Ask and Embla

In the Norse cosmogony the gods encounter two pieces of wood or two trees on a shore and from them create the first human pair. In the Poetic Edda (Völuspá stanza 17) three gods named Hœnir, Lóðurr and Odin find Ask and Embla and give them gifts; in the Prose Edda (Gylfaginning ch. 9) the three brothers Odin, Vili and Vé walk along a beach, find two trees and from the wood create Ask and Embla, clothing them, naming them and placing them in Midgard. The accounts agree that the pair originate at the mythic beginning and that the gods bestow the capacities that make them human.

Primary attestations describe Ask and Embla as created from trees or wood (the Prose Edda says the gods took two trees on a beach and made them into the first man and woman). Ask's name transparently connects him to the ash tree (Old Norse askr = 'ash tree'); Embla's etymology is uncertain, with scholarly proposals including derivations meaning 'elm', 'vine', or a compound interpreted as 'firemaker'/'smokebringer'. No detailed anthropological physical description (height, hair, complexion) is preserved in the cited sources; the focus is on vegetal/material origin rather than corporeal detail.

Initially the pair are described as limited—Völuspá says they were 'little able' and lacking ørlög (fate/law/destiny) until the gods endowed them. The Prose Edda specifies that the three divine agents gave them the breath of life, movement and intelligence, and form, speech, hearing and sight; they were also clothed, named and placed in Midgard. After these gifts they function as the first humans and progenitors, capable of living and reproducing. The precise wording of the gifts and the identities of the two helper gods differ between sources and are matters of scholarly debate.