The Making of the Dwarfs

9. Then went all the powers to their judgment-seats, the all-holy gods, and thereon held council, who should of the dwarfs the race create, from the sea-giant’s blood and livid bones.

10. Then was Môtsognir created greatest of all the dwarfs, and Durin second; there in man’s likeness they created many dwarfs from earth, as Durin said.

“… the dwarfs had been bred in the mould of the earth, just as worms are in a dead body. It was, in fact, in Ymir’s flesh that the dwarfs were engendered, and began to move and live. At first they were only maggots, but by the will of the gods they at length partook both of human shape and understanding, although they always dwell in rocks and caverns.”

In Völuspá the gods hold council in their judgment-seats about who should create the race of dwarfs, from the blood and bones of a sea-giant. Móðsognir becomes the greatest of the dwarfs and Durinn the second, and the council makes many dwarfs in the likeness of men. A long catalogue of dwarf names follows.

Snorri quotes these stanzas in Gylfaginning but adds a different image: the dwarfs first came to life as maggots in the flesh of the giant Ymir, and the gods then gave them human shape and understanding. They keep to the earth, rocks and caverns. Snorri’s extra detail does not appear in the poem, so the two should not be read as one story.

The glossary of the translation used here reads Móðsognir as roughly “sucking in courage or vigour”, a reading it presents as an etymology and not as a certainty. The stanza’s grammar is hard, and translators differ over who exactly is doing the creating, which is why the “sea-giant” and the “livid bones” are rendered in several ways.

The sea-giant is not named; Snorri understands the giant to be Ymir. Whether the poem means the same figure is a matter of interpretation, not something the stanza states.