god or goddess
Búri
The first ancestor of the gods in Snorri's creation story: licked out of the salty ice by the cow Auðhumla, he was the father of Borr and grandfather of Odin.
Búri is the grandfather of Odin, and almost nothing else is known about him. He appears in a single passage of Snorri's Gylfaginning. The primeval cow Auðumla licked the salty ice-blocks: on the first evening a man's hair appeared, on the second day his head, and on the third day "the whole man was there". He was Búri, "fair of feature, great and mighty", and he "begat a son called Borr" Gylfaginning 6.
Snorri does not say who the mother of Borr was, or how Búri had a son with no woman yet in the world besides giants. He says nothing about Búri's later fate either: he is not mentioned at the killing of Ymir, which is the work of his grandsons Gylfaginning 7.
The poems of the Poetic Edda never name him. A skaldic verse quoted in Skáldskaparmál calls the king it praises "the son of Borr, of Búri's heir" Skáldskaparmál 2, a kenning for Odin. That shows the genealogy was known to poets, not only to Snorri. See The making of the world for the whole sequence.
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.
the third day the whole man was there. He is named Búri: he was fair of feature, great and mighty. He begat a son called Borr
