When I am on Wikipedia I sometimes tend to click my way on with the little links that are everywhere in every Wikipedia text. I went from the edda to the mythology itself to how it got to Sweden. I might remember wrong slightly here and I wouldn't be able to repeat the exact same thing but anyway, here is where it really escalates. Now I was at the page of some ruler of Sweden and I think it was around year 1300. I didn't recognise his name but I did recognise his fathers name from some history lesson in elementary school, ten years ago or so. Of course I clicked on his father and read about him, and then his father, and his father, and his father.
Whenever I got stuck because someones father wasn't on wikipedia I tried with the mother or other relatives instead and it actually wasn't that much trouble going back in time from ruler to ruler. Now, reading one of these stories doesn't take very long but I got stuck in story after story of charming kings doing stuff like burning down each others houses during dinner, impaling each other on poles and a lot of other stuff.
After a while I got to the first officially recognised Swedish king Eric Segersäll/Eric the victorious, his father was indeed on Wikipedia but unlike Mr Victorious historians arn't sure about the facts about him, thus he's called a legend.
Reading the word legend late at night really got me curious so I kept following the way, after a while I got to year 800-something and Ragnar Lothbrok who is the main character of the Vikings series on TV. His sons had funny names so of course I checked them out as well, and as the amount of tabs grew time passed. Then his father Sigurd Ring and then ... I'm not going to name every predecessor, lets jump back another 500 years or so to Sigurð and his father Sigmund, and his father Völsung, after whom the cycle is named.
Here it where it gets really interesting. Not only because mr Völsung isn't called Sig-something like many of his kids and grandkids but because the legends now start really mixing with mythology. Sure, there were already some dragonslayers etc but after Völsungs father Rerir we get back to Sigi - Another "Sig-name" but this is the last one, I promise! - who is a god and the son of none other than mr Odin the all-father himself, the norse version of Zeus.
So now I had more or less traced the heritage of some 1300 ruler to the main god of the mythology, quite crazy. Here is where I intended to stop but then I realised that my knowledge of norse mythology didn't go further back than Odin, so how did it all begin? I did recognise it when I read it so I had probably learned it in elementary school but the game Age of Mythology from which I got most of my knowledge of norse mythology didn't go further back than Odin so these things were long forgotten. Anyway, Odins daddy was apparently Borr, whose father was Buri. And there we finally get to the first god in norse mythology. After him I had to google my way to a page with a translation of the icelandic edda that started my latenight journey, you can find a link to it at the end of this post.
Was Buri the start of it all tho? Of course not. This is where it gets weird. He was licked out of ice by a cow named Audhumla, who is then the creator of the gods. The creator of Audhumla, well ... frost. The creator of frost? I think it has always existed but there was another interesting guy called Ymir who is the forefather of all the frost giants, a man and a woman grew out of his armpits and his legs made a son together, which turned out to be the first frost ogre. I'm not sure exactly how. Where did Ymir come from? I will give up here and shamelessly copy exactly what the page I googled my way to says. If you want to read even more, like how the sky is Ymirs skull, the clouds his brain substance and the human world his eyebrows you can click the link at the bottom of this post. I hope this wasn't too much of a history lesson and still an enjoyable blog post, if not I apologise. But hey, at least you learned something that most people probably don't know. The picture is of the cow, Ymir and Buri.
Muspell
The first world to exist was Muspell, a place of light and heat whose flames are so hot that those who are not native to that land cannot endure it.Surt sits at Muspell's border, guarding the land with a flaming sword. At the end of the world he will vanquish all the gods and burn the whole world with fire.
Ginnungagap and Niflheim
Beyond Muspell lay the great and yawning void named Ginnungagap, and beyond Ginnungagap lay the dark, cold realm of Niflheim.Ice, frost, wind, rain and heavy cold emanated from Niflheim, meeting in Ginnungagap the soft air, heat, light, and soft air from Muspell.
Ymir
Where heat and cold met appeared thawing drops, and this running fluid grew into a giant frost ogre named Ymir.
Frost ogresYmir slept, falling into a sweat. Under his left arm there grew a man and a woman. And one of his legs begot a son with the other. This was the beginning of the frost ogres.
Audhumla
Thawing frost then became a cow called Audhumla. Four rivers of milk ran from her teats, and she fed Ymir.
Buri, Bor, and Bestla
The cow licked salty ice blocks. After one day of licking, she freed a man's hair from the ice. After two days, his head appeared. On the third day the whole man was there. His name was Buri, and he was tall, strong, and handsome.Buri begot a son named Bor, and Bor married Bestla, the daughter of a giant.
Link: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/creation.html