Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

the boat disappeared, still the mythologists have not had the heart to take the boat away
from Bergelmir. On the contrary, they have allowed the boat to grow into a ship, an ark.
As already pointed out, Vafþrúðnismál tells us expressly that Bergelmir,
Aurgelmir's grandson, was "laid on a mill" or "on the supporting timbers of a mill." We
may be sure that the myth would not have laid Bergelmir on "a mill" if the intention was
not that he was to be ground. The kind of meal thus produced has already been explained.
It is the mould and sand which the sea since time's earliest dawn has cast upon the shores
of Midgard, and with which the bays and strands have been filled, to become sooner or
later green fields. From Ymir's flesh the gods created the oldest layer of soil, that which
covered the earth the first time the sun shone thereon, and in which the first herbs grew.
Ever since the same activity which then took place still continues. After the great mill of
the gods transformed the oldest frost-giant into the dust of earth, it has continued to grind
the bodies of his descendants between the same stones into the same kind of mould. This
is the meaning of Vafþrúðnir's words when he says that his memory reaches back to the
time when Bergelmir was laid on the mill to be ground. Ymir he does not remember, nor
Þrúðgelmir, nor the days when these were changed to earth. Of them he knows only by
hearsay. But he remembers when the turn came for Bergelmir's limbs to be subjected to
the same fate.
"The glorious Midgard" could not be created before its foundations raised by the
gods out of the sea were changed to bjóð (Völuspá). This is the word (originally bjóðr)
with which the author of Völuspá chose to express the quality of the fields and the fields
themselves, which were raised out of the sea by Bor's sons, when the great mill had
changed the "flesh" of Ymir into mould. Bjóð does not mean a bare field or ground, but
one that can supply food. Thus it is used in Haustlöng 5 (af breiðu bjóði, the place for a
spread feast), and its other meanings (perhaps the more original ones) are that of a board
and of a table for food to lie on. When the fields were raised out of Ymir's blood they
were covered with mould, so that, when they got light and warmth from the sun, then the
grund became gróin grænum lauki. The very word mould comes from the Germanic
word mala, to grind (cp. Eng. meal, Latin molere). The development of language and the
development of mythology have here, as in so many other instances, gone hand in hand. 11
That the "flesh" of the primeval giants could be ground into fertile mould refers us
to the primeval cow Auðhumbla by whose milk Ymir was nourished and his flesh formed
(Gylfaginning). Thus the cow in the Germanic mythology is the same as she is in the
Iranian, the primeval source of fertility. The mould, out of which the harvests grow, has
by transformations developed out of her nourishing liquids.
Here, then, we have the explanation of the liðmeldur which the great mill grinds,
according to Snæbjörn. Liðmeldur means limb-grist. It is the limbs and joints of the
primeval giants, which on Amlodi's mill are transformed into meal.
11 Here Rydberg makes an unnecessary digression, confusing two etymologically unrelated words, "bjóð"
(singular, "table") and "bjöð" (plural, "lands, earth").