The Norse poetic creation myth
With translation of relevant parts, synthesized prose narrative and short discussion about ancient parallels
The most complete and famous variant of the Norse creation myth is found in chapters 4–8 of Gylfaginning, the first part of Snorre’s Edda. This is the intricate narrative involving a collision between a southern lava realm and a northern ice realm, a cow licking the first god out of an ice-block, and a great deluge. While it seems strange to think that Snorre, a Christian Icelandic writer living in the 13th century, should have made up such stories on their own, it remains a fact that they are unattested in the older pre-Christian poetic sources.
When read on their own, the older sources may instead be describing something more alike to creation myths found in other ancient religious texts from West Eurasia and beyond. In this post I will translate the relevant poetry, offer a version of the creation myth synthesized from them, and then shortly discuss their affinities to other ancient texts.
The Norse primary sources
It should be noted that no extensive poetic narrative treatment of the Creation survives in Old Norse. The sources we have are fairly short and probably rely on the audience’s preexesting familiarity with the myths.
The three relevant texts are: sts. 3–8 of the Spae of the Wallow (ON Vǫlu spǫ́), sts. 20–35 of the Speeches of Webthrithner (Vafþrúðnis mǫ́l), and sts. 41–42 of the Speeches of Grimner (Grímnis mǫ́l). Stanzas from all three poems are cited in Gylfaginning, and linguistic traits show that they date to the pre-Christian Wiking Age.1
The Spae of the Wallow
In this poem a wallow (ON vǫlva ‘seeress, sibyl’) is awoken by Weden (ON Óðinn, the Chief of the Gods) in order to divulge her earliest memories, and her spae (ON spǫ́ ‘prophecy’) for the future of the World. What follows is her narration, telling of the beginning:
I recall Ettins2 born of yore,
they who formerly had nourished me.
nine Realms I recall; nine evil-working women;
the renowned Measuring-Tree3 beneath the soil.It was the dawn of ages where Yimer4 dwelled;
there was not sand nor sea, nor cool waves.
Earth was never found, nor Up-heaven5;
there was a Gap of Ginnings6, but grass nowhere.before the Sons of Byre7 lifted up the flatlands,
They who created the renowned Middenyard8.
Sun shone from the south on the stones of the hall;
then was the ground grown with green leek.Sun cast from the south—Moon’s companion—
her right hand over heaven’s rim.9
Sun knew not where halls She had;
stars knew not where places they had;
Moon knew not what sort of might He had.Then went the Reins10 all onto the rake-seats:
the Yin-holy11 Gods, and from each other took counsel of that.
To night and the moon-phases names They gave;
morning They named, and middle day,
afternoon and evening, the years for to tally.The Eese12 found each other on the Idewolds13,
They who harrow and hove14 timbered on high;
hearths They laid; wealth They smithed;
tongs They created, and tools They made.They played board games15 in the yards; merry were They;
for Them was nothing golden wanting—
until three daughters of Thurses16 came,
very misshapen, from Ettinham17.
The identity of these three daughters is not elaborated on. Instead the poem uses the next 31 lines to describe the creation of dwarfs, with several long lists of dwarf names. After that the wallow turns to the creation of men, wars between different tribes of gods, and the broader cosmology—all of which is somewhat outside of the scope of the present post.
The Speeches of Webthrithner
In this poem the god Weden challenges the Ettin Webthrithner18 to a contest of wits, which consists of questions about god-lore. Throughout the quoted sequence Weden asks and Webthrithner answers; for reasons of space I have abbreviated the repetitive question formula after its first occurrence.
“Say this one, if thy wisdom avails,
and thou, Webthrithner, mightst know:
Wherefrom Earth did come, or Up-heaven19,
first, O learned ettin?”“From Yimer’s trunk was the earth created,
and from his bones the mountains;
heaven from the skull of the rime-cold ettin,
and from his blood the sea.”“Say this other one…
Wherefrom Moon did come, he that journeys over men,
or Sun, likewise?”“Mundlefarer20 he’s called; he is the father of Moon,
and so of Sun, likewise.
