Save one, Bergelmer,—he on shipboard fled
Thy deluge, and from him the giants sprang.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).
Here he took up his abode, calling the place Jötun-heim (the home of the giants), and here he begat a new race of frost giants, who inherited his dislikes, continued the feud, and were always ready to sally forth from their desolate country and make a raid into the territory of the gods.
The gods, who in Northern mythology are called Æsir (pillars and supporters of the world), having thus triumphed over all their foes, and being no longer engaged in perpetual warfare, now began to look about them, wondering how they could improve the desolate aspect of things and fashion a habitable world. After due consideration Börr’s sons rolled Ymir’s great corpse into the yawning abyss, and began to make the world out of its various component parts.
Creation of the earth.
Out of the giant’s flesh they fashioned Midgard (middle garden), as the earth was called, which was placed in the exact center of the vast space, and hedged all round with Ymir’s eyebrows which formed its bulwarks or ramparts. The solid portion of Midgard was surrounded by the giant’s blood or sweat, which now formed the ocean, while his bones made the hills, his flat teeth the cliffs, and his curly hair the trees and all vegetation.
Well pleased with the result of these their first efforts at creation, the gods took the giant’s unwieldy skull and poised it skillfully above earth and sea as the vaulted heavens; then scattering his brains throughout the expanse they fashioned from them the fleecy clouds.
“Of Ymir’s flesh
Was earth created,