Ymir

“ Not even among the fairest daughters of the Aesir have I seen such hair, by Ymir!”
“Who are you to swear by Ymir?” she mocked. “What know you of the gods of ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure among strangers?”
“By the dark gods of my own race!” he cried in anger. “Have I been backward in the sword-play, stranger or no? This day I have seen four score warriors fall, and I alone survive the field where Wulfhere’s reavers met the men of Bragi. Tell me, woman, have you caught the flash of mail across the snow-plains, or seen armed men moving upon the ice?” ”

“ Had a blizzard come up and hidden them, we had never found you, by Ymir!”
“Swear not so often by Ymir,” muttered a warrior, glancing at the distant mountains. “This is his land and the god bides among yonder mountains, the legends say.”
“I followed a woman,” Amra answered hazily. “We met Bragi’s men in the plains. I know not how long we fought. I alone lived. I was dizzy and faint. The land lay like a dream before me. Only now do all things seem natural and familiar. The woman came and taunted me. She was beautiful as a frozen flame from hell. ”

“ So huge was Ymir that when he was slain his blood poured out in such a mighty flood that his sons were all drowned in it, all except Bergelmir, who was in a boat with his wife when the flood came, and who floated away on the flood to the place that we now call Jötunheim, the Realm of the Giants.
"Now Odin and his sons took the body of Ymir—the vastest body that ever was—and they flung it into the Chasm of Chasms, filling up all the hollow places with it. They dug the bones out of the body and they piled them up as the mountains. They took the teeth out and they made them into the rocks. ”

“ Slain by the gods, Ymir, the first giant, fell lifeless on the ice, drowning all his progeny in his blood. One couple only, Bergelmir and his wife, effected their escape to the confines of the world, Jötun-heim, where they took up their abode and became the parents of all the giant race. ”

“ But Naram-ninub--" he halted in confused thought. "Why, of all the men of Nippur, he has been my staunchest friend!"
"Friend?" she mocked. "What is friendship but a pleasant pretense to while away an idle hour?"
"But why. in Ymir's name?"
"What are the petty intrigues of men to me?" she exclaimed angrily. "Yet now I remember that men from Erech, wrapped in cloaks steal by night to Naramninub's palace."
"Ymir!" like a sudden blaze of light Pyrrhas saw reason in merciless clarity. ”

“ From him spring all our race, and hence are we so strong and mighty.'"
"How did the race of Ymir spread itself?" asked Gangler; "or dost thou believe that this giant was a god?"
"We are far from believing him to have been a god," replied Har, "for he was wicked as are all of his race, whom we call Frost-giants. And it is said that, when Ymir slept, he fell into a sweat, and from the pit of his left arm was born a man and a woman, and one of his feet engendered with the other a son, from whom descend the Frost-giants, and we therefore call Ymir the old Frost-giant." ”

“ Should those Jotuns be slow in coming, Loki was to rouse Ymir from his rest, Ymir the terrific giant Frost, whose blood is the seas, whose body forms the earth, whose bones are the mountains, whose skull is the heavens, whose brains are the clouds and what they discharge in the shape of rain or snow, and whose eyebrows supplied the material for the making of Midgard, the habitable portion of the globe. Ymir sleeps under the Ygdrasil tree whose branches extend to every quarter of the universe, while its three roots connect Asgard with Niffleheim and [Pg 148] Jotunheim. ”

“ And when I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the giant Ymir from the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir and Loki and the frozen Jötuns—as I say, when I had told her of all this, and of Thor and Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her hands and cried out, with sparkling eyes:
“Oh, you barbarian! You great child! You yellow giant-thing of the frost! You believer of old nurse tales and stomach satisfactions! But the spirit of you, that which cannot die, where will it go when your body is dead?” ”

“ In the terrible battle that took place between the gods and giants, Ymir was killed; and from his body poured forth such a great river of blood that all of the giants were drowned in it except two. These were Bergelemer and his wife, who escaped on a chest that floated away to the edge of the world. From them sprang a new race of frost-giants who continued to make trouble for the gods just as their forefathers had done. ”