Turn round in heaven shall they, every day,
for mankind’s year-tally.”“Say the third…
Wherefrom Day came, he that journeys over the folk,
or Night with the moon-phases?”“Delling21 he’s called; he is Day’s father,
but Night was born to Narrow.
The waxing and waning [of the moon] the Benevolent Reins created
for mankind’s year-tally.”
For reasons of space I excise sts. 26–27, dealing with the Summer and Winter. The only information given is that they were both fathered by the unknown figure “Windcool” (ON Vindsvalr).
“Say the fifth…
Who of the Eese, or of Yimer’s kinsmen,
in days of yore became oldest?”“Uncountable winters before the Earth was created,
then was Bareyelmer22 born.
Thrithyelmer23 was that one’s father,
and Earyelmer24 the grandfather.”“Say the sixth…
Wherefrom Earyelmer came among the Sons of Ettins,
first, O learned ettin?”“From the Ilewaves25 splashed venom-drops;
so it grew until it became an ettin.
Our lineages came there all together,
therefore it is ever all too fierce.”“Say the seventh…
How that one begot children, the stubborn ettin,
when he knew not a troll-woman’s pleasure?”“In the hand of the rime-thurse, they said, did grow
a maid and a lad together.
Foot against a foot begot for the learned ettin
a six-headed son.”“Say the eigth…
What dost thou first recall, or foremost know?
Thou art all-wise, ettin!”“Uncountable winters before the earth was created,
then was Bareyelmer born.
It I first remember, when the learned ettin
on the tree-trunk was laid.26”
The Speeches of Grimner
In this poem Weden comes disguised as an old wizard to the hall of his protegé, king Garfrith in order to test his hospitality. He fails the test, and instead has Weden imprisoned and bound between two fires to force him to speak. The king’s young son is upset at this injustice and comes to give the disguised God a drinking horn; as a reward he is promised his father’s kingdom and the esoteric learning to which most of the poem is dedicated.
Stanzas 40–41 describe the fashioning of the World from Yimer’s body in very similar language to Vaf 21 above, but with an extra stanza about Middenyard (cf. Vsp 4 above):
From Yimer’s trunk was the Earth created,
and from his blood the sea;
mountains from his bones, woods from his hair—
and from his skull the heaven.And from his brows the blithe Reins made
Middenyard for the sons of men;
and from his brains were the hard-minded
clouds all created.
Synthesized prose narrative
From these primary sources I’ve composed the following synthesized prose narrative. It does not describe the whole cosmology, but ends at the coming of the three ettin-women in Vsp 8. Instead of my usual Anglicisms, I’ve opted here to literally translate the Norse names.
In the dawn of ages there was neither land nor sea, neither hill nor wood, neither Earth nor High Heaven. There was the still Great Gap, and the venomous Stormy Waves.
And from the intense seething of the Stormy Waves droplets of venom began to clump together, and they grew into a sentient being. This was Yimer, or Mud Yeller, the first Ettin. He had no wife, but by the sweat of his arm he begot a maid and lad, and by the rubbing of his feet he begot a six-headed son. Mud Yeller begat Strength Yeller. And he begat Naked Yeller, uncountable winters before the Earth was created. From these are come the ever terrifying lineages of the Ettins.
From the Waves was also born a man, beautiful of hue, great and mighty. This was Settler. And He begat Offspring27. And with the ettin-woman Housewife He begat Lord of Mind, Will, and Hallower. From these are come the lines of the Gods, mighty and loving.
And the three sons of Offspring slew Yimer, and they cut his body asunder. From his trunk they lifted up the Earth, and from his blood the sea. From his bones the hills, and from his hair the woods. From his skull the High Heaven, and from his brains the stormy clouds.
