Yggdrasil · Cold and the Dead

Bergelmir and the Flood

The giant born before the earth, who in Snorri survives the flood of Ymir’s blood.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

29. Countless winters, ere earth was formed, was Bergelmir born; Thrûdgelmir was his sire, his grandsire Aurgelmir.

35. Countless winters, ere earth was formed, Bergelmir was born. That I first remember, when that wise Jötun in an ark was laid.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

“… the sons of Bor slew the giant Ymir, and when he fell there ran so much blood from his wounds, that the whole race of Frost-giants was drowned in it, except a single giant, who saved himself with his household. He is called by the giants Bergelmir. He escaped by going on board his bark, and with him went his wife, and from them are descended the Frost-giants.”

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Vafþrúðnismál makes Bergelmir the son of Thrúðgelmir and the grandson of Aurgelmir, born countless winters before the earth was formed. Asked what he remembers earliest, the giant Vafþrúðnir answers that it is the time when the wise giant was laid “in an ark”. The poem says no more about the event, and nothing in it speaks of a flood of blood or of Ymir’s death.

Snorri supplies the larger story in Gylfaginning. The sons of Bor kill Ymir, and his blood drowns the Frost-giants, but Bergelmir escapes with his wife on a bark, and the Frost-giants descend from them. Snorri does not say where Bergelmir lived afterwards.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

This edition’s glossary renders the name as “Mountain-old”, which suits a being said to have been born before the earth, though other readings of the name are possible. The poem’s word for what he was laid in is hard, and translators do not agree on it, so “ark” is one choice and not a fact of the text.

Snorri’s account of a bark and a surviving household goes beyond the poem’s single line. The two together make Bergelmir the link between the first giants and the Frost-giants of later times, and neither source places him in any realm.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Bergelmir is named in Vafþrúðnismál, stanzas 29 and 35 in Thorpe’s numbering, and in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, where he is the one giant to survive the flood of Ymir’s blood. The poem and the prose agree that he is an ancestor of the giants but differ in how much they tell, and Snorri alone gives the flood and the bark. No archaeological or pictorial evidence is known.