ATDTDA (5.4) - Bad Ice After Midnight

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

 My bad, forgot to provide a link to Amy Koehler's fine piece on Norse Creation Myths. 


               Norse Creation Myth

                 When I was very young, perhaps six or seven, I got 
             my hands on a children’s book of mythology. Today, 
             the contents of those pages are little more than a 
             blur – a whirl of surreal color and dusty words. One 
             particular thing has dominated my memory of this 
             encounter, however, and has remained in my small 
             cache of vivid, immutable pictures of the past. Looming 
             over my childhood with a jaundiced, two-dimensional 
             gaze is the single eye of Odin, the great Norse god. 
             Once and for all, I resolve to exorcise the demon, to 
             rid myself of the fleshy folds surrounding the bloodshot 
             orb, to at last tell the story of the events surrounding 
             the epically proportioned incandescent instrument 
             of ogling. 
                  It begins with a void, like many other primal myths 
             of creation. This void was called Ginnungagap, or 
             Yawning Gap, and was a bridge between two not-voids, 
             Muspelheim and Niflheim. Muspelheim (also called 
             Muspell in some reference guides) was in the far south. 
             It was a fiery realm, tumultuous and torrid, that sent 
             tongues of light into the distant corners of the then-world. 
             In the northernmost regions was Niflheim. From its icy 
             stronghold flowed 12 frigid rivers, merging in 
             Ginnungagap. The heat and flame from Muspelheim 
             and the waters of Niflheim wove an ethereal web of 
             mist in the Yawning Gap, a cradle that was to bear the 
             first life of the world. (Hamilton 326)

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/doherty/plan2/amycreation.html