00:00Three brothers murdered the first living thing that ever existed.
00:04Then they cut the body open and built the world out of the pieces.
00:08His name was Ymir.
00:10If you've watched Attack on Titan, you already know that name.
00:14You just don't know what they did to him.
00:16Every mountain is his bone.
00:17Every ocean is his blood.
00:20The sky over your head is the inside of his skull.
00:24You are standing on a corpse.
00:26And two members of his family got away.
00:29In the beginning there was no earth, no sea, no sky.
00:33There was a gap.
00:35The Norse called it Ginnungagap.
00:37And it wasn't empty space.
00:39The name means a gap that yawns, a mouth.
00:43North of it lay Niflheim, ice and freezing mist,
00:46and eleven rivers that had frozen solid where they ran.
00:50South of it lay Muspelheim,
00:52fire so hot that nothing not born inside it can enter and live.
00:56Between them, for a very long time, nothing at all.
00:59Then the ice crept south, and the fire crept north.
01:03And somewhere in the middle of the gap, they touched.
01:06And the ice began to melt.
01:08The water that dripped down took a shape.
01:10And the shape was breathing.
01:12That was Myr, the first being in existence.
01:14Not a god, a giant, made of melt water, asleep in the middle of nothing.
01:19And while he slept, he sweated.
01:22Out of the sweat under his left arm, a male and a female grew.
01:26From between his legs came another.
01:28Ymir never had children.
01:30Ymir leaked them.
01:32An entire race budding off a sleeping body like frost forming on a window.
01:36They were the Jotnar, the giants.
01:39And every one of them came out of a man who never woke up to see it.
01:42But something had to feed him.
01:44And the second thing that ever existed was a cow.
01:48Audumla.
01:49A cow the size of the world.
01:51Formed out of the same melting ice.
01:53Four rivers of milk ran out of her.
01:55And Ymir drank.
01:57But something had to feed her.
01:59So she licked the ice.
02:00The ice was salted.
02:02And where she licked, it wore away.
02:04On the first day, hair appeared in the ice.
02:07On the second day, a head.
02:10On the third day, a whole man stepped out of it.
02:13His name was Budi.
02:14And he was the first god.
02:16The entire Norse pantheon.
02:18Odin.
02:19Thor.
02:20Every name you know.
02:21Exists because a cow spent three days licking a block of salt.
02:25Budi had a son called Bor.
02:27And Bor did the thing the gods would spend the rest of eternity pretending was normal.
02:32He married a giant.
02:33Bestla.
02:34Daughter of a Jotun.
02:35They had three sons.
02:37Odin.
02:37Vili.
02:38And Vey.
02:39Which means the kings of Asgard were half giant.
02:42Their mother's family was Ymir's family.
02:44And what they did next was not a war between gods and monsters.
02:48It was a murder inside a family.
02:52The three brothers killed Ymir.
02:55The stories never say why.
02:57They don't give him a crime.
02:58They don't give him a threat.
02:59He was simply the largest thing in existence.
03:02And they wanted what was underneath him.
03:04And when the first being in the universe died.
03:07He bled.
03:08Not the way a man bleeds.
03:10Ymir was the size of everything.
03:12And everything he had came out at once.
03:15The blood rose over the ice and became a flood.
03:18And the flood drowned the Jotunar.
03:21Every giant that had ever butted off his body.
03:24Ymir's own children drowning in their father's blood.
03:27All of them but two.
03:29One giant, Burgomir, put himself and his wife inside a hollowed out vessel and rode it out.
03:35Two survivors floating on a sea of blood watching a world end.
03:40Every giant in every Norse story from this point forward.
03:44Every enemy the gods ever face.
03:46Every monster.
03:47Every war comes from those two people in that boat.
03:52The gods didn't defeat the giants.
03:54They committed a genocide.
03:56Missed two.
03:57And spent the rest of the mythology being hunted by the survivors.
04:02They didn't bury him.
04:04They dragged the body into the middle of the gap and took it apart.
04:07His blood became the seas and the lakes.
04:10His flesh became the land.
04:13His bones became the mountains and the splinters of them.
04:17And his teeth became the rocks and the gravel.
04:20His skull they lifted and stretched over the world to make the sky.
04:24It was so heavy it needed four dwarves standing at the corners to hold it up.
04:28And their names were North, South, East and West.
04:33The compass is four people holding up a roof.
04:36Made out of a dead man's head.
04:38His brains they threw into the air.
04:40Those are the clouds.
04:41And the dwarves themselves.
04:43Where did they come from?
04:44While the body lay open.
04:46Maggots bred in the rotting flesh.
04:49The gods looked at them.
04:50Gave them shape and reason.
