Ginnungagapᚷ

Ginnungagap is the immense, magically charged void that existed before the earth, the sea, or the sky, before any of the nine realms had taken shape. It is not itself a realm but the emptiness between the fire of Muspelheim and the ice of Niflheim, out of which the first living form eventually rose.

The void before the worlds

Voluspa opens its account of creation by describing a time when there was no sand, no sea, no cool waves, no earth, and no sky above, only Ginnungagap, a yawning gap where grass had not yet grown. It is the blank condition the whole myth begins from, the emptiness every later realm will eventually fill.

Fire and ice at the edges

Two realms already existed at the far edges of that emptiness. Muspelheim, a world of blazing fire, lay to the south, so hot that no one who does not belong there can endure it. Niflheim, a world of ice, cold, and mist, lay to the north, feeding poisonous rivers into the gap between them. Ginnungagap was the meeting ground where their opposite natures pressed against each other.

Meltwater into flesh: the birth of Ymir

The rivers flowing out of Niflheim froze as they crossed into Ginnungagap, building up layer after layer of rime ice. When the sparks and warm air drifting north from Muspelheim touched that ice, it began to melt, and from the dripping meltwater the first living shape took form: the giant Ymir, ancestor of all the frost-giants who would later people Jotunheim.

Audhumla and the first gods

The same meltwater also shaped the cow Audhumla, whose milk nourished Ymir as he grew. Audhumla herself fed by licking the salty, ice-rimed stones of Ginnungagap, and over three days her tongue uncovered a man named Buri, freed whole from the rock. Buri's line would eventually lead to Odin and his brothers, the gods who shaped the world that followed.