Odin builds a Cosmos
It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye
People sometimes (very rarely, I must admit) ask: “How did Odin lose an eye?”
Thing is, He never lost it: He knows perfectly well where it is.
“Mythological realism” contains many elements where gods and godlike beings trade their body parts for power, or symbolically consume something that gives them power, or join parts of themselves with the cosmos to be a part of the cosmic power structure.
In Norse myth, the godlike being Mim / Mimir (“the one who remembers” / “the wise one”) represents raw wisdom. He is reflected in his sacred well, from which he drinks every day: to drink from the well is to gain wisdom.
Odin bartered one of His eyes for a drink from the well, drank and thereby was made wise, and left His eye in the well to connect Himself to the cosmic source of wisdom.
So, He didn’t lose it. He willingly parted with it, and it is still connected to Him, and the connection makes Him exceedingly wise. It also filled Him with a terrible purpose to tear down and create anew.
The curve above describes the state of order (measured on the y axis) in the original universe. Order (defined as the extent to which reality acts consistently and predictably) increases towards the cold and heat maxima at the negative and positive fringes of the universe (Nifelheim and Muspelheim), with an unordered state (characterised by unpredictability but also in this case by greater survivability) in the middle. The gods (later known as vanir) lived there in innocence and play, achieving little but being in peace with creation. Odin set out to change all that.
Killing Ymir
The first step was to kill the giant thing Ymir. This sounds horrible, but Ymir wasn’t a person or even an animal, but a planet-sized (nearly 20000 km tall), roughly human-shaped, inert mass of androgynous… body. In any case, Odin killed Ymir, and their dying body fell, filling out the space within the trough of the x⁴ curve.
The curve above describes the state of order once Odin had killed Ymir and started to build a cosmos from the cadaver. A new maximum of order has arisen in the centre, and the only unordered points are at plus/minus the inverse of the root of 2. The Greek alphabet references these events in the shapes of the first and last letter: Α is Ymir standing on their feet, while Ω is the curve after Ymir’s death in exaggerated form.
The realm of Hel
Under the body of Ymir, the realm of Hel preserved the original, passive, timeless, and contented primordial state. The spring Vergelmer (“bubbling boiling spring”), the source of all the waters in the world, also erupts here through the great wound in Ymir’s body that killed them.
Midgard and Utgard
Starting at the bottom as any builder must: between the zero root points, Odin built a cosmos using Ymir’s body, covering Hel’s realm. Mimir’s well ended up deep within Ymir’s body, where it was hidden and protected. Odin transformed Ymir’s flesh to soil, their blood to lakes and seas, their hair to vegetation, their bone and teeth to rocks and mountains. Odin named the central lands on the top of Ymir’s body Midgard (“the middle yard”), and the great chasms down to the zero root points Utgard (“the outer enclosure”).
Creating the Elves (Alfar) and the Jotnar
Maggots were gnawing the carcass of Ymir, and Odin gave them limbs and a thinking mind, transforming them into small folk. They became the light elves and the dark elves, who live in mansions and dwellings under the earth, connected by tunnels.
Not murky, musty, and miserable dwellings or tunnels, but cosy and fresh dry-stone-clad (it only seems that way, it’s actually an internal sclerodermatoid reaction of Ymir’s not-quite-dead tissues) halls and conduits illuminated with glow-stones from the dark elves’ mines.
The light elves can relatively often be seen in the lands of Midgard and they are instrumental in bringing life back after the cold of winter: because of that, humans make a sacrifice to them near midwinter (“Alfablot”). They created the different forms of animals of Midgard and sometimes roam Midgard in animal or half-animal form.
The dark elves or dwerrows prefer digging into and below the earth, and only rarely come to Midgard to trade wondrous items and jewellery they have forged from what they find inside the giant’s body. Their dwellings are known as the Nether Fields.
The jotnar were originally elves that mixed with the vanir, planting their babies for the vanir to raise. They often have some animalistic trait like antlers, horns, tail, cloven hoofs, etc, but they are good at hiding those using simple shapeshifting magic. They are unpredictable and unreliable and have massive appetites, so the vanir eventually became very good at detecting them and drove them out into Utgård, where they settled in Jotunheim.
The creation of humankind
Odin also created the first humans in Midgard out of two logs. The humans mingled with the vanir and procreated, forming many large tribes, and later kingdoms. The jotnar began again to infiltrate Midgard again as changeling children of humans, which are less clever than ordinary vanir.
The first war
Tensions because of Odin’s redesign of the world led to conflict between the vanir (the simple gods) and the Æsir (the elevated gods, Odin’s house). Fighting was inconclusive, and Odin would later resolve the conflict with the creation of Asgard and Vanaheim as described below.
The skies and heavens
To preserve the gods, Odin placed Ymir’s skull over the rest of creation, and the branches of the World Tree grew up and held it aloft as the sky. He formed the heavens out of pieces of Ymir’s brain. There the Æsir and the vanir live in Asgard and Vanaheim, separate from the realms of mortals. The only connection between Asgard and Midgard is the rainbow bridge.
The World Tree’s roots and the world springs
The World Tree’s deepest root stretches down to the spring of Vergelmer at the world’s bottom regions, and another one found the well of Mimir in innerearth. A third root even made its way to the soaring lands of Vanaheim, and at its tip Odin was dismayed to find a third great well, Urd’s well, where the weavers of fate live. Despite his craft and wisdom, Odin is powerless against fate.
The great serpents of the abyss
Under the world, outside of Hel’s realm, the great serpents ruled by Nidhoggr roam, gnawing on the roots of the World Tree and poisoning the deep waters with their venom. The dark elves fear burrowing too deep and ending up opening tunnels for the great serpents to invade their dwellings.
These are the nine worlds: Asgard, Vanaheim, Midgard, Utgard (Jotunheim), Alfaheim, the Nether Fields, Nifelheim, Muspelheim and Hel.
The folly of the wise one
Of course, in spite of all Odin’s wisdom and all His preparations, His work will all come crashing down together with the gods, the vanir, and humans, and also the jotnar, the thursar, and the legions of Hel. The few survivors will be back in the innocent and directionless x⁴ state.
Odin can finally see this in His great wisdom, and knows that no schemes can avert this fate. But for now the World Tree stands. Its strong roots and branches creak and shiver, but they hold the Cosmos together until the day when it can’t be held together anymore.