And from his brows they made blissfully the renowned Middle Enclosure for the sons of Men, to protect against the Ettins.
At this time the Sun knew not her halls; the Moon knew not his might; the stars knew not their place.
And the Gods went to their Thing, to their Seats of Judgment. And they took the Sun and Moon, the children of Axle-Goer, and made them to circle in Heaven with the stars. And in their benevolence they gave names to the night and the waxing and waning of the moon, and they named morning and midday and afternoon and evening, for Men to count the years.
And the Gods met on the Fields of Industry, and They timbered on high temples of wood and altars of stone. And They laid hearths and forges and forged great wealth. And the Sun shone from the south on the lush gardens. They sat merry in the courtyards and played chess, and They had no want of gold.
Until there came from Ettinham three hideous daughters of ettins...
Parallels in other sources
Wessobrunn prayer
Closest at hand is the late 8th century Old High German “Wessobrunn prayer”. This short poem, although clearly Christian, is composed in native alliterative verse.
This I learned among men—the greatest of wonders—
that Earth was not nor Up-heaven,
nor forest nor mountain was not;
not any [...]; nor did the sun shine,
nor the moon give off light, nor the glittering sea.Then there was nothing finite or infinite,—
and then was the One Almighty God:
the mildest of men [= Christ], and there were also many with Him:
good ghosts, and Holy God.
The alliterative word pairs in lines 2 and 3 stand out:
erdo : ufhimil ‘Earth : Up-heaven’ is found in all attested Old Germanic poetic traditions. See note to Vsp 3/3 above.
paum : perek ‘forest : mountain’ is cognate with bjǫrg : baðmr ‘mountains : wood’ in Grm 41/3.
It is unlikely that these formulae should have been transmitted from a book in a German monastery to the mouths of pagan Norse poets; they rather seem to be part of a common poetic inheritance.
Other ancient cosmogonies
Further afield, many motifs occurring in the Norse tradition can also found in some much older Eurasian cosmogonies:
Primæval inhospitable Waters (RV 10.129; Genesis 1:2 and its Near Eastern predecessors like the Enūma Eliš);
the spontaneous generation of a First Man/God from the Waters (RV 10.129; cf. the Theogonia);
the younger Gods sacrificing Him and forming the World from His body (RV 10.90, the Chinese Xu Zheng28);
an original Golden Age (Works and Days; the Indian Satya-yuga);
the importance of naming in the creation (Genesis 1; Enūma Eliš).
A particularly close similarity to Vaf 21 and Grím 41–42 above is found in verse 14 of RV 10.90, which describes the creation of the World and the things in it by the Gods, who sacrificed the Purusha, or the primeval “Man”:
From his navel was the midspace. From his head the heaven developed.
From his two feet the earth, and the directions from his ear. Thus they arranged the worlds.29
I do not think it coincidental that the Norse cosmogony seems to agree most closely with the Vedic, seeing as these were both Indo-European cultures relatively free from outside influence. One very important thing that I have not touched on is the relation between the Creation and later human religious activity, especially Sacrifice, in the view of the ancients. This will hopefully be righted by a future post.
See Christopher Sapp 2022: Dating the Poetic Edda.
ON jǫtnar. A group of primeval chthonic deities, generally the enemies of Gods and Men. Commonly translated as “giants”.
ON mjǫt-viðr ‘measuring-tree’, presumably a name for the great Ash of Ugdrassle (ON askr Yggdrasils) at the center of the World.
ON Ymir, with unclear etymology. The ancestor of the Ettins who was sacrificed by the Gods and dismembered to make the World.
ON jǫrð … up-himinn ‘Earth … Up-heaven’; this is a well-attested formulaic cosmological word-pair found in all four Old Germanic languages with poetic traditions (ON, OE, OHG, OS), especially as concern the creation and destruction of the world. See my earlier post: Proto-Germanic poetic formulæ.
