Long ago — and this was before long ago, before there was anyone to remember, before remembering itself — there was no world at all. There was no sand, no sea, no cool wave on any shore. There was no earth below and no sky above. There was only a great, quiet emptiness, wide as everything, called Ginnungagap. If you had stood in it, you would have heard nothing at all. But there was no one to stand in it. Not yet.
Now, far to the north of that emptiness there was a land of mist and ice called Niflheim, where eleven rivers crept along in the dark, and froze, and creaked, and pushed their ice out into the great gap, layer upon layer, year upon year — though there were no years yet, only the slow breathing of the cold. And far to the south there was a land of fire called Muspelheim, where everything glowed and crackled, and warm sparks drifted out over the emptiness like fireflies over a summer field.
And in the very middle, where the ice from the north met the warmth from the south, something wonderful happened. The ice began to melt. Drop by drop, drip by drip — and the drops drew themselves together, the way raindrops do on a window, and they took a shape. The shape was alive. He was a giant, the very first being in all the world, and his name was Ymir. When he slept, he snored, and even his snoring was creative: more giants grew from him as he dreamed, the strange old family of the frost.
The melting ice made a second creature too, and this one was gentler: a great cow, called Audhumla. Her milk fed Ymir. And what fed Audhumla? Well — she licked the salty ice, the way cows lick a salt stone in a field. And here is the strange and lovely thing: as she licked, day after day, a shape came slowly out of the ice, as if she were uncovering someone who had been waiting inside it all along. The first day, hair. The second day, a head. The third day, there he stood: Buri, tall and fair, the first of the family that would one day be called gods.
Buri had a son named Borr, and Borr married Bestla, a daughter of the giants — for in those days there were only giants to marry — and they had three sons. The first was called Odin. And Odin and his brothers looked around at the mist and the ice and the dark, and they thought what young people have thought in every age since: we could make something better than this.
So they did. It was hard, and it was sad too, in the way that great changes often are: the world they built, they built from old Ymir himself, when his long life ended. His body became the good dark earth. His blood became the sea, ringed around everything like a moat. His bones stood up as mountains, and his teeth were scattered as boulders and scree. His great round skull they lifted up high, high, high over everything, and that is the sky; and they set a dwarf at each corner to hold it — their names were North, South, East and West, and they are holding it still.
The brothers caught the drifting sparks of Muspelheim and set them in the sky to be stars. Two of the brightest they put in chariots: the Sun and the Moon, who drive across the sky to this very night — and if they seem to hurry, well, that is a story for another evening. From Ymir's eyebrows, which were bushy and enormous as you might imagine, they built a fence around the middle of the world, a snug green garden safe from the wild things outside. They called it Midgard: the middle yard. It is where you live. You are tucked inside it right now.
Then, one day, walking on the new shore with the new sea shushing at their feet, the three brothers found two trees: an ash and an elm, standing together where the tide had left them. And Odin said: something is missing. He breathed on the trees, and gave them life. His brother gave them thought and feeling — the little voice inside that wonders about things, the same one listening to this story. And the third brother gave them warm faces, and speech, and hearing, and the colour that comes to your cheeks when you laugh. The ash tree became the first man, and his name was Ask. The elm became the first woman, Embla. Every single person you have ever met is their grandchild's grandchild's grandchild, many times over — which means, if you follow it all the way back, that people are made of trees, and trees are made of the world, and the world is as old as ice and fire.
High over Midgard the gods built their own shining home, Asgard, and between the two they hung a bridge made of rainbow. On quiet evenings, they say, you can still see it, after the rain, arching from the sky down to the earth — the road home, left out like a lamp in a window.
And that is how everything began: with ice, and fire, and a cow uncovering a sleeping god, and three brothers who looked at the dark and decided to build. The world they made is the one you are lying in tonight, warm under Ymir's sky, safe inside the middle yard. The stars are old sparks. The sea is still salty. And the story, like the world, is yours now too. Sleep well.