Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

lood. With earth is here meant, as distinguished from rocks, the mould, the sand, which
cover the solid ground. Vafþrúðnismál calls Ymir Aurgelmir, Clay-gelmir or Mouldgelmir;
and Fjölsvinnsmál gives him the epithet Leirbrimir, Clay-brimir, which suggests
that his "flesh" was changed into the loose earth, while his bones became rocks. Ymir's
descendants, the primeval giants, Þrúðgelmir and Bergelmir perished with him, and the
"flesh" of their bodies cast into the primeval sea also became mould. Of this we are
assured, so far as Bergelmir is concerned, by strophe 35 in Vafþrúðnismál, which also
informs us that Bergelmir was laid under the mill-stone. The mill which ground his
"flesh" into mould can be none other than the one grinding under the sea, that is, the
cosmic Grotti-mill.
When Odin asks the wise giant Vafþrúðnir how far back he can remember, and
which is the oldest event of which he has any knowledge from personal experience, the
giant answers: "Countless ages before the earth was created Bergelmir was born. The first
thing I remember is when he var á lúður um lagður."
This expression was misunderstood by the author of Gylfaginning himself, and
the misunderstanding has continued to develop into the theory that Bergelmir was
changed into a sort of Noah, who with his household saved himself in an ark when Bur's
sons drowned the primeval giants in the blood of their progenitor. Of such a counterpart
to the Biblical account of Noah and his ark our Germanic mythical fragments have no
knowledge whatever.
The word lúður (with radical r) has two meanings: (1) a wind-instrument, a loor, a
war-trumpet; (2) the tier of beams, the underlying timbers of a mill, and, in a wider sense,
the mill itself .
The first meaning, that of war-trumpet, is not found in the songs of the Poetic
Edda, and upon the whole does not occur in the Old Norse poetry. Heimdall's wartrumpet
is not called lúður, but horn or hljóð. Lúður in this sense makes its first
appearance in the sagas of Christian times, but is never used by the skalds. In spite of this
fact, the signification may date back to heathen times. But however this may be, lúður in