In the mysterious beginning, there was Ginnungagap, an endless gulf. It was so enormous that it could reach in all directions forever. There were space enough for a billion worlds and in addition there were space for more.
You would get ill if you would even try to imagine it to yourself, you would turn weightless and your mind would be struck with terror, because it has no length or width, no up or down. In the very beginning there was not anything in Ginnungagap that a human-brain could understand, not a drop of water, not a blade of grass or a branch, not even a grain of sand.
There were no light, no darkness, no silence but still no sounds - only a gaping gulf.
This nothing had no shape, but it was surely not empty. Only the gods knew its secret.
After the beginning, this nothing started to become something and in it, there seemed to be two divided parts. First there was the world of the fire, called Muspelheim (THE HOME OF THE WORLD DESTROYERS). No ordinary creature could excist there, because the land was all ablaze and the air as well.
Later on, the Fire-giants would make it their home.
The Æsir (THE GODS) never did get close to this area, because the heat was so intensive and the flames so powerful that anything that got to close, would get burned and turned to ash by them.
But most frightening of all was Surt, the most savage of the Fire-giants, who guarded the flaming borders with a sword of blazing fire in his hands.
He didn't let anyone pass, not even the Æsir. He stood there from the beginning and would stand there until the end, Ragnarök (THE JUDGEMENT DAY). Surt's hair was on fire and streams of lava poured down his malformed body, made of fire.
No wonder it was told that Surt would spread flames and stinking smoke all over the universe and burn everything that was alive to black ash, when Ragnarök came.

The other big world in Ginnungagap was called Niflheim. It was a world of frozen, dreary ground covered by snow and ice and the air was filled with cold fog.
Niflheim as well