Elivagar

Also Known As: Old Norse Élivágar; usually read as storm waves, from él, a squall of snow or hail, and vágar, waves or seas; often loosely given as ice waves
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Norse Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: Freezing rivers that carry a living poison out of the far north, whose ice and rime filled the empty gap before the world was made.
Role in Mythos: They supply the raw material of creation, since the first giant Ymir grows from their thawing venom, and they later stand as the cold water at the border of giant country.
Relation to Humans: No mortal is ever said to reach or cross them, and only the god Thor wades them on foot. Their one trace in the human world is a star, made from a frozen toe that Thor snapped off a man he was carrying through the stream.

Before there was ground to stand on, there was already a sound: water running in the dark. It came from a spring called Hvergelmir, in the mist-world of Niflheim, which was old long before the earth. Rivers poured out of that spring and ran south toward an emptiness called Ginnungagap. The Icelander Snorri Sturluson, writing his Edda around 1220, has three enthroned figures explain all this to a visiting king, and he gives the rivers a collective name. They are the Elivagar.

The name is usually read as storm waves. Its first part is the Old Norse word for a sudden squall of snow or hail, and its second means waves or open water. Ice waves is the popular rendering and is not quite what the words say, though nobody who has read the story will quarrel much with it.

What made these rivers different from any other was what they carried. Mixed into the current was a poison, a kind of bitter yeasty scum that rode the water like froth. As the Elivagar ran farther and farther from their source the scum thickened and set, the way slag hardens when it runs out of a furnace, and the water stiffened into ice. When the ice stopped moving, a vapour rose off the venom and froze in its turn. Rime settled on rime, layer over layer, out across the gap.

So the northern side of Ginnungagap filled with a heavy mass of ice and hoarfrost, with drizzle and gusts of wind inside it. The southern side lay open to Muspell, the region of fire, and was lit by drifting sparks and glowing embers. In the middle the air was as mild as a windless day. There the hot breath met the rime and the rime began to drip.

Life came out of the dripping. The drops quickened and took the shape of a man, and he was Ymir, whom the frost giants call Aurgelmir, the ancestor of their whole race. An older poem than Snorri’s prose says the same thing in four lines. In Vafthrudnismal, Odin sits in a giant’s hall and asks where the first giant came from, and the giant answers that drops of venom sprang from the Elivagar and grew until a giant stood there. The verse as Snorri quotes it ends on a dry note: that is why giants are all so bad-tempered. They are made of poison. The cow Audhumla came out of the same thaw a little later, and fed Ymir with her milk.

Snorri names eleven rivers that flow from Hvergelmir: Svol, Gunnthra, Fjorm, Fimbulthul, Slid, Hrid, Sylg, Ylg, Vid, Leipt and Gjoll, the last of which runs past the gates of Hel. Readers have generally taken these to be the Elivagar themselves. Snorri does not quite say so. He lists the rivers in one breath and brings in the name Elivagar in the next, and leaves the join to his audience.

Once the world exists, the Elivagar do not go away. They become a frontier. In the poem Hymiskvida the gods need a cauldron big enough to brew ale for all of them, and the god Tyr knows where one is: his father, the giant Hymir, lives east of the Elivagar at the edge of the sky and owns a kettle a mile deep. Thor and Tyr drive a full day to get there. The river marks where the gods’ side of things stops.

Thor crossed it at least once on foot. After his duel with the giant Hrungnir he came home with a piece of whetstone lodged in his skull, and a wise woman named Groa sang charms over him to work it loose. As the stone began to shift, Thor thought to cheer her up with news. He had come wading south across the Elivagar out of giant country, he said, with her husband Aurvandil on his back in a basket. One of the man’s toes had stuck out through the wicker and frozen solid. Thor had broken it off and thrown it into the sky, where it now shone as the star called Aurvandil’s Toe. Her husband would be home soon. Groa was so glad that she forgot the rest of her charms, and the whetstone is still in Thor’s head.

That basket is the clearest picture the sources give of what the Elivagar are like to be in. A man carried over them loses whatever he lets hang out in the open air. The poison is not mentioned again after the creation. The cold is enough.

Their power, then, is of two kinds. At the beginning they are the stuff the world is built from: their ice fills the void, their venom becomes the first living body, and through Ymir, whose corpse the gods later use for earth, sea and sky, every later thing descends from them. Afterwards they are a barrier that keeps giants and gods on their own banks, cold enough to maim.

The limits are just as clear. Left alone, the Elivagar make only dead rime. Nothing stirs in it until heat arrives from the south, so the rivers are half of creation and never the whole. And as a wall they fail against the one god strong enough to wade them. No source describes their far bank, says how wide they are, or tells what becomes of them when the world ends.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Elivagar in Norse mythology?

Elivagar is the name of the freezing, venomous rivers that existed before the world in Norse mythology. They flowed from the spring Hvergelmir in Niflheim into the empty gap called Ginnungagap, where their ice and rime piled up. The first giant, Ymir, grew from that rime when it thawed.

What does the name Elivagar mean?

Elivagar is usually understood as storm waves. The first part is the Old Norse word for a squall of snow or hail, and the second part means waves or open water. The name is often translated more loosely as ice waves.

How was Ymir created from Elivagar?

The Elivagar carried a poison that hardened into ice, and vapour from it froze into layers of rime in Ginnungagap. Warm air from the fire region of Muspell melted the rime, and the drops came to life as the giant Ymir. The poem Vafthrudnismal says Ymir grew from drops of venom that sprang from the Elivagar.

Who lives beyond Elivagar?

The giant Hymir lives east of the Elivagar at the edge of the sky, according to the poem Hymiskvida. He owns a cauldron a mile deep, which Thor and Tyr travel there to fetch. In this story the Elivagar mark the border of giant country.

What happened when Thor crossed Elivagar?

Thor waded across the Elivagar out of giant country carrying a man named Aurvandil in a basket on his back. One of Aurvandil’s toes stuck out of the basket and froze, so Thor broke it off and threw it into the sky. It became the star called Aurvandil’s Toe.