Ásar bardagi
ᚢᛘᛁᛋ ᚼᛅᚢᛋ umis haus

Ymir's skull: the sky, the four dwarves and the sparks of Muspell

The gods made the sky from the skull of the giant Ymir, set a dwarf under each corner, and filled it with sparks from the fire-world Muspell.

Story: Medieval source

What the sources say

Out of Ymir's flesh was fashioned the earth, / And the ocean out of his blood; / Of his bones the hills, of his hair the trees, / Of his skull the heavens high.

Grimnismol 40, tr. Bellows (1923)

They took his skull also, and made of it the heaven, and set it up over the earth with four corners; and under each corner they set a dwarf: the names of these are East, West, North, and South.

Gylfaginning, ch. 8, tr. Brodeur (1916)

They assigned places to all fires: to some in heaven, some wandered free under the heavens; nevertheless, to these also they gave a place, and shaped them courses.

Gylfaginning, ch. 8, tr. Brodeur (1916)

The names

ᚢᛘᛁᚱYmir
the first giant, from whose body the world was made
ᚾᚢᚱᚦᚱᛁ ᛋᚢᚦᚱᛁ ᛅᚢᛋᛏᚱᛁ ᚢᛁᛋᛏᚱᛁNorðri, Suðri, Austri, Vestri
North, South, East and West: the four dwarves under the sky's corners
ᛘᚢᛋᛒᛁᛚᛋᚼᛁᛘᚱMúspellsheimr
the world of fire in the south
ᚴᛁᚾᚢᚾᚴᛅᚴᛅᛒGinnungagap
the yawning void

Runes: our letter-by-letter spelling in the Viking-age Younger Futhark; these names come down to us in manuscripts written in the Latin alphabet. How we write runes.

The story and what it means

The Norse creation story builds the world from a body. Óðinn and his brothers killed the first giant, Ymir, and made the earth from his flesh, the sea from his blood, the mountains from his bones and the sky from his skull, which they raised over the earth on four corners. Under each corner sits a dwarf, and their names are simply the four directions: Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri.

The lights in that dome came from Múspellsheimr, the hot world in the south. The gods took the sparks and glowing embers that flew out of it and gave them places, some fixed in the sky and some free to wander under it, though even these were given set paths. Snorri adds that from these lights the days were counted and the years reckoned, which is exactly what calendars still do.

It is natural to read the 'wanderers with set courses' as the planets, whose name in Greek means wanderers: they move against the fixed stars, but along a predictable track close to the Sun's path. Snorri does not use the word planet here, so treat that reading as ours. Skaldic poets used the picture freely: the sky could be called 'Ymir's skull', 'the burden of the dwarves' or 'the helmet of Austri and Vestri'.

In tonight's sky

CityThe wanderers tonight (naked-eye planets)
ReykjavíkMars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –
OsloMars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –
StockholmMars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –
LondonMars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –
New YorkMars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –
SydneyMercury –; Mars –; Jupiter –; Saturn –

Our sky charts are drawn as the dome over your head: the edge is the horizon, and the four dwarves' names sit at north, east, south and west.

Sources

Texts: Grímnismál 40–41; Vafþrúðnismál 21; Gylfaginning 8; Skáldskaparmál 23 (sky kennings); Völuspá 5–6. Quotations from the public-domain translations of the Poetic Edda by Henry Adams Bellows (1923) and the Prose Edda by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916); Brodeur's chapter numbers.

More Norse sky lore