The Creation

Before the world there was nothing. Völuspá 3 describes this nothing as a yawning gap. ginnunga gap, "the void of the yawners" or "the enchanting void", depending on how the first element is read. It is not space and it is not darkness; it is before that distinction. No shore, no cool waves, no earth, and no heaven, and nowhere grass.

Snorri in Gylfaginning 4 places two zones around this gap: Niflheimr "many ages" before the earth was made, and further to the south Múspellsheimr, a bright and hot realm that has been "from the beginning". Between them lies Ginnungagap, the precondition for creation, a gap in which opposites can meet. Gylfaginning's insistence that Niflheim is "much older" reflects a systematising that the Eddic poem does not itself make; in Völuspá the yawning gap and ekki (nothing) are co-concepts.

Two details from Snorri's account are attested only in him and must be classed B: that Niflheimr explicitly precedes Múspellsheimr in time, and that Múspellsheimr is guarded by Surtr, who stands at its border with a flaming sword (Gylf. 4). The Eddic poems place Surtr in the context of Ragnarok (Völuspá 52, Vafþrúðnismál 17) and leave him entirely absent from the primal scene.

3Ár var alda,þat er ekki var,vara sandr né særné svalar unnir;jörð fannsk ævané upphiminn,gap var ginnunga,en gras hvergi.

Of old was the age when Ymir lived; / Sea nor cool waves nor sand there were; / Earth had not been, nor heaven above, / But a yawning gap, and grass nowhere.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

Snorri's Gylfaginning 4 places two zones around Ginnungagap. To the north lies Niflheimr, "the mist-world", from nifl- "dim, dark", cognate with German Nebel and Latin nebula, a cold and foggy realm. To the south lies Múspellsheimr (or Múspell), a hot, bright land where none but Múspellsmegir, "the sons of Muspell", can dwell. Their leader is Surtr, "the black", who stands guard at the border with a flaming sword.

The Eddic poems confirm only parts of this picture. Vafþrúðnismál 30–31 name Élivágar as the icy rivers flowing from the region of Niflheim, but do not use the name Niflheim; that is Snorri's term. Múspell appears in Völuspá 51 and Lokasenna 42 in Ragnarok contexts. The southern placement and the "before the earth" chronology are Snorri's systematisation, absent from the Eddic poems themselves.

The term Niflheimr is attested in the Old Norse corpus but occurs strikingly often in combination with Snorri's prose cosmology. Some scholarship (de Vries 1956; Simek 1993) argues that Snorri's orderly north–south partition is a medieval construction drawing on older images without itself being a coherent pre-Christian tradition.

31Ór Élivágumstukku eitrdropar,svá óx, unz varð ór jötunn;þar eru órar ættirkomnar allar saman ,því er þat æ allt til atalt.

Out of Ely-waves issued / the drops of venom, / so waxed they till a giant was formed. / Thence hath our race sprung, / each and all , / therefore is it ever so fierce.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), adapted for line-breaks.

Snorri in Gylfaginning 5 tells of the spring Hvergelmir in Niflheim. From it flows a set of rivers. Snorri lists twelve: Svöl, Gunnþrá, Fjörm, Fimbulþul, Slíðr, Hríð, Sylg, Ylg, Víð, Leiptr, and two named Vilja with variants depending on the manuscript, collectively called Élivágar, "the primal waves" or "storm waves". They flow south towards Ginnungagap and there freeze into ice.

Over time the ice piles up and comes closer to the heat of Muspelheim. Where the hot and cold winds meet the ice, a venomous corroding rain is produced. eitrdropar, which drips down. It is from these venom-drops that life arises: the first drop takes shape into a figure, into the primordial giant. Vafþrúðnismál 31 preserves the same image in compressed form: from Élivágar venom-drops spattered, and grew until from them came a giant, svá óx, unz varð ór jötunn.

The number twelve for the rivers is Snorri's specification and must be classed B; Vafþrúðnismál says simply Élivágar in the plural, without a number. Hvergelmir's role as the source also belongs to Snorri's contribution; Grímnismál 26 mentions Hvergelmir as the place where Níðhöggr gnaws Yggdrasil's root, but not as the express source of Élivágar.

