Auðumbla, the cow of the ice: the Norse myth in which the first god emerges
In the Prose Edda, the cow Auðumbla feeds the giant Ymir and licks blocks of salty ice until a man, Búri, Odin's grandfather, emerges from them.
Before heaven and earth there was only ice, fire and a void in between. There, according to Snorri Sturluson, a cow began to lick the ice and, without meaning to, made a god appear.
The void and the two worlds
The Prose Edda says that in the beginning there was the abyss Ginnungagap. To the north lay Niflheim, the world of ice and mist. To the south, Muspell, the world of fire. When the heat from the south met the ice from the north, the ice melted into drops, and from them Ymir was born, the first giant.
The cow
From the same source of ice came the cow Auðumbla. Four rivers of milk flowed from her udders, and Ymir fed on them. The cow herself lived by licking blocks of ice covered with salt.
The man in the ice
Auðumbla licked the salty ice for a day, and by the end of the day a man’s hair appeared. On the second day, the head. On the third, the whole man. His name was Búri, and Snorri describes him as handsome, large and strong.
Búri had a son, Borr, who married Bestla, the daughter of a giant. From that union were born Odin, Vili and Vé, the first gods.
The end of Ymir
The three brothers killed Ymir, and from his body they made the world: the sea from blood, the land from flesh, the mountains from bones, the sky from the skull. That is the second step of the creation myth, which Snorri tells next.
What the myth shows
The story mixes elements of the northern climate, with ice and fire, and a very human image of care: an animal that nourishes and, by licking the ice, frees someone. The oldest sources, such as the Völuspá, do not mention Auðumbla, and the cow appears mainly in Snorri. For that reason scholars debate how much he gathered from tradition and how much he arranged himself.
The poems and the start of the world
The Völuspá, the best-known poem of the Poetic Edda, describes the beginning of time without mentioning the cow: then there was no sand, no sea, no cold waves, no earth and no sky, only the abyss Ginnungagap. The Grímnismál, another poem in the same collection, says the world was made from the body of Ymir. Snorri gathered these pieces and added the image of the cow, so his version is the fullest and also the most orderly.
To free Búri from the block of ice before it freezes over again, play Auðumbla’s ice.
Sources.
- Snorri Sturluson, *Prose Edda*, section *Gylfaginning* (around 1220)
- *Völuspá* and *Vafþrúðnismál*, in the Poetic Edda (Codex Regius manuscript, around 1270)