Ymir's legs begot Þrúðgelmir, a six-headed frost giant, without any mate — the primordial giant's body generating offspring from itself in the earliest age of the world.
Odin, Vili, and Vé slew the primordial giant Ymir and fashioned the cosmos from his corpse — his flesh became earth, blood became sea, bones became mountains, skull became sky, and eyebrows became Midgard's walls.
Tuisto and Ymir are the same self-born primordial giant remembered across Germanic traditions — the earth-born ancestor of Tacitus's Germania and the frost-born colossus whose dismembered body became the world in the Norse Eddas.
⚠ Both names may derive from PIE *Yemo ('twin'): Tuisto from Proto-Germanic *twistaz and Ymir possibly from a related root. The connection is widely accepted (Lincoln, Myth Cosmos and Society, 1986) but the myths diverge significantly in function.
Auðumbla, the primordial cow, emerged from the melting ice of Ginnungagap alongside Ymir. She nourished the first giant with four rivers of milk from her udder while she herself fed by licking the salty ice.
While Auðumbla nourished Ymir, she licked Búri free from the primordial ice over three days. Búri became the ancestor of the gods who would eventually slay Ymir and create the world from his body.
The venomous streams of the Élivágar froze into layers of rime in Ginnungagap, and when the heat of Muspelheim thawed that poisoned ice, the quickening drops took shape as Ymir, the first of all living beings.
Ymir, the first being, quickened from melting rime within Ginnungagap when the searing heat of Muspelheim met the frozen venom of the Élivágar, and from his sleeping body's sweat sprang the first frost giants.
Ymir is the ancestor of all jötnar. When his blood drowned nearly all the frost giants after his death, only Bergelmir escaped to repopulate Jötunheim. The giants' enmity toward the gods stems from this primordial killing.
Midgard was fashioned from the body of the slain primordial giant Ymir — his flesh became the land, his blood the seas, his bones the mountains, and his eyebrows the walls enclosing the realm, as told in Gylfaginning.
Sparks and embers from Muspelheim's fire melted the ice of Niflheim in Ginnungagap, creating Ymir. The primordial giant emerged from the meeting of fire and frost that gave rise to all life.
Ymir, the first being, formed from the melting ice of Niflheim where it met the heat of Muspelheim in the void of Ginnungagap. The primordial giant's body later became the raw material of the world.
The dwarves were created from maggots in Ymir's flesh after his death, then shaped by the gods into skilled beings. They built their realm Svartalfheim in the underground depths of Ymir's transformed body.
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