Nordic Mythology : Best Books of Skandinavian Stories

In the beginning there was the abyss, the Ginnungagapet.

To the North of the abyss there was Nifelheim, the world of cold where Cold and Darkness rules. Frosty mists rose where the great spring, Hvergelmir, flowed out into Ginnungagap.

To the South there was the hot Muspelheim, Land of Fire. Slushy rime ice pouring forth from Hvergelmir came in contact with sparks and embers hurled into space by the volcanoes of Muspellheim.

At the same time flares from Muspelheim fell into the abyss and the mix of flares and ice formed two giant beings- A cow with the name 'Audhumbla' and a giant named 'Ymer'.

The Aesir

The cow lived on the white frost on the rocks and her warm breath revealed a man who, after three days, stepped forth from the ice. He was called Buri. His son Borr married the giantess Bestla and fathered three sons: Odin, Vili, and Ve -- the first Aesir.

Odin killed Ymer, and used the giant's body for a new world. The Giant's blood became the sea. His skull became the sky. His bones became mountains, his brain the clouds, his teeth the rocks and pebbles. His eyebrows became a wall to separate this new world, Midgard, from the lands of the giants.

The universe is organised into Nine Worlds interconnected and bound together by an immense ash tree called Yggdrasil (the World Tree) which grows from the Ginnungagap. At the base of Ygdrasil is the Well of Wisdom and Odin gave his right eye for a drink of the water in this well.

These worlds are on three levels: an upper level with Asgard, Vanaheim, and Alfheim, a middle level with Midgard, Jotunheim and Muspellheim and a lower level with Svartalfheim, Niflheim and Hel. The upper and middle levels are connected by Bifrost, the fiery rainbow bridge reaching from Asgard to Midgard.

Odin and his brothers found two trees with the names Ask and Embla on the sea shore of Midgard. The gods breathed life into Ask and Embla, gave them power of motion, intelligence, fantasy and spirit, and granted them Midgard for themselves and their descendants, the human race.

Yggdrasil, which binds together the fabric of the Nine Worlds and on whose survival their very existence depends, is under constant attack from all sides.

A dragon gnaws at the root that lies in Niflheim, four deer and a goat live on branches and eat its leaves, plus the trunk of the Tree is infected with some sort of rot. Fortunately, each day healing water is applied to the trunk of Yggdrasil by the three Norns, wise women.

And so the eternal balance between growth and decay is maintained.

The Norns

The three Norns are called Urd, Verdandi and Skuld.

Urd means Fate, referring to those actions that have already taken place; Verdandi means Becoming, referring to those actions in the process of taking place; and Skuld means Necessity, referring to those necessary actions that drive the whole process.

Each day as the Norns apply the healing water to Yggdrasil's trunk, they speak the Orlog, they chant the Songlines, for the Orlog is the essential and unchanging law of the universe.

The Orlog is not just a symbolic acknowledgment of significant past events, it creates and empowers the present which is constantly influenced by all that has gone before.

This active "power of the past upon the present" is the wyrd.

To survive in this world, and to be favourably remembered after death, the wise person must learn as much as possible about the realms of the Tree and thus come to glimpse, however dimly, the nature of wyrd itself.

No treatment of ancient Nordic spirituality would be complete without at least a mention of the runes, letters carved on wood, bone, stone or metal that not only served as part of a functional alphabet, but also symbolised key mythical-psychological concepts in the Nordic world view.

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