The Heavens

Then said Gangleri: What was done then by Borrs sons, if thou believe that they be gods? Hárr replied: In this matter there is no little to be said. They took Ymir and bore him into the middle of the Yawning Void, and made of him the earth: of his blood the sea and the waters; the land was made of his flesh, and the crags of his bones; gravel and stones they fashioned from his teeth and his grinders and from those bones that were broken. And Jafnhárr said: Of the blood, which ran and welled forth freely out of his wounds, they made the sea, when they had formed and made firm the earth together, and laid the sea in a ring round about her; and it may well seem a hard thing to most men to cross over it. Then said Thridi: They took his skull also, and made of it the heaven, and set it up over the earth with four corners; and under each corner they set a dwarf: the names of these are East, West, North, and South. Then they took the glowing embers and sparks that burst forth and had been cast out of Múspellheim, and set them in the midst of the Yawning Void, in the heaven, both above and below, to illumine heaven and earth. They assigned places to all fires: to some in heaven, some wandered free under the heavens; nevertheless, to these also they gave a place, and shaped them courses. It is said in old songs, that from these the days were reckoned, and the tale of years told, as is said in Völuspá:

The sun knew not | where she had housing;
The moon knew not | what Might he had;
The stars knew not | where stood their places.
Thus was it ere | the earth was fashioned.

The sun knew not, the moon knew not, the stars knew not: the blood of the sea and the firelight of wandering star-sparks beneath the skull-dome of heaven. Salt and wind and the first rains, glittering starlight fashioned of white rose oud, lavender, white musk, champagne grape and petitgrain, and heavens vault constructed of bone-white sandalwood and purest frankincense.