31Ór Élivágumstukku eitrdropar,svá óx, unz varð ór jötunn.

Out of Ely-waves issued / the drops of venom, / so waxed they till a giant was formed.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), partial.

From the matter of the venom-drops the first being takes shape. Snorri names him Ymir, the name the Eddic poetry uses, while Vafþrúðnismál 21 and 28 call him Aurgelmir. Vafþrúðnir, the wise giant, explains the name to Odin: before there was any earth or heaven, Aurgelmir was the first of the rime-giant lineage. Whether Ymir and Aurgelmir are identical figures or two strata of tradition which Snorri systematises is disputed.

The being is not a benign figure. Völuspá 2 lets the völva remember the "nine worlds", the "nine roots" (níu man ek heima, níu íviði), and sets Ymir as the starting point; Vafþrúðnismál 21 says that from his body the earth would later be made, from his blood the sea, from his bones the mountains, from his skull the heavens. Ymir is both the primeval being and the primeval material. He is the source of the material from which creation is later made.

That Ymir was suckled by the cow Auðumla, who also arose (see moment 6), and thereby kept alive, is attested only in Snorri (Gylfaginning 6). Vafþrúðnismál says nothing of this. It is a characteristic example of Snorri's tendency to fill in concrete mechanisms where the Eddic poem is more elliptical.

30Ór Élivágumstukku eitrdropar,svá óx, unz varð ór jötunn;þar órar ættirkómu allar saman,því er þat æ allt til atalt.

Out of Ely-waves issued / the drops of venom, / so waxed they till a giant was formed. / Thence hath our race sprung / all together , / therefore is it ever so fierce.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

21Ór Ymis holdivar jörð of sköpuð,en ór beinum björg,himinn ór hausiins hrímkalda jötuns,en ór sveita sær.

Out of Ymir's flesh / was fashioned the earth, / and the mountains were made of his bones; / the sky from the frost-cold / giant's skull, / and the ocean out of his blood.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

While Ymir sleeps, life begins to arise spontaneously from his body. Vafþrúðnismál 33 gives the image concisely: from the arms of the giant Aurgelmir a son and a daughter grew, and one of his feet begot on the other a six-footed son. Vafþrúðnir explains this as the origin of the giants, "from the wise giant the lineage comes". It is an asexual, spontaneously fertile body: Ymir is at once the first being and the first maternal source.

Snorri in Gylfaginning 5 repeats Vafþrúðnismál's image but adds a detail: sweating shoulders. While Ymir sweats in his sleep, two beings come forth from under his left arm, a man and a woman, and one of his feet begets with the other a son. From them the rime-giant lineage grows. Snorri's version is prose-concrete but stays within the Eddic poem.

The biological picture is in several respects unusual for pre-Christian religion: the engine of creation here is sweat and passive growth, entirely lacking creative volition. Clunies Ross (1994, I:158) places it in a larger pattern in which Norse myth often thinks of bringing-into-being as process rather than as intentional act.

33Undir hendi vaxakváðu hrímþursimey ok mög saman;fótr við fætigat ins fróða jötunssexhöfðaðan son.

They say of the rime-giant / that under his arms there grew, / maid and youth together; / foot with foot / begot, for the wise giant, / a six-headed son.

English translation: egen översättning baserad på Bellows 1923.

At the same time that Ymir took shape from the thawing venom-drops, according to Snorri, a second being arose: the cow Auðumla. The name is enigmatic. auð- can mean "empty, desolate" but also "rich", and humla is possibly "hornless". One reading is therefore "the rich hornless one", another "the desolate hornless one". Gylfaginning 6 is the sole source that names her; the Eddic poems are silent.

Snorri describes her thus: when the rime thawed the cow came forth; from her udder ran four streams of milk, and with them Ymir was nourished. She herself lived by licking salt-stones, and on the first day's evening a man's hair appeared from the stone, on the second a head, on the third a whole man. This was Búri, forefather of Borr and in turn of the gods.

The figure of Auðumla has striking parallels in other Indo-European cosmogonies, the Indian primal cow Kamadhenu, the Iranian Gavaevodata. Lincoln (1986) argues she is an archaic figure preserved behind Snorri's prose. But since she does not appear at all in the Eddic poems, it cannot be ruled out that Snorri himself, or his sources, constructed her as a logical bridge between the spontaneously arisen giants and the later gods.