“ Father of gods and men though he was, born though he was of a giant mother, there was bitter strife between him and the vast Frost and Mountain Giants, the seed of Ymir's feet. They alone ventured openly to dispute his sovereignty.
Mightiest of the other twelve Æsir was the All-father's eldest Earth-born son, Thor. Two goats of magical powers drew his chariot; iron gauntlets he had with which to grasp Miolnir, the hammer that none might withstand; when he girded about his loins the belt of strength, even his god-like might was doubled. ”

“ He was surrounded by tall golden-haired warriors in mail and furs.
“Amra! You live!”
“By Crom, Niord,” gasped he, “am I alive, or are we all dead and in Valhalla?”
“We live,” grunted the Aesir, busy over Amra’s half-frozen feet. “We had to fight our way through an ambush, else we had come up with you before the battle was joined. The corpses were scarce cold when we came upon the field. We did not find you among the dead, so we followed your spoor. In Ymir’s name, Amra, why did you wander off into the wastes of the north? We have followed your tracks in the snow for hours. ”

“ In the Scandinavian legend, Ymir, the giant, is slain by the sons of Bur, and the streams of blood flowing from his wounds were so copious that the flood drowned the whole race of ice and frost giants, and Bergelmir alone of that race was saved, with his wife, by taking refuge in a bark ”

“ But how is the earth fashioned?"
"It is round without," replied Har, "and encircled by the deep ocean, the outward shores of which were assigned for a dwelling to the race of giants. But within, round about the earth, they (the sons of Bor) raised a bulwark against turbulent giants, employing for this structure Ymir's eyebrows. To this bulwark they gave the name of Midgard [1] . They afterwards tossed Ymir's brains into the air, and they became the clouds, for thus we find it recorded.
"Of Ymir's flesh was formed the earth ”

“ There was only Ginnungagap. Numberless years before the earth was shaped was Bergelmir born. Trudgelmir was his father, and Orgelmir his grandfather.”
“On what did Ymir live, or by what?” asked Ivar.
Gudbrand replied: “It happened that when the hoar frost fell in drops, the cow Audhumla grew out of it; four rivers of milk ran from her teats, and she fed Ymir. Audhumla for food licked the rime stones, covered with salt and rime, and the first day she licked them a man’s hair came out of them; the second day a man’s head; the third day a whole man was there. ”

“ WHile the cow had been thus engaged, Ymir, the giant, had fallen aspleep, and as he slept, a son and daughter were born from the perspiration under his armpit, and his feet produced the six-headed giant Thrudgelmir, who, shortly after his birth, brought forth in his turn the giant Bergelmir, from whom all the evil frost giants are descended. ”

“ The earth is fashioned round without, and there beyond, round about it lies the deep sea; and on that sea-strand the gods gave land for an abode to the giant kind, but within on the earth made they a burg round the world against restless giants, and for this burg reared they the brows of Ymir, and called the burg Midgard. The gods went along the sea-strand and found two stocks, and shaped out of them men ”

“ By Ymir, I was born in a land the gods built! There are great blue mountains, with valleys lying like long shadows between, and snow peaks glittering in the sun. Rivers rush foaming down the cliffs in everlasting tumult, and the broad leaves of the trees shake in the strong winds."
"I, too, was born in a broad land, Pyrrhas," answered the Semite. "By night the desert lies white and awful beneath the moon, and by day it stretches in brown infinity beneath the sun. But it is in the swarming cities of men, these hives of bronze and gold and enamel and humanity, that wealth and glory lie." ”

“ But a few centuries later, when the simple old Saxon names in a had very much died out, Emma coming in as something quite new, and with the stamp of Norman prestige, became at once, as appears from the Liber Vitæ, a name in favour. As to the etymology, which is considered by the Germans to be obscure, I have elsewhere ventured to suggest Old Northern ymia, stridere; whence the name of the giant Ymir, in Northern mythology. The sense is that of a harsh and loud voice, which suggests huge stature. ”

“ While this wonderful beast was [Pg 72] licking the salt stones in the ice, which formed her diet, a quantity of human hair grew out of them, and the next day a human head was developed, and then appeared a whole man. Bör, the son of this man, married a daughter of one of the ice-giants, and they had three children, the oldest of whom was Odin, who became the rulers of heaven and earth, because they were all good, while the children of Ymir, the ice-giant, were evil. Then, as now, the Good and the Evil were at war. ”

