Episode 3: Ask and Embla — The First Human Breath

The two trees Odin and his brothers found beside the sea would have meant little to anyone passing that way. There were already trees in the world, just as there were mountains, stones, and clouds. But the brothers stopped, took them up, and began to shape them. They had made the land around them from Ymir’s body; now, on its shore, they were making the first people who would live there.

At first, the figures had no more awareness of their surroundings than the wood from which they came. Waves moved nearby, but they could not hear them. Light fell upon the water, but they could not see it. Whatever form the brothers gave them, something was still missing. A human being would need more than hands with which to grasp and feet on which to stand. The brothers would each give a gift, and together those gifts would bring the two figures to life.

Odin gave them breath and life. Until that moment, the air had passed around them as it passed around the stones along the shore. Now it entered their bodies, and they began to breathe. It is a small movement in an ordinary life, so familiar that we seldom notice it. Here, it marked the beginning of every human life that would follow. The world had living people in it at last, though the brothers had not yet finished their work.

Vili, Odin’s brother, gave them understanding and feeling. With those gifts, they could begin to make sense of what happened around them and experience something of their own in response. The world would be more than a succession of things that touched or moved them. There could be curiosity about what lay farther along the shore, pleasure in another’s company, and fear of something unfamiliar. These possibilities belonged to the lives opening before them, though there would be time enough to discover each one.

Ve, the third brother, gave them their outward form and the abilities to speak, hear, and see. Now the sound of the sea could reach them, and the moving water could become something they watched. Each could look upon the other. The gods had made many things by then, but here were two beings who could look back at what had been made and begin to know it for themselves. The story does not preserve their first words or tell us which of them spoke first. We can leave that little mystery with them.

The brothers gave the pair clothing and names. The man was called Ask, and the woman Embla. Remember them as the first two people in this account, the ancestors from whom humankind descended. They were not another branch of Ymir’s giant family, nor children born into the household of a god. Their beginning lay in the two trees found by the sea, and in the gifts that Odin, Vili, and Ve had shared among them.

Their home was Midgard. In the last tale, the brothers had enclosed that inner region with a barrier made from Ymir’s eyebrows, protecting it against the giants outside. What had seemed an empty country now had inhabitants. Ask and Embla would live beneath the sky raised from Ymir’s skull, walk upon the earth made from his flesh, and find their way among mountains formed from his bones. To them, these would be the familiar features of home rather than the remains of a being they had never known.

There would be much to learn in such a place. A sheltered spot was not yet a house, and a stretch of open ground was not yet a path. No older human could show them where to settle or explain what to do when the weather changed. The old account gives us no adventures from those first days, so we cannot follow them through each discovery. What it does tell us is that from Ask and Embla came the human family. However many generations followed, their story began with two people, and neither began alone.

With humankind established in Midgard, the tale turns again to the gods. They, too, would have a home, a place where they could gather, hold counsel, and build their halls. It was called Asgard. There Odin would take his seat among a growing company whose names would soon become familiar to us. The world was becoming a busier place, and before long its stories would lead us away from the quiet shore to the home of the gods.