Búri, the man licked free from the salt-stone by Auðumla, is presented by Snorri as the first in the lineage that will become the gods'. He was "fair to look on, great and mighty", and he had a son named Borr. How he had this son is not explained; the asexual mothers of Eddic poetry (cf. Ymir in moment 5) suggest that the question itself is ill-posed. Snorri skips it.

Borr married the giantess Bestla, and with her had three sons: Óðinn, Vili, and Vé. Bestla's father is one of the few points at which the Eddic poem supplements Snorri: in Hávamál 140 Odin says that "nine fimbul-songs I took from the famous son of Bölþórr, Bestla's father". enn mærs sonar Bölþórs, Bestlu fǫður. Bölþórr (or Bölþorn) is Odin's maternal grandfather. What "Bölþórr" itself means is debated; the first element may be linked to böl "misfortune, evil".

The union Borr (from the proto-human line via Búri) + Bestla (from the giant line) is structurally significant: the gods are on the paternal side partly from "the first" and on the maternal side from the giant lineage. Æsir and jötnar therefore, quite literally, share blood. Clunies Ross (1994, I:170) argues that this kinship is the deep precondition for the ongoing tension between the two classes.

140Fimbulljóð níunam ek af inum frægja syniBölþórs, Bestlu föður,ok ek drykk of gatins dýra mjaðar,ausinn Óðreri.

Nine mighty songs / I got from the son of Bolthorn, / Bestla's father; / and a draught I got / of the goodly mead / poured out from Othrörir.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

Borr's three sons, Óðinn, Vili, and Vé, slay Ymir. Snorri says so plainly in Gylfaginning 7. How they do it, why, or under what circumstances is not commented on: the slaying is itself the transition from the still-standing of prehistory to the creative process that follows.

So much blood flows from Ymir's body that it floods all of prehistory. All the rime-giants that have spontaneously arisen from Ymir's own body (see moment 5) drown, all but one. Vafþrúðnismál 35 names him and preserves one of the oldest and strangest images in the whole Old Norse cosmogony: á lúðr Bergelmir saved himself, the word lúðr means both "cradle, trough, mill" and "boat" (older philologists have read all senses into it). From this surviving pair stems the later giant race that Ymir's original blood did not drown.

That the gods slay the first being and that the earth is then built from his body is a motif with deep Indo-European parallels. Lincoln (1986, 41–64) compares the Indian Purusha hymn and the Iranian Yima motif and argues that this is a jointly inherited cosmogonic structure. The connection Ymir ↔ Indian Yama / Iranian Yima has long been established in comparative mythology (Puhvel 1987, 284–289).

35Ørófi vetra,áðr væri jörð sköpuð,þá var Bergelmir borinn;þat ek fyrst of man,er sá inn fróði jötunná var lúðr of lagiðr.

Untold ages ere earth was shaped, / Then Bergelmir lived; / that I remember first, / when the giant wise / in a boat was laid.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

After Ymir is slain and the blood-flood has subsided, Óðinn, Vili, and Vé begin the work of building the world. The material is the body of the primal giant. Grímnismál 40–41. Odin's own words to Geirröðr, enumerates the correspondences in a rhythm like a spell: from the flesh was made the earth, from the blood the sea, from the bones the mountains, from the teeth and shattered jaws the stones and scree, from the skull the vault of heaven, from the brain the heavy clouds.

Vafþrúðnismál 21 gives the same list compressed (quoted in moment 4 above). Gylfaginning 8 confirms the scheme and adds two details: from Ymir's eyebrows the gods built the wall that encloses Midgard (see moment 15), and from his hair the forest grew. All these correspondences are body-part → cosmic element: there is no ex nihilo act in the Norse creation. All that is made is transformed primal being.

This kind of cosmogony, where the world is a sacrificed ancestral body, is vanishingly rare in Abrahamic traditions but deeply familiar in Indo-European material (Lincoln 1986). The text bears a particular aesthetic mark of this: the world is literally a body. That will return as a note through the whole Old Norse relation to nature.

