Ymir and the First Frost

31. From Elivâgar sprang venom drops, which grew till they became a Jötun; but sparks flew from the south-world: to the ice the fire gave life.

“And when the heated blast met the gelid vapour it melted it into drops, and, by the might of him who sent the heat, these drops quickened into life, and took a human semblance. The being thus formed was named Ymir, but the Frost-giants call him Orgelmir.”

In Vafþrúðnismál the giant Vafþrúðnir is asked where Aurgelmir came from, and answers that venom drops sprang from the Élivágar and grew into a giant, while sparks from the south gave the ice life. The poem then says that a girl and a boy grew under the giant’s armpit and that his feet begot a six-headed son.

Snorri tells the events at more length in Gylfaginning. The Élivágar freeze to ice in Ginnungagap, hot air from Muspellheim meets the frost in the gap, and the melting drops quicken into Ymir, whom the Frost-giants call Orgelmir. He sweats in his sleep and a man and a woman come from his left armpit. Later the sons of Bor slay him, and so much blood runs from his wounds that the Frost-giants are drowned in it, apart from Bergelmir and his household.

Aurgelmir and Orgelmir look like forms of one name, which Snorri equates with Ymir; the glossary of this edition describes Ymir as a word for a confused noise. The poem and Snorri do not call the being by the same name, and the poem does not say Ymir at this point.

The scene is a gap between cold and heat, not a place in Niflheim, and it should not be moved into any one realm. Snorri says plainly that Ymir was not a god but wicked, like his kin, and that the Frost-giants descend from him. Odin and his brothers are, in Snorri’s telling, born later from the line of Búri.