Ymir

The Primordial Giant

Domain: Creation, Ice & Origin
Alignment: True Neutral
Element: Earth
Relics of Power: Body of the World

Speak with Ymir

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Norse & Germanic peoples

Region

Scandinavia & northern Europe

Period

Viking Age, 8th–11th c.

The gods of Asgard were worshipped by the Norse peoples of Scandinavia and by the Germanic tribes, especially during the Viking Age. Warriors sought to die in battle to reach Odin's Valhalla, and the myths were preserved in the Icelandic Eddas. The cult declined with the region's Christianization around the year 1000.

The Norse celebrated blóts, seasonal sacrifices with feasts of meat and mead, such as the Yule of the winter solstice. The great temple at Uppsala, in Sweden, hosted every nine years one of the largest sacrificial festivals of the Viking world.

At a glance

Ymir is the first being described in the Norse texts I consulted: he is born from drops of poison that froze and then melted in the abyss of Ginnungagap, and the frost giants call him Aurgelmir (Gylfaginning, ch. 5). He is not a god; Snorri calls him evil, like all his kin. Fed by the cow Auðhumla, he begets offspring alone, sweating in his sleep. The sons of Borr, Odin, Vili and Vé, kill him and make the world from his body: flesh becomes earth, blood becomes sea, skull becomes sky. The Poetic Edda repeats that list in Vafþrúðnismál 21 and Grímnismál 40-41.

12 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The primordial ice, the abyss, the cow Audhumla and the giant body

Family

Ymir

Children

A man and a woman born under the left arm (unnamed in the sources)A six-headed son begotten by the feet (unnamed; Bellows suggests Þrúðgelmir, as a guess)

Genealogy according to Edda em Prosa, Gylfaginning 5-8; Edda Poética, Vafþrúðnismál 28-35

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Anonymous, The Poetic Edda (Völuspá, Vafþrúðnismál, Grímnismál). translation: Henry Adams Bellows, 1923. read
Anonymous, The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson. translation: Benjamin Thorpe. read
Snorri Sturluson, The Younger Edda; also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda. translation: Rasmus B. Anderson. read
Anonymous, Völuspá, Old Norse text. read
Anonymous, Vafþrúðnismál, Old Norse text. read
Anonymous, Grímnismál, Old Norse text. read
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, Old Norse text (chapters 4–8 and 14). read
Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál, Old Norse text (sections 31–33). read

Studies

Henry Adams Bellows, Notes and introduction to the translation of The Poetic Edda (notes to the stanzas of Völuspá, Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál). 1923. open
Rasmus B. Anderson, Biographical introduction to Snorri Sturluson, in the translation of the Prose Edda. open

Name and epithets

The texts use three names for the same being, or for beings that scholars identify with him: Ymir (genitive Ymis), Aurgelmir and Brimir.

In the ancient sources

Völuspá (Poetic Edda), poem preserved in the Codex Regius, brought by Bishop Brynjólfur in 1643, and in the Hauksbók, from about 1300 (according to Bellows); dating of the poem itself not verified.

The myths

Before there was a world: Ginnungagap. In Gylfaginning 4, King Gangleri asks how everything began, and Hár answers with the Völuspá: it was the time when there was no sand, no sea, no cool waves, no earth and no sky, bu…

Worship and archaeology

In the sources I opened, Ymir has no cult. Gylfaginning 5 states the opposite of what a worshipped deity would need: "we by no means accept him as a god".

How the god was depicted

BLOCKED: I opened no source on images of Ymir in stone, metal, manuscript or modern art. For that reason I do not describe depictions.

What scholars debate

Was Ymir good, neutral or evil?. The site's catalogue records Ymir as "neutral", but Snorri's source in Gylfaginning 5 is explicit: he is evil, like all his family, and he is not a god.

After antiquity

The first reception I can document is Snorri's, who uses the Völuspá, Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnismál as proofs throughout Gylfaginning and teaches in Skáldskaparmál to call the sky "Ymir's skull", the earth "Ymir's flesh"…

Did you know?

In Gylfaginning 7, Ymir's blood drowns the giants; in Gylfaginning 8, the blood of his wounds is the sea set in a ring around the earth. The same liquid is catastrophe and foundation.

Codex relic

Body of the World. The flesh, bones and blood from which the earth, the mountains and the seas were made.

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