40Ór Ymis holdivar jörð of sköpuð,en ór sveita sær,björg ór beinum,baðmr ór hári,en ór hausi himinn.

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.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

41En ór hans brámgerðu blíð reginmiðgarð manna sonum,en ór hans heilaváru þau in harðmóðguský öll of sköpuð.

Mithgarth the gods / from his eyebrows made, / and set for the sons of men; / and out of his brain / the baleful clouds / they made to move on high.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

When the sky had been made from Ymir's skull (moment 9), the question remained how it would be held up. Snorri in Gylfaginning 8 answers it with a detail not found in the Eddic poems: four dwarves take their places at the four corners of the skull, one at each cardinal point, and hold up the vault. Their names are Austri ("Eastern"), Vestri ("Western"), Norðri ("Northern"), and Suðri ("Southern"), the names are simply the four directions. The dwarves as functional cosmic pillars.

The Eddic poems are silent on this. Völuspá's catalogue of dwarves (st. 9–16) names Norðri, Suðri, Austri, and Vestri among the dwarves listed (st. 11), but does not place them in the specific sky-bearing role. That they are posted at the four corners is thus Snorri's own specification, possibly drawing on an older oral tradition the Eddic poem does not reproduce, possibly a systematisation of his own hand.

Functionally they fill the role of "the pillars" in many cosmologies, atlas figures, Shu in Egyptian tradition, the four turtle-legs in Chinese myth. The structure is well known in comparative material; the specific Old Norse filling with dwarves as bearers, however, is unique to Snorri.

With the sky raised, it remained to fill it. According to Snorri's Gylfaginning 8, the sons of Borr took the sparks and embers flying about from Muspelheim and placed them in the heavens, some fixed, others on set courses. That is how sun, moon, and stars came to be. Völuspá 5 gives the same moment more compressed: the sun, "sunnan follva", the southern travelled, came and laid her hand over "himinjöður", heaven's rim, and did not yet know where she should rest.

It is a moving moment in the poem: the heavenly bodies have just been set up but do not yet "know" their places. This presupposes a further action which Völuspá 6 supplies: the gods gather on their judgement-seats (rökstólar), hold council, and give names to night and her sons, to morning, midday, afternoon, and evening, and so give names to time. Without the council the heavenly bodies exist, yet the rhythm is still missing.

We meet here a structural principle of Norse cosmogony that Clunies Ross (1994, I:184) has formulated sharply: creation is not completed simply because matter is in place; it also needs to be named. Naming is a creative act that the gods perform after physical creation. The pattern recurs throughout the mythology (cf. Alvíssmál, where Thor forces the dwarf to name everything in every world).

5Sól varp sunnan,sinni mána,hendi inni hægriof himinjöður;sól þat né vissihvar hón sali átti,stjörnur þat né vissuhvar þær staði áttu,máni þat né vissihvat hann megins átti.

The sun from the south, / the moon's companion, / her right hand cast / over heaven's rim; / no knowledge she had / where her home should be, / the moon knew not / what might was his, / the stars knew not / where their stations were.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

When the heavenly bodies have been given their places through the gods' council (moment 11), time in the mythology comes into being by way of personification. Snorri's Gylfaginning 10 tells: the giant Narfi, who lived in Jötunheimr, had a daughter named Nótt. Night, dark and black like her kin. She was married three times. Her third husband was Dellingr, of the Æsir's kin, and their son was Dagr. Day, bright and fair after his father.

Odin takes Nótt and her son Dagr and sets each on the sky with a horse and a chariot. They traverse the heavens in twelve hours. Nótt's horse is named Hrímfaxi ("Rime-mane") and it is drops from his bit that fall each morning as dew on the earth. Dagr's horse is named Skinfaxi ("Shining-mane") and his mane scatters light over air and land.

Vafþrúðnismál 24–25 confirms the names of the horses and the roles but is sparser: Nótt and "Nári day", where "Nári" is, per Snorri, the name of Dagr's paternal grandfather Dellingr. That Nótt comes first and Dagr after her is a structural point reflecting the general order of creation: darkness, mist, and gap precede the light. The personification of time follows that of creation.

14Hrímfaxi heitir,er hverja dregrnótt of nýt regin;mélfur hann morgin hvern,þaðan kømr dögg of dala.

