creature
Auðhumla
The primeval cow of Snorri's creation story: she fed the giant Ymir with her milk and licked Búri, grandfather of Odin, out of the salty ice.
Auðhumla (Brodeur spells her Audumla) is known from one passage of Snorri's Gylfaginning. No poem in the Poetic Edda mentions her; see The making of the world for the whole story.
When the rime in Ginnungagap began to melt, Snorri says, a cow sprang from it as well as the giant Ymir. Four streams of milk ran from her udders, and she fed him Gylfaginning 6. Asked what fed the cow, Hárr answers that she licked the salty blocks of ice. On the first evening a man's hair appeared from the ice, on the second day his head, on the third the whole man: Búri, "fair of feature, great and mighty", grandfather of Odin Gylfaginning 6.
So the cow stands at the root of both lines in the Norse world. Her milk keeps the first giant alive; her tongue frees the ancestor of the gods. Snorri says nothing more about her, not even what became of her once the world was built.
Scholars often compare her with sacred or cosmic cows in other Indo-European traditions. Others suggest Snorri, or a source he used, simply supplied the obvious answer to a child's question: if Ymir was the first living thing, what did he eat?
In the sources
Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.
there sprang from it the cow called Audumla; four streams of milk ran from her udders, and she nourished Ymir
She licked the ice-blocks, which were salty; and the first day that she licked the blocks, there came forth from the blocks in the evening a man's hair