04:52And let them keep the dark underground.
04:54Every dwarf in every Norse story.
04:57Every legendary weapon ever forged.
05:00Thor's hammer.
05:01The chain that binds the wolf.
05:03All of it.
05:04Made by the things that ate Ymir.
05:06Then the brothers walked into Muspelheim.
05:09Gathered the flying sparks and burning embers.
05:11And set them into the inside of the skull.
05:14Those are the stars.
05:15And they fixed each one into a path.
05:18So that the days could be counted.
05:19That is the moment time starts.
05:22Now they had a world.
05:24And there was no one in it.
05:27Odin and his brothers were walking along a shore.
05:29The edge of the new sea.
05:31And they found two pieces of driftwood.
05:34Deadwood.
05:34Washed up.
05:35No use to anyone.
05:37Odin gave the first one breath.
05:39And life.
05:40Vili gave it a mind.
05:41And the ability to feel.
05:43Ve gave it a face.
05:44Speech and hearing and sight.
05:46The woods stood up.
05:48A man and a woman.
05:49Ask and Embla.
05:51In this mythology.
05:52Humanity is not shaped from clay.
05:54And it is not made in anyone's image.
05:56We are two logs somebody found on a beach.
05:59And decided to animate.
06:01And then the gods gave us somewhere to live.
06:03Walled off.
06:04Protected.
06:05Fenced in from everything outside.
06:07They built the wall.
06:09Out of Ymir's eyebrows.
06:11That's Midgard.
06:12Middle Earth.
06:13And yes.
06:14That is exactly where Tolkien took the name from.
06:16Every human being who has ever lived.
06:18Has lived inside a fence made out of the face of the murdered.
06:23So how many worlds are there?
06:25Nine.
06:26And people recite them.
06:27Like a map.
06:28It isn't a map.
06:30It's a filing system.
06:31Built by people who were frightened.
06:33Two of them were never made.
06:35Niflheim and Muspelheim.
06:37The ice and the fire.
06:39Were there before anyone was alive to build anything.
06:42Three of them are Ymir.
06:44Midgard.
06:45Walled in with his face.
06:47Asgard.
06:47The fortress the gods raised for themselves in the center.
06:50Above everyone.
06:52And Jotunheim.
06:53Out at the edge of the ocean.
06:54The land the gods handed to the giants.
06:57Stop on that one for a second.
06:59They drowned an entire race in its father's blood.
07:02And then they gave the two survivors a country.
07:05The mythology never explains why.
07:08It was guilt.
07:09Or it was fear.
07:10The sense that you cannot leave the family you tried to erase, with nowhere at all to go.
07:15Either way, that single decision is what guarantees everything that comes afterwards.
07:20And then four more, sorted by kind.
07:24Vanaheim, for the Vanir.
07:26An older set of gods the Aesir fought, and never entirely swallowed.
07:30Alfheim, for the light elves.
07:33Svartalheim, underground, for the dwarves.
07:36The ones out of the corpse.
07:37And at the bottom, Helheim.
07:39Cold, gray, and reserved for everyone who dies without a weapon in their hand.
07:45Nine worlds, stacked on top of each other.
07:47And nothing holding them together, except a tree.
07:52Yggdrasil.
07:53An ash tree so large, that the nine worlds hang inside it.
07:57It stands on three roots.
07:58Under the first, is the Well of Urd.
08:01And beside it, sit the Norns.
08:03Three women who decide what happens to every living thing that exists.
08:06Gods included.
08:08The gods hold their council there.
08:10Every single day, at the foot of the Well that has already decided how they die.
08:15Under the second root, is Mimir's Well.
08:17And the water in it, is Wisdom.
08:19Odin paid an eye to drink from it.
08:21But that's another story.
08:22And I've already told you that one.
08:24And under the third root, is Fergumir.
08:27The spring the first rivers came out of.
08:29That root, has something living against it.
08:32A serpent, called Nidhogg.
08:34It is chewing.
08:35It has been chewing since the beginning.
08:37And it has never once stopped.
08:39At the very top of the tree, sits an eagle.
08:42And running up and down the trunk, all day, every day, is a squirrel called Ratatoskr.
08:47Whose entire function, in the cosmology of an entire civilization,
08:52is to carry insults between the eagle at the top, and the serpent at the bottom.
08:56And make absolutely sure the two of them keep hating each other.
09:00None of this was ever stable.
09:02It was never meant to be.
09:04These people didn't believe the world was made, and then finished.
09:08They believed it was made out of a crime.
09:11And that crimes get paid.
09:14Everything after this, is the payment.
09:16One of them started with a ring.
09:19I'm ancient legends.
09:21The next legend is already waiting.
09:23Xoayla
