Save one, Bergelmer: he on shipboard fled
Thy deluge, and from him the giants sprang.”
Here he took up his abode, calling the place Jötunheim (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 raid the territory of the gods.
The gods, in Northern mythology called Æsir (pillars and supporters of the world), having thus triumphed over their foes, and being no longer engaged in perpetual warfare, now began to look about them, with intent to 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 create the world out of its various component parts.
The Creation of the Earth
Out of the flesh they fashioned Midgard (middle garden), as the earth was called. This was placed in the exact centre of the vast space, and hedged all round with Ymir’s eyebrows for bulwarks or ramparts. The solid portion of Midgard was surrounded by the giant’s blood or sweat, which 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 their first efforts at creation, the gods now took the giant’s unwieldy skull and poised it skilfully as the vaulted heavens above earth and sea; then scattering his brains throughout the expanse beneath they fashioned from them the fleecy clouds.
“Of Ymir’s flesh
Was earth created,