The Story of Creation

Posted by Byron Pendason on August 1, 2022 CE, in Heathenry, Cosmology, Myths, Reconstruction

I’m working on a novela at the moment, called Young Penda and the Swamp Ettin. In the story, a young Penda goes to a witch to inquire about the origins of the ettins, and she ends up telling him about the origins of everything. So, I wrote a myth for the story, and decided to share it here.

This myth is lightly based upon the Norse creation myth, but incorporates elements from my own UPG/doxa, and the UPG of other Fyrnsideras that I know.

In the beginning, there was only chaos. The building blocks for everything in the universe existed in the chaos, but could not take any form.

From the chaos emerged Gymm1, the father of the ettins and the father of the gods. Gymm fed himself from the teets of a cow that had emerged with him, and then laid down and slept.

As he slept, beings began to emerge from Gymm’s armpits and thighs. Many of these beings reveled in the chaos, these were the ettins. But some of them wanted to form order from the chaos. These were the gods.

The gods tried to bring order to the chaos, but the ettins refused to allow them to.

“We must await until father Gymm awakens,” the ettins would say.

But the father would only awaken for a long enough time to feed from the cow, and then immediately fall back asleep, and more chaotic beings would emerge from his sleeping body. The gods, unable to get permission from father Gymm, rose up and slew the father of the ettins and the father of the gods.

This sparked a war between the ettins and the gods, but the gods emerged victorious and the ettins were dispersed, thanks to the tactical knowledge of Tīw and the wisdom of Wōden. Never again would the ettins be a united force to threaten the gods, but they would always be a threat to mankind.

From the body of Gymm, the gods formed our world Middengeard. The ettins never forgot the betrayal of the gods. Many decided to come to our world in order to sow chaos, in order to try to sink the world back into the chaos from which it came.

I hope you enjoyed the myth. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!

  1. Gymm is a reconstructed Old English cognate for the Norse Ymir. ↩