ON: gap vas ginnunga. The origin of the Ginnunga-gap, as found in Gylfaginning. The word gap here means ‘chasm, pit’, while ginnunga appears to be a gen. pl. of the word ginnung(r). That word appears in poetic lists as a rare synonym for “hawk”, and in the archaic poem Haustlǫng it’s used in a sky-kenning: ginnunga vé ‘sanctuaries/mansions of hawks [SKIES/HEAVENS]’. The sense seems to be that there was an undifferentiated chasm.
Weden, Will and Wigh (ON Óðinn, Vili, Véi), the first Gods.
“Middle Earth”; the home of men.
Perhaps a poetic description of the dawn.
ON ręgin, a pantheistic word. The divine powers in their role as upholders of the cosmos.
ON ginn-hęilagr ‘high holy, sacrosanct’.
ON ę́sir, Gods.
ON Iða-vęllir ‘plains, fields of industry’.
ON hǫrgr ok hof ‘cairn/altar and temple’, a formulaic word-pair. Two types of ritual structures.
ON tęfla ‘play board games’, derived from tafl ‘board game’, ultimately from Latin tabula.
ON þursar. Poetic synonym for Ettins.
ON jǫtun-hęimar ‘realms, homes of the Ettins’.
ON Vaf-þrúðnir ‘Web-strengthener’.
See note to Vǫl 3/3 above.
ON Mundil-fari. Mundil- may be related to mǫndull ‘axle-rod’, and fari is an agent noun of the verb fara ‘to go, journey, travel’. The name probably refers to the turning of the Heavens.
ON Dęllingr, maybe ‘bright, splendid one’, if derived from a lost adjective *dallr ‘shining’ (= OE deall ‘proud’), as found in the godnames Hęimdallr and Mardǫll.
ON Bęr-gęlmir. The first element is bęrr ‘bare, nude’; the second unclear. One translation has been ‘screamer, yeller, noise-maker’.
ON Þrúð-gęlmir. The first element is þrúðr ‘(virile) strength’. For -gęlmir see note to Bęr-gęlmir above.
ON Aur-gęlmir. Snorre thinks this another name of Yimer. The first element is probably aurr ‘mud’. For -gęlmir see note to Bęr-gęlmir above.
ON Élivágar ‘Stormy/Icy Waves’.
A reference to an obscure myth; the word here translated as “tree-trunk” is lúðr which usually means ‘trumpet’, more rarely ‘flour bin’; the base meaning seems to be ‘hollowed-out wood’.
Snorre uses this stanza as support for a Norse flood myth (Gylf 5): “The sons of Byre slew the ettin Yimer, but when he fell then so much blood gushed out of his wounds that with that they drowned all the lineage of rime-thurses, save for one who got away with his household. Him the ettins call Bareyelmer; he went up on his lúðr with his woman, and lasted there; and from them the lineages of rimethurses are come, as is said here: [Vaf 35]”
I am here drawing on Gylfaginning 6, according to which Búri (here “Settler”, cognate with German Bauer ‘farmer’) was the first ancestor of the Gods. He (somehow) fathered Burr ‘Son, Offspring’, who by the ettin-woman Bęstla (here “Housewife”) fathered Weden, Will and Wigh. See Vsp 4 above and note.
This 3rd century Chinese author relates the creation of the world from the primeval being Pan Gu. Numerous other fragments of Chinese creation myths can be found in the short article The Rhinoceros Totem and Pangu Myth by Wudang Xiao in Oral Tradition, 16/2 (2001). I must thank a reader for alerting me to these parallels.
Jamison-Brereton 2014: The Rigveda: the Earliest Religious Poetry of India.
Always striking that the gods themselves built temples. Temples to whom?
This was a great post. I always enjoy hearing creation myths. Interestingly, there are a few similarities here between the Old Norse-Germanic creation myth and the Chinese creation myth. In the Chinese one, the being Pang'u's bones and body make up the world.