įrom Ymir's eyebrows they crafted a stronghold named Midgard. Finally, from Ymir's brains, they formed the clouds. They called this fortification Miðgarðr (Old Norse 'central enclosure'). Using Ymir's eyelashes, the trio built a fortification around the center of the landmass to contain the hostility of the jötnar. The trio provided land for the jötnar to leave by the sea. Some remained fixed and others moved through the sky in predetermined courses. Īfter forming the dome of the Earth, the brothers Odin, Vili, and Vé took sparks of light from Muspell and placed them around the Earth, both above and below. From Ymir's skull they made the sky, which they placed above the earth in four points, each held by a dwarf ( Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri-Old Norse 'north, south, east, and west', respectively). They surrounded the earth's lands with sea, forming a circle. They made the earth from Ymir's flesh the rocks from his bones from his blood the sea, lakes, and oceans and scree and stone from his molars, teeth, and remaining bone fragments. Odin, Vili, and Vé took Ymir's corpse to the center of Ginunngagap and carved it. The sons killed Ymir, and Ymir's blood poured across the land, producing great floods that killed all of the jötnar but two ( Bergelmir and his unnamed wife, who sailed across the flooded landscape). Búri's son Borr married a jötunn named Bestla, and the two had three sons: the gods Odin, Vili and Vé. Over the course of three days, she licked free a beautiful and strong man, Búri. Auðumbla fed from salt she licked from rime stones. Ymir fed from rivers of milk that flowed from the teats of the primordial cow, Auðumbla. From his left arm grew a male and female jötunn, "and one of his legs begot a son with another", and these limbs too produced children. When the rime and the blowing heat met, the liquid melted and dropped, and this mixture formed the primordial being Ymir, the ancestor of all jötnar. Between Niflheim and Muspell, ice and fire, was a placid location, "as mild as a windless sky". The northern region of Ginnungagap continued to fill with weight from the growing substance and its accompanying blowing vapor, yet the southern portion of Ginunngagap remained clear due to its proximity to the sparks and flames of Muspell. These thick ice layers grew, in time spreading across the void of Ginnungagap. When the flow became entirely solid, a poisonous vapor rose from the ice and solidified into rime atop the solid river. Eventually the poisonous substance within the flow came to harden and turn to ice. Together these rivers, known as Élivágar, flowed further and further from their source. In Niflheim was a spring, Hvergelmir, and from it flow numerous rivers. According to scholar John Lindow, "the cosmos might be formed and reformed on multiple occasions by the rising sea." Cosmogony ĭrawing in part on various eddic poems, the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda contains an account of the development and creation of the cosmos: Long before the Earth came to be, there existed the bright and flaming place called Muspell-a location so hot that foreigners may not enter it-and the foggy land of Niflheim. While events in Norse mythology describe a somewhat linear progression, various scholars in ancient Germanic studies note that Old Norse texts may imply or directly describe a fundamental belief in cyclic time. The tree is an example of sacred trees and groves in paganism and Germanic mythology, and scholars in the field of Germanic philology have long discussed its implications.Concepts of time and space play a major role in the Old Norse corpus's presentation of Norse cosmology. Scholars generally consider Hoddmímis holt, Mímameiðr and Læraðr as other names for the tree. Creatures live in Yggdrasil, including the dragon Níðhöggr, an unnamed eagle, and the deer Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, and Duraþrór. The branches of Yggdrasil extend to the sky, and the tree is supported by three roots that extend to other locations one for the Urðarbrunnr well in the heavens, one for the Hvergelmir spring, and one for the Mímisbrunnr well. The gods go to Yggdrasil daily to gather in their traditional government assemblies. In both sources, Yggdrasil is a huge ash tree that is the center of the cosmos and considered very sacred. Yggdrasil is attested in the Poetic Edda compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources and in the Prose Edda written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. Around him is everything else, including the Nine Worlds. Yggdrasil, in Norse Mythology, is a central and immense sacred tree.
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