as the rivers flowed on the ice accumulated, so that at length the whole abyss was filled up with ice and rime. But in the process of time also the heat from Muspell began to act on that portion of the ice the nearest to it, until the whole by degrees was thawed, and from the thaw was produced the giant Ymer, whose immeasurable bulk filled up a portion of the abyss. Ymer fell into a deep sleep, during which a man and a woman were generated under his left arm, and one foot begat a son upon the other. From these are descended the race of the Hrymthussar, or giants of the frost. At the same time that Ymer, or the evil principle (for the Edda tells us that he and all his race were evil), was produced from the contending elements, Alfadur, or the father of all things, created the cow, Audumbla, from whose udders flowed four streams of milk, by which Ymer was nourished. She herself procured sustenance by licking some stones on which the hoar frost still lay, and which were salt. By this process, within three days, they were moulded into a man who was called Bure. He had a son Bur or Börr, who married a maid of giant race named Beyzla, or Belsta, by whom he had three sons, Odin, Vile, and Ve. These three, shortly after their birth, slew the giant Ymer, the blood from whose wounds drowned the whole of the frost giants, with the exception of Bergelmer (the old man of the mountain), who escaped with his wife in a boat, and continued the race. After this, Börr's sons took Ymer's body and midst of the gulf Ginnungagap. set it in the Of his flesh they formed the earth, of his blood seas and waters, of his bones mountains, of his teeth rocks and stones, of his hair all manner of plants. They made the heavens out of his skull, and set four dwarfs, whose names were East, West, North, and South, at the four corners, to support it. They took also fires from Muspelheim and fixed them in heaven, above and below, to light up the heaven and the earth. And they determined the course of all meteors and heavenly bodies, some in the heavens, some under the heavens. Moreover, they threw up Ymer's brains into the air, where they became clouds, and formed Midgard of his eye-. brows." Such is the account of the creation of the universe given in the Prose Edda, the author of which has put in the shape of a continuous narrative details collected from several of the Mythological Poems or Songs, which compose what is called the Elder or Poetic Edda. In the Voluspa, or the Song of the Prophetess, the most interesting of them all, as well on account of the evident marks which it bears of remote antiquity, as of the loftiness of its language, and the poetry of its conception, a Vala or Prophetess, probably Urda, the Norny of the past, from a high seat, informs the gods and the numerous race of lesser deities, assembled in intent silence around her, of the mystery of their creation, and of the destruction which must one day overtake them. She begins as follows: 1. Listen to my tale, Of the race of Heimdall! I will narrate the deeds Of the sire of the slain, The oldest I remember. 2. I bring to mind the giants, They who, of yore, I can tell of nine worlds, 3. It was the morn of time, When nothing was, Nor sand nor sea, Nor cold billows, Nowhere could earth be found, Nor the high heaven, There was a boundless gulph 4. Until the sons of Börr Gave life to clay, They who constructed The lordly Midgard. When earth was decked With verdant plants. In like manner, in another of these songs, the Grimnersmaal, to which we shall have occasion to refer presently, we are told by Odin himself:- From Ymer's corpse Earth was created: From his blood the sea; Plants from his hair; The heavens from his front; From his brows The wild gods formed Midgard, for the sons of men; Whilst from his brains The hard blowing clouds Notwithstanding the extravagant wildness of the preceding fiction, thus much at least may be elicited from it; that its inventors believed in one supreme, eternal, and omnipotent being (Alfadur), to whom they assigned no origin, and respecting whose nature and attributes they presumed not to conjecture. They intended also plainly to inculcate that matter was eternal, and in its nature evil, whilst good could proceed only from the allwise Alfadur.9 Finn Magnussen views the Scandinavian Cosmogony as an allegory, which he thus interprets :The giant Ymer represents the chaotic state of the earth, produced by the combined effects of heat and cold upon water, which according to the belief of all nations, and to the account of the Holy Scriptures themselves, was the first existing 8 Mysterious allusions to the supreme being occur from time to time in the poems of the Elder Edda. Thus in Hyndla's song, Yet there shall come Another mightier, Altho' him I dare not name. Further onward Few can see, Meets the wolf. 9 The eternity of the world, remarks Bastholm, is an invention of modern philosophers; but the ancients, whilst they steered clear of this absurdity, believed in the eternity of matter, because they could not comprehend how the world could have been produced out of nothing. (Bastholm over de ældste Folkes-lægters rel. og philos. Meiningen). |