Norse cosmology

• 1. Introduction

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  Norse cosmology is the ancient North Germanic account of how the universe began, how it is arranged, and how it will end. Its most famous picture shows Nine Worlds clustered around a single enormous tree named Yggdrasil. Yet the surviving texts never clearly name all nine, if they name them at all.

  The people who first told these stories did not write them down. What we have was recorded from earlier oral sources, and it survives in two works of the 13th century. One is the Poetic Edda, a compilation of poems. The other is the Prose Edda, attributed to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson.

  Those pages raise questions that any listener might ask. What existed before the earth? Who shaped the first people, and from what? And does this universe simply end, or does it begin again?

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• 2. Fire and Ice

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  Long before the earth existed, according to the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda, there was a bright and flaming land called Muspell. It was so hot that foreigners could not enter it. Far from it lay Niflheim, a land of fog.

  In Niflheim rose a spring named Hvergelmir, and numerous rivers poured out of it. Together these rivers are called Élivágar. The farther they flowed from their source, the more the poisonous substance in them hardened into ice. When the flow had frozen solid, a poisonous vapor rose from the ice and settled on top as rime. Layer upon layer of ice then crept out across Ginnungagap, the great void.

  The northern part of Ginnungagap grew heavy under the weight of ice and drifting vapor. The southern part stayed clear, because it lay close to the sparks and flames of Muspell. Between the two, the text describes a place "as mild as a windless sky".

  In that calm middle ground the rime met the blowing heat, melted, and dripped. The mixture took shape as Ymir, a primordial being and the ancestor of every jötunn. Ymir would need food, and the source names exactly what fed him.

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• 3. The Cow and the Giants

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  Ymir sweated in his sleep, and the sweat was productive. A male and a female jötunn grew from his left arm, and one of his legs fathered a son with another. These limbs went on to produce further children.

  For nourishment Ymir drank from rivers of milk that flowed from the teats of the primordial cow Auðumbla. The cow, in turn, lived on salt that she licked from rime stones. Over the course of three days her licking freed a beautiful and strong man named Búri.

  Búri's son Borr married a jötunn named Bestla. The couple had three sons, who were the gods Odin, Vili and Vé. These brothers killed Ymir, and his blood poured across the land in great floods. Every jötunn drowned except two: Bergelmir and his unnamed wife, who sailed across the flooded landscape.

  Three brothers now stood over the largest corpse in existence, with a void still waiting to be filled.

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• 4. Carving the Giant

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  At the center of Ginnungagap, Odin, Vili and Vé set about carving up Ymir's body. His flesh became the earth, and his bones became the rocks. His blood filled the sea, the lakes and the oceans. His molars, teeth and broken bone fragments became scree and stone. The brothers ringed the lands with sea, forming a circle.

  Ymir's skull became the sky. The gods set it above the earth and had it held up at four points, each guarded by a dwarf. Their names are Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri, which in Old Norse mean north, south, east and west.

  Next the brothers gathered sparks of light from Muspell and placed them around the earth, both above and below. Some stayed fixed. Others traveled the sky on predetermined courses. From Ymir's brains they formed the clouds.

  The brothers also set aside land by the sea where the jötnar could leave. To contain the hostility of those giants, they built a fortification around the center of the landmass out of Ymir's eyelashes. They named it Miðgarðr, Old Norse for central enclosure.

  The enclosure stood ready, but nobody lived inside it yet.

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• 5. Askr and Embla

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  Walking along the seashore, the three brothers came upon two trees and shaped human beings from them. Each brother gave a different gift. Odin gave spirit and life. Vili gave wit and feeling. Vé gave form, speech, hearing and sight.

  The gods also provided clothing and names. The man was called Askr and the woman Embla. They became the ancestors of all humankind, who lived in Midgard. The gods built a city for themselves in the middle of the world, and called it Asgard.

  The sources do not agree on who the creators were. In this account, from the Prose Edda, they are Odin, Vili and Vé. The poem Völuspá in the Poetic Edda says the gods who formed the first two humans from driftwood were Hœnir, Lóðurr and Odin.

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• 6. The World Tree

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  Three roots hold Yggdrasil in place, and each one reaches a different water. One goes to the well Urðarbrunnr in the heavens. Another goes to the spring Hvergelmir. The third goes to the well Mímisbrunnr.

  The tree's branches stretch far into the heavens and reach into the various realms. A whole community of creatures lives in and around it. The dragon Níðhöggr is one. An eagle, left unnamed in the sources, is another. Four stags named Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór also dwell there.

  Every day the gods themselves come to Yggdrasil to hold their assemblies, the traditional governing gatherings known as things.

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• 7. The Nine Worlds

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  The second stanza of Völuspá is the first place the Poetic Edda mentions Níu Heimar, the Nine Worlds. A dead völva, a seeress, is the speaker. In Henry Adams Bellows's 1923 translation she says: "Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree."

  The Nine Worlds are mentioned a second and last time in the Poetic Edda in stanza 43 of Vafþrúðnismál. There the wise jötunn Vafþrúðnir fights a deadly battle of wits with the disguised god Odin. In Bellows's rendering he boasts: "To nine worlds came I, to Niflhel beneath, the home where dead men dwell."

  The Prose Edda mentions them only once, in section 34 of the Gylfaginning. Odin threw Loki's daughter Hel into the underworld. The text says: "Hel he threw into Niflheim and gave her authority over nine worlds." She must give board and lodging to those sent to her, meaning people who die of sickness or old age.

  No medieval source clearly lists the nine. Henry Adams Bellows proposed Ásgarðr, Vanaheimr, Álfheimr, Miðgarðr, Jötunheimr, Múspellsheimr, Svartálfaheimr and Niflheimr, which is sometimes Hel. He added Niðavellir as a possible ninth.

  Some editions of the Eddas go further and print illustrations of what the author or artist suspects the nine to be.

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• 8. Cycles and Ragnarök

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  Sól, the Sun, is a goddess in Norse tradition, while the moon, Máni, is a male figure. The earth is personified as Jörð. Night appears as the female jötunn Nótt and day as Dagr. Dagr's father is the god Dellingr, whose name means shining and who may in some way personify the dawn.

  Water is personified too. The goddess Rán and her jötunn husband Ægir had wave-maiden children, the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán.

  The myths describe a somewhat linear progression of events. Yet scholars of ancient Germanic studies note that the Old Norse texts may imply, or directly describe, a belief in cyclic time. The scholar John Lindow writes that "the cosmos might be formed and reformed on multiple occasions by the rising sea."

  Ragnarök is the great future reckoning in this view. It is a series of foretold events, including a great battle, that ends in the deaths of a number of major figures, including various deities. Natural disasters follow, and finally the world is submerged in water.

  Then the world rises again, new and fertile. The surviving and returning gods meet. Humankind begins anew with two people named Líf and Lífþrasir, who will emerge from Yggdrasil.

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