Hrímfaxi is he, / who each morn the night / draws forth for the kindly gods; / his bit drops foam, / thence come the dews in the dales.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), with minor line adjustment.

Sun and moon as heavenly bodies have been set in place (moment 11). But as personifications, as the sibling pair Sól and Máni, their origin is different. Vafþrúðnismál 23 tells: Mundilfari was the father of Sól and Máni, and in his pride he gave them names after the created heavenly bodies. The gods were angered by this hubris and took the children and set them on the sky themselves as drivers of sun and moon.

Sól now drives the sun's chariot; her horses, per Grímnismál 37, are named Árvakr ("Early-waker") and Alsviðr ("All-swift"), and beneath their manes the gods have placed ice-coolness (isarnkol) so they shall not be burned. Máni drives the moon's course and, per Vafþrúðnismál 23, also keeps count of the phases, by which humans reckon the seasons.

Grímnismál 39 adds an uneasy detail: Sól and Máni are hunted by wolves. Sköll heitir úlfr, er fylgir inu skírleita goði, "Sköll is the name of the wolf that follows the shining god", that is, Sól, "all the way to Ragnarok". Another wolf, Hati Hróðvitnisson, hunts the moon. At Ragnarok they will catch up. The motion of the heavenly bodies is therefore a flight from the wolves. The creation carries its destruction already in its rhythm.

39Sköll heitir úlfr,er fylgir inu skírleita goðitil varna viðar,en annarr Hati,hann er Hróðvitnis sonr,sá skal fyr heiða brúði himins.

Sköll is the wolf / that to Ironwood follows / the glittering god; / and the son of Hróðvitnir, / Hati, awaits / the bright bride of heaven.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), adapted.

Of the dwarves' origin the sources give two not quite compatible versions. Völuspá 9 says that "the powers sat upon judgement-seats" and held council as to who should make the dwarves "from Brimir's blood and Bláinn's limbs". ór Brimis blóði ok ór Bláins leggjum. Brimir and Bláinn are both heiti for Ymir (the giant). The dwarves are thus made of the same primal material as the world, but as a separate class with its own origin.

Snorri's Gylfaginning 14 gives instead a slightly different account: the dwarves first "quickened in the earth like maggots in flesh" until the gods gave them understanding and human-like form. They came, then, first from Ymir's flesh as corpse-worms and were afterwards deliberately shaped. Whether this is an alternative to Völuspá's version, a complement, or Snorri's own elaboration, is debated.

After their making, Völuspá lists the dwarves by name across two long stanzas (9–13 for the enumeration proper; 14–16 continuing the list). The dwarf-catalogue has fascinated scholarship both for its length and for what it may reveal of pre-Christian tradition, some names have parallels in the other Germanic language areas and may be archaic. Others are obviously inventions (so for instance Oakenshield, Fili, Kili, Eikinskjaldi appear to be the list Tolkien borrowed wholesale into The Hobbit).

9Þá gengu regin öllá rökstóla,ginnheilug goð,ok of þat gættusk,hverr skyldi dvergadróttir skepjaór Brimis blóðiok ór Bláins leggjum.

Then sought the gods / their assembly-seats, / the high-holy gods, / and council held, / to find who should raise / the race of dwarves / out of Brimir's blood / and the legs of Bláin.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), slightly adjusted.

Already in moment 9 it was mentioned that Midgard, "the middle enclosure" or "middle-garth", was made from Ymir's eyebrows. Snorri's Gylfaginning 8 elaborates: the gods took his eyebrows and built from them a wall encircling the inhabited part of the earth. Inside this wall people were to dwell, safe from the giants. Outside lay the sea, and beyond the sea Jötunheimr.

Midgard is therefore only the inner, fortified circle of the created earth. The name Miðgarðr (Old Norse miðr "middle" + garðr "enclosure") describes a geometry: the fortified middle ring, with the sea around it and the giants' world beyond. The cosmic picture is of three concentric circles: Asgard highest and innermost, Midgard in the middle for humans, Jötunheimr outermost.

