frost-giant
Ymir
The first being, a giant who woke in the melting rime of the primeval void. Odin and his brothers killed him and built the world from his body.
Ymir is the giant who was there before the world, and whose body became it. The seeress of Völuspá measures the beginning of time by him: "Of old was the age when Ymir lived", when there was no sand, sea, earth or sky, only "a yawning gap" Völuspá 3.
Birth from the ice
The poems say little about where Ymir came from. In Vafþrúðnismál the giant Vafþrúðnir tells Odin that venom dripped from the rivers called Élivágar and "waxed till a giant it was", the ancestor of all giants Vafþrúðnismál 31. Snorri's Gylfaginning builds this into a fuller scene. Rime from the north filled Ginnungagap; sparks from Múspellsheimr warmed the south; where heat met rime, the drops came to life "and became a man's form" Gylfaginning 5. The cow Auðumla fed him with four streams of milk Gylfaginning 6.
Ymir had no mate. Under his arms grew a man and a woman, and one of his feet begot a son on the other Gylfaginning 5; Vafþrúðnismál says that son had six heads Vafþrúðnismál 33. From these came the frost-giants. Snorri is blunt about his nature: "he was evil and all his kindred" Gylfaginning 5.
Death and the making of the world
Odin, Vili and Vé, the sons of Borr, killed Ymir. In Snorri's telling so much blood poured from him that it drowned every frost-giant except Bergelmir and his wife Gylfaginning 7. The gods then carried the body into the middle of the void and built the world from it: the earth from his flesh, the sea from his blood, rocks from his bones, the sky from his skull, set up over the earth with a dwarf under each corner Gylfaginning 8.
Out of Ymir's flesh was fashioned the earth,And the ocean out of his blood;Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees,Of his skull the heavens high.Grímnismál 40
Grímnismál adds that the gods made Miðgarðr from his eyebrows and the clouds from his brain Grímnismál 41. Vafþrúðnismál gives a shorter version of the same list Vafþrúðnismál 21. None of the poems describes the killing itself; that detail, and the flood, are Snorri's.
Scholars have long compared Ymir with other myths in which the world is made from the body of a primeval being, such as the Vedic hymn of Purusha. How far these reflect a shared inheritance, rather than a common idea, is debated.
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.
Of old was the age when Ymir lived; Sea nor cool waves nor sand there were
when the breath of heat met the rime, so that it melted and dripped, life was quickened from the yeast-drops
They say 'neath the arms of the giant of ice Grew man-child and maid together
where he fell there gushed forth so much blood out of his wounds that with it they drowned all the race of the Rime-Giants
Out of Ymir's flesh was fashioned the earth, And the ocean out of his blood; Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees, Of his skull the heavens high.
They took his skull also, and made of it the heaven, and set it up over the earth with four corners; and under each corner they set a dwarf
Where the sources disagree or fall silent
- Snorri says the giants call Ymir 'Aurgelimir' (Gylfaginning 5). Vafþrúðnismál names an Aurgelmir as the grandfather of Bergelmir (Vafþrúðnismál 29) but never says outright that he is Ymir; the identification is Snorri's.
- Vafþrúðnismál 21 says the giant's bones became 'the mountains', Grímnismál 40 'the hills'; Snorri adds stones from his teeth and clouds from his brain. The lists overlap but are not identical.
