no weapon by which to recognize the moment. It tells us simply that the sons of Bor killed him. For a being who had lived before the earth itself, it is a remarkably brief end. What followed, however, was so great that it nearly swept away the family he had brought into existence.

Blood poured from Ymir’s wounds and spread through Ginnungagap in a terrible flood. The frost giants were caught in it, and their lineage might have ended there had one of them not escaped. His name was Bergelmir, a descendant of Ymir, and he survived with his wife aboard a vessel that carried them through the torrent. The story leaves us few details of their passage, but it preserves what mattered: the two lived, and from them the frost giants would multiply again. We shall meet that family often enough as our journey continues.

Odin, Vili, and Ve now carried Ymir’s body into the middle of Ginnungagap. Around them was the same vast expanse in which the first living things had appeared, still without the earth and sky familiar to us. There, the brothers began to shape the giant’s remains. His flesh became land, his bones became mountains, and his teeth and the fragments of his broken bones became stones and gravel. What had been a living body took on the shapes of a country: great heights of rock, stretches of ground, and smaller stones that might one day turn beneath a traveler’s foot.

From Ymir’s blood they made the waters, gathering a great sea around the land. For the first time, a journey could end at a shore. Beyond the solid ground lay an expanse of water so wide that anyone wishing to cross it would have to consider the matter carefully. The brothers had given the earth its outline, but above it there was still work to do. They took Ymir’s skull and raised it over the land to make the sky, placing a dwarf beneath each of its four corners to support it.

Those four were Nordri, Sudri, Austri, and Vestri—North, South, East, and West. Their names belong to the directions by which travelers would later find their way, though there were no human travelers yet to make use of them. Above the new earth, the heavens also needed light. The brothers gathered sparks and glowing embers that had flown from Muspelheim into Ginnungagap and set them overhead. They assigned the heavenly lights their places and courses, establishing the movements by which days and years could be counted.

Other parts of Ymir found their places as well. His hair became trees, and his brain became the clouds. Beneath that sky, the brothers arranged where the world’s inhabitants would live. They gave the giants lands along the outer shores, while farther inland they made a protected region. For its defenses, they used Ymir’s eyebrows, shaping them into an enclosure against the hostility of the giants beyond it. This inner country they called Midgard, the place that would become the home of humankind.

It was an unusual home to inherit, made from a giant and surrounded by the waters of his blood. Yet for those who would live there, it would be the only world they knew: ground firm enough to build upon, trees under which to shelter, and clouds from which rain could fall. The great empty gap had become a place where a life could be lived. Still, no human being stood beneath its sky. The land was ready long before there was anyone to call it home.

One day, Odin, Vili, and Ve were walking beside the sea when they found two trees. After mountains and oceans, two trees might seem a small matter, but the brothers stopped and took them up. Here was something that could be shaped again, as they had shaped so much already. This time, however, an outward form would not be enough. Whatever they made would need to breathe, to understand, and to open its eyes upon the world.