THE NORSE

CREATION
HOW DID IT ALL STARTED?
 In the Elder Edda a Wise Woman says:-

Of old there was nothing,

Nor sand, nor sea, nor cool waves.

No earth, no heaven above.

Only the yawning chasm.

The sun knew not her dwelling,

Nor the moon his realm.

The stars had not their places.

NIFLHEIM
The cold realm of the death.
MUSPELHEIM
The land of fire.
YMIR AND FROSTMAIDENS
First frost giants who was formed from the melting of ice
Niflheim, one of the primordial realms.
 ODIN AND HIS TWO
BROTHERS KILLED YMIR
They made the earth and sky from him, the sea from his blood, the earth from his body, the heavens from his skull. They took
sparks from Muspelheim and placed them in the sky as the sun, moon, and stars. The earth was round and encircled by the sea.
 MIDGARD
A great wall which the gods built out of Ymir's eye- brows defended the place where mankind was to live. The
space within was called Midgard.
 ASKR AND EMBLA
The first man and woman who were created from trees, the man from an ash, the woman from an elm; parents of
mankind.
 DWARFS
ugly creatures, but masterly craftsmen, who lived under the earth
 ELVES
Lovely sprites, who tended the flowers and streams.
 YGGDRASIL
A wondrous ash-tree, supported the universe. It struck its roots through the
worlds.

Three roots there are to

Yggdrasil:
-Hell lives beneath the
first.
-Beneath the second the
frost-giants,
-And men beneath the
third.
 URDA'S WELL
a well of white water, so holy that none might drink of it. The three Norns guarded it: The three were URDA (the Past),
VERDANDI (the Present), and SKULD (the Future).
WELL OF KNOWLEDGE
A well guarded by Mi-mir, the wise.
 THREAT OF DESTRUCTION
Over Yggdrasil, as over Asgard, hung the threat of destruction. Like the gods it was doomed to die. A serpent and his
brood gnawed continually at the root beside Niflheim, Hel's home. Some day they would succeed in killing the tree, and
the universe would come crashing down.
 FROST GIANTS AND THE
MOUNTAIN GIANTS
who lived in Jötunheim were the enemies of all that is good. They were the brutal powers of earth, and in the
inevitable contjest be- tween them and the divine powers of heaven, brute force would conquer.

The gods are doomed and the end is death.

 But such a belief is contrary to the deepest conviction of the human spirit, that good is stronger
than evil. Even these sternly hopeless Norsemen, whose daily life in their icy land through the
black winters was a perpetual challenge to heroism, saw a far-away light break through the
darkness. There is a prophecy in the Elder Edda, singularly like the Book of Revelation, that
after the defeat of the gods, when

The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,

The hot stars fall from the sky,
And fire leaps high about heaven itself,
 -there would be a new heaven and a new earth,

In wondrous beauty once again.

The dwellings roofed with gold.
The fields unsowed bear ripened fruit
In happiness forevermore.
 Then would come the reign of One who was higher than Odin and beyond the reach of evil-

A greater than all.

But I dare not ever to speak his name.
And there are few who can see beyond
The moment when Odin falls.
 This vision of a happiness infinitely remote seems a thin sustenance against despair, but it was
the only hope the Eddas afforded.