Ymir

In the earliest, pre-creation epoch of Norse myth Ymir arose in Ginnungagap—the grassless void where the cold of Niflheim/Élivágar met the heat of Muspell. According to the sources summarized in the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Ymir formed from atter (eitr), the yeasty venom that dripped from the icy Élivágar; he existed contemporaneously with the primeval cow Auðumbla. In Snorri's account the brothers Odin, Vili and Vé slew Ymir and used his body to fashion the cosmos: flesh into earth, blood into seas (an immense flood is reported at his death), bones into mountains, hair into trees, brains into clouds, skull into the heavens, and eyebrows into Midgard. Poetic sources likewise present Ymir (under variant names Aurgelmir/Brimir/Bláinn) as the ancestor of the jötnar; scholarly summaries note that some sequence and synthesizing detail is emphasized in Snorri's Prose Edda relative to the poetic corpus.

The poetic sources provide little pictorial detail beyond indicating Ymir's status as an immense, primordial jötunn whose body, after death, becomes the physical world. Poetic Edda stanzas record unusual generative anatomy—offspring issuing from beneath his armpits and a six-headed jötunn produced by his feet—emphasizing his role as ancestor rather than giving conventional humanlike description. The attestations also record variant names (Aurgelmir, Brimir, Bláinn) applied to this being in different contexts.

Ymir's principal functions in the sources are generative and material: he begets progeny in an unorthodox manner (a male and female growing beneath his armpits; a six-headed jötunn from his feet), establishing him as ancestor of the jötnar (Poetic Edda, Vafþrúðnismál). After his death at the hands of Odin, Vili and Vé, his body is the raw material for cosmogenesis—his flesh, blood, bones, hair, brains and skull become earth, sea (with his blood causing an immense flood), mountains, trees, clouds and sky (Poetic/Prose Edda summaries). The sources do not attribute other active powers, ongoing behaviors, or magical practices to Ymir beyond these cosmological roles.