No sky on high.
The gulf gaped
And grass grew nowhere.
The empty gulf had a name, Ginnungagap, which the thin child repeated again and again. It was a wonderful word. It was not entirely formless. It was bounded by points of the compass. To the north was Niflheim, home of mists, the place of cold and wet, from which roared twelve violent streams of icy water. To the south was Muspelheim, the hot place, where fire scorched and smoked. Icebergs rolled from Niflheim and were melted to steam by the hot blast from Muspelheim. In the swirling chaos a human form was shaped from the spitting matter, the giant Ymir, or Aurgelmir, whose name meant seething clay or gravel-yeller. He was made, some said, of the pure white clay with which the Norns fed Yggdrasil. He was vast: he was everything, or almost everything. The thin child saw him spread-eagled, glistening all over, for some reason faceless, his head a rocky globe.
There was another creature in Ginnungagap, a huge cow, constantly making milk as she licked the salt on the ice-rocks. Ymir fed on the milk. The thin child could not imagine how. There was too much of him. He was the father of the Hrimthurses, the frost-giants, who budded from his bulk. In the pit where his left arm met his trunk, creatures formed, male and female; his feet coiled together and gave birth to a male being. Meanwhile the great cow, busily supping the salt with her hot tongue, uncovered, first the curled hair, then the sleeping frost-flesh of another giant, Burr, who gave birth to another, Bor, who found somewhere (where? thought the thin child, her head crammed with giants overwhelming Ginnungagap) a giantess called Bestla, who gave birth to three sons, the first gods, Odin, Wili and We.
These three set upon Ymir, slaughtered him and dismembered him.
The thin child tried to imagine this. It could be contemplated if she reduced everything in size, so that Ginnungagap and its contents resembled a thick glass ball, inside which the mist blew like ropes, and the clay man sprawled in space, glistening with frost. They crept up on him, the first gods, and tore him open – with fingernails, with teeth, with scythes, with hooks, with what? They tore him limb from limb, a phrase she knew well. They did not have faces, they were not persons, these three gods, they moved like running black shadows, like rat-men, stabbing and searching. This first act of the new gods took place in three colours, the first that humans see and name, black, white and red. The Gap was black, many shades of black, thick and fine, glossy and tenebrous. The great snowman was white, except where his own parts cast white-violet shadows, in the pits of his arms, in his monstrous nostrils, under his knees. The new gods hacked and laughed. Blood spurted from the wounds they made, poured from his neck over his shoulders, slid like a hot garment over his chest and flanks, flowed, flowed, filled the glass ball with running crimson, and drowned the world. It was unquenchable, it was the life that had been in him, under the clay and ice, it drained away into death. There was a story in the Asgard book that the thin child did not like, about a giant called Bergelmir who built a boat and survived the deluge, and became the ancestor of the other giants. She did not like the story because the German writer said it was perhaps an echo of the story of Noah and the Flood. She wanted to keep this tale separate.
The gods made the world from the dead giant. The thin child was disturbed at having to imagine this; there was no scale by which she could measure it, although she could grasp the shadowy semblances that linked the bits of dead Human to the creatures and structures in the world.
From the flesh of Ymir
The earth was shaped.
From his bones, the mountains,
The heaven from the skull
Of the giant cold as frost
And from his blood,
The sea.
The lakes were made from his sweat, and the trees from his curling hair. Inside the high cavern of his skull, his brains became the rolling clouds. The stars were perhaps wandering sparks from Muspelheim which the gods trapped and fixed under the skull bone. Or maybe they were lights above the bone, glimpsed through slits and bore-holes made during the murder.
Maggots and worms of all kinds fed on the festering flesh. The gods made these into cavedwellers, the dwarf people, the slow strong trolls, the dark-elves. They took the thick eyebrows of the corpse and fashioned them into a bushy fence, containing Midgard, the Garden of Middle Earth. At the centre of Midgard they built the home of the gods, Asgard. These gods called themselves Ases, pillars, and Asgard was circled by Midgard, which was circled by the bloody sea, outside which lay Utgard, the Outside, in which terrible things lurked and prowled.
The gods also made the sun and the moon, and with them, time. The earth was a sprouting corpse and the heaven was the bowl of a skull. Sun and Moon also were human in form. The Sun was a shining woman, in a chariot pulled by a horse, Arwaker (early-waker). The Moon was a bright boy, Mani, driving his horse Alswider (all-swift). Mother Night rode a dark horse, Hrimfaxi (frost-mane) and was followed by her son Day on Skin-faxi (shining mane). These figures, alternating dark and light, hurtled in an endless procession below the skull, above the clouds.
There was something strange about these shining and shadowy drivers and riders. Both sun and moon were hotly pursued by wolves, with open jaws, snapping at their heels, loping across emptiness. The story did not mention any creation of wolves; they simply appeared, snarling and dark. They were a part of the rhythm of things. They never rested or tired. The created world was inside the skull, and the wolves in the mind were there from the outset of the heavenly procession.
The gods built Asgard beautifully. They made tools and weapons, gold pots and beakers, for gold was plentiful, gold disks for hurling and carved gold figures to play games of draughts and chess. They had made the dwarves and trolls, the dark elves and the light. It was at this point that, almost casually, to please or amuse themselves, they made human beings.
There were three gods who left Asgard and went walking for pleasure in the green fields of Midgard. The earth was bright with grass and juicy leeks. The three gods were Odin, Honir and Lodur, who was, the Asgard book explained, possibly the quick Loki in another form. The three gods came to the seashore and found there two lifeless logs, Ask, the ash, and Embla, who might have been an alder, an elm, or the stump of a vine. These things had nothing.
They had no mind
They had no sense
Nor blood nor sound
Nor lively colours.
The three gods turned them into living beings. Odin gave them minds, Honir gave them their senses, and Loki