The social symbolism is heavy. The wall marks the boundary between cosmos and chaos, between god/human and giant. Throughout the ensuing mythology it is this boundary that is threatened, and crossed. Thor travels beyond the wall to fight the giants; the giants cross it to abduct goddesses or steal Mjöllnir. Midgard is never undisturbedly safe; the wall makes a difference, but no guarantee.

At the centre of the created cosmos stands the world-tree. Völuspá 19 names it Yggdrasill, the name is usually read as "Ygg's (Odin's) horse", that is, the gallows, since Odin in Hávamál 138 hung nine nights on a wind-beaten tree to win the wisdom of the runes. The tree is thus both that which stands at the world's centre and that on which Odin once temporarily gave up his life in exchange for knowledge.

Grímnismál 31 specifies that Yggdrasil has three roots, stretching in different directions: one to the Æsir, one to the rime-giants, one to the underworld of men. Gylfaginning 15 gives the same number but different destinations: Urðarbrunnr (where the Norns dwell, see moment 17), Mímisbrunnr (Mímir's well of wisdom), and Hvergelmir in Niflheim (where Níðhöggr gnaws). This is one of the divergences between the Eddic poem and Snorri that will be treated under textual traditions below.

The tree is inhabited by a set of animals. Grímnismál 32–35 lists: an eagle sits in the crown, a hawk named Veðrfölnir between its eyes; four stags. Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr, Duraþrór, browse its buds; the squirrel Ratatoskr runs up and down the trunk carrying insults between the eagle above and the dragon Níðhöggr below at the root. At the root Níðhöggr gnaws along with "countless serpents". The tree is alive and at the same time constantly eaten: cosmos as a process in wear.

31Þrjár rætrstanda á þrjá vegaundan aski Yggdrasils;Hel býr und einni,annarri hrímþursar,þriðju mennskir menn.

Three roots there are / that three ways run / 'neath the ash of Yggdrasil; / 'neath the first lives Hel, / 'neath the second the frost-giants, / 'neath the last are the lands of men.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

At the Well of Urd, beneath one of Yggdrasil's roots, three women come forth: Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. Völuspá 20 is the text's closest description. The three are "very wise" and "knowing maidens" who rise from the lake beneath the tree; they carve in the tree (or on a slip of wood. skáru á skíði), they laid down laws, they chose lives for the children of men and their destinies.

The names translate: Urðr as "that which has become" or "that which is twisted forth"; Verðandi as "that which is becoming"; Skuld as "that which shall be". The three tenses belong together as a grammatical system. But the reading that wants to see the norns as three phases of time (past–present–future) is a later systematisation: Völuspá 20 places them in simultaneity, and the stanza insists that they themselves actively twist fate forth rather than merely observe it.

Snorri in Gylfaginning 15 expands: there are more norns than these three; some come from the Æsir's kin, some from the elves', some from the dwarves'. They decide fates for different people, good norns give good lives, others give hard ones. This pluralisation belongs to Snorri alone; in Völuspá the norns are three.

20Þaðan koma meyjarmargs vitandi,þrjár, ór þeim sæer und þolli stendr;Urð hétu eina,aðra Verðandi,, skáru á skíði ,Skuld ina þriðju;þær lög lögðu,þær líf kurualda börnum,ørlög seggja.

Thence come the maidens / mighty in wisdom, / three from the dwelling / down 'neath the tree; / Urth is one named, / Verthandi the next , / on the wood they scored , / and Skuld the third. / Laws they made there, / and life allotted / to the sons of men, / and set their fates.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

The creation of humans does not happen from material intended for it. Völuspá 17 lets three Æsir, Óðinn, Hœnir, and Lóðurr, come to a shore where two logs lie: an ash (askr) and something that may be an elm or a vine (embla, the etymology is debated). The logs have "little strength", are void and without destiny. The gods give them three gifts.

Völuspá 18 enumerates the gifts: Óðinn gave önd (breath, life-spirit); Hœnir gave óðr (mind, composure); Lóðurr gave lá ok litu góða (warm liquid and good hue, that is, blood and complexion). The man was named Askr after his wood, the woman Embla. They are therefore humans made from driftwood that the gods have found on a shore: no solemn moulding of clay, but the reuse of material already there.