“ He has a flaming sword, and at the end of the world he will go and make warfare and get victory over all the gods, and burn the whole world with fire” (Later Edda, c. 4) . [27]
The origin of the Hrim Thursar and the Birth of Ymir, who lived in Ginnungagap, and of Odin, Vili, and Ve, is as follows:
“Gangleri asked, ‘How was it before the kindreds existed and mankind increased?’ Hár answered, ‘When the rivers called Elivagar had run so far from their sources that the quick venom which flowed into them, like the dross which runs out of the fire, got hard, and changed into ice ”

“ Asgard lies to the north, and Vanaheim to the northwest of Cimmeria, and there is continual war along the borders."
"What manner of men are these northern folk?" asked Prospero.
"Tall and fair and blue-eyed. Their god is Ymir, the frost-giant, and each tribe has its own king. They are wayward and fierce. They fight all day and drink ale and roar their wild songs all night."
"Then I think you are like them," laughed Prospero. "You laugh greatly, drink deep and bellow good songs ”

“ The two gods journeyed east of the Elivagar in Thor’s goat chariot, left this conveyance at the house of the peasant Egil, Thialfi’s father, and wended their way on foot to the dwelling of the giant Hymir, who, they knew, owned a kettle one mile deep and proportionately wide. ”

“ The fishes scurried about in every direction, and the sea-monsters wildly sought new places to hide themselves when they found their homes destroyed. The sea itself was stirred to its lowest depths, and the waves ran trembling into one another's arms. The earth, too, shrank and shivered. Hymir, cowering low in the boat, was glad of one thing, which was that the terrible Midgard serpent had vanished out of sight. And that was the last that was ever seen of him, though he still lived, wounded and sore from the shock of Thor's hammer. ”

“ Thor abode as guest there overnight; but at dawn Hymir arose and clothed himself and made ready to row to sea a-fishing. Then Thor sprang up and was speedily ready, and asked Hymir to let him row to sea with him. But Hymir said that Thor would be of little help to him, being so small and a youth, 'And thou wilt freeze, if I stay so long and so far out as I am wont.' But Thor said that he would be able to row far out from land, for the reason that it was not certain whether he would be the first to ask to row back. ”

“ But one thing there is that will never perish,—the good man’s fame.”
3. The poems purely mythological are of a more interesting class. The Hymis-guida, or song concerning Hymir, describes an entertainment given by Ægir, the sea-god, to the deities of the Scandinavian Olympus. Ægir, to his great dismay, has no cauldron large enough to brew mead in for such thirsty guests; and Thor goes to borrow or steal one from the great Hymir. This entertainment gave rise to another poem, the Loka-glespa, or quarrelling of Loka with the assembled guests. ”

“ Caused trouble to the Jotun th' unwelcome-worded As: he forthwith meditated vengeance on the gods. Sif's husband he besought a kettle him to bring, "in which I beer for all of you may brew."
4. The illustrious gods found that impossible, nor could the exalted powers it accomplish, till from trueheartedness, Ty to Hlorridi much friendly counsel gave.
5. "There dwells eastward of Elivagar the all-wise Hymir, at heaven's end. My sire, fierce of mood, a kettle owns, a capacious cauldron, a rast in depth." ”

“ Thor insisted upon going further until they came near the borders of the world, and the two began to fish. Hymir soon hooked and drew up two whales, which he boastfully showed as proof of his strength, but soon after Thor hooked the Midgard Serpent, which rose spouting floods of venom that greatly terrified Hymir. Thor pulled with so much strength on the line that he broke through the bottom of the boat, but his feet stood upon the bottom of the sea and he raised his hammer to strike the serpent ”

“ Njorth: father of Freyr and Freyja, and given by the Wanes as a hostage, in exchange for Hönir, at the close of the first war; cf. Voluspo, 21 and note, also Skirnismol, introductory prose and note. Babes: cf. stanza 23 and note. Bugge suggests that this clause may have been a late insertion. [163]
34. Daughters of Hymir: we have no clue to who these were, though Hymir is doubtless the frost-giant of the Hymiskvitha (q.v.) . Loki’s point is that Njorth is not a god, but the product of an inferior race (the Wanes) . ”