Snorri in Gylfaginning 9 confirms the story but gives a different triad of donors: Óðinn, Vili, and Vé (his usual three brothers). Lóðurr and Hœnir are thus replaced with Odin's brothers. This is a clear textual divergence. Lóðurr hardly appears elsewhere in the tradition, which has led to speculation that it is a heiti (alternative name) for Loki or possibly for Vé. Several scholars argue, however, that Völuspá's triad is original and that Snorri harmonised it with his usual formula.

17Unz þrír kvámuór því liðiöflgir ok ástkiræsir at húsi;fundu á landilítt megandiAsk ok Embluörlöglausa.

Until there came three / out of that company, / mighty and gracious / Æsir, to the home; / they found on the land, / little able, / Askr and Embla, / empty of fate.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD), adapted.

18Önd þau né áttu,óð þau né höfðu,lá né lætiné litu góða;önd gaf Óðinn,óð gaf Hœnir,lá gaf Lóðurrok litu góða.

Soul they had not, / sense they had not, / heat nor motion, / nor goodly hue; / soul gave Óthin, / sense gave Hœnir, / heat gave Lóthur / and goodly hue.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

When the world has been made, the heavenly bodies ordered, the humans given breath and the tree with its norns in place, then the gods themselves gather and build their halls. Völuspá 7 gives the scene: the Æsir met on Iðavöllr, "Iðavöllr", a plain whose name may be read as "the ever-returning field", and built altars and temples. They raised forges, forged golden tools, worked on tongs, made clips and fastenings, they lived in a first age when all was enough.

Völuspá 8 adds an almost entranced observation: they played board-games in the court, glad with gold. tefldu í túni, teitir váru. This is the youth of the gods. Golden buckles, golden fittings, golden tables. Nothing was wanting. This golden age lasted, per Völuspá, until "three giantesses came from the world of the jötnar". Then everything changed (see moment 20).

Grímnismál 4–17 then lists the individual halls of the gods in a densely packed catalogue: Þrúðheimr for Þórr, Ýdalir for Ullr, Álfheimr (given by the gods to Freyr as a tooth-gift) for the elves, Valaskjálf for Odin's other hall, Sökkvabekkr for Sága, Glaðsheimr with Valhöll for Óðinn, Þrymheimr for Skaði, Breiðablik for Baldr, Himinbjörg for Heimdallr, Fólkvangr for Freyja, Glitnir for Forseti, Nóatún for Njörðr, Landvíði for Víðarr. The complete list that forms the inner ring of the mythic geography.

7Hittusk æsirá Iðavelli,þeir er hörg ok hofhá timbruðu;afla lögðu,auð smíðuðu,tangir skópuok tól gerðu.

At Ithavoll met / the mighty gods; / Shrines and temples / they timbered high; / Forges they set, / and fashioned gold, / tongs they wrought, / and tools they made.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).

Here the creation ends and the later mythic history begins. Völuspá 8 lets the golden age break when three giantesses (þursa meyjar) come from Jötunheimr. The text withholds their names. It says only that they have "very great might" (ámáttkar mjök). Something in the Æsir's world is shaken. Völuspá in this stanza is laconic, it is one of its most cryptic transitions.

Völuspá 21–24 immediately follows with the first war: þat man hon folkvíg fyrst í heimi, "that war she remembers, the first of wars in the world". Gullveig, a figure burned three times in Odin's hall (Hár is one of Odin's names. höll Hárs is his hall) and who nonetheless kept on living. After this burning the war between Æsir and Vanir broke out. The collective power of the gods, as set in the cosmogonic frame, experiences its first internal fracture.

This transition marks the limit of the creation account. Moment 20 marks where the creation account passes over into later mythic history. After it the world is made, humans exist, the gods have their houses, and the disturbance has begun. From this point the material passes from cosmogony (how the world came to be) to mythic history (what happens in the made world). The individual stories of Baldr's death, the binding of Loki, Ragnarok, all the stories that come, take their start from here.

8Tefldu í túni,teitir váru,var þeim vettergisvant ór gulli,uns þrjár kvámuþursa meyjarámáttkar mjökór Jötunheimum.

In their dwellings at peace / they played at tables, / of gold no lack / did the gods then know , / till thither came / up giant-maids three, / full of might, / from Jötunheim.

English translation: Bellows 1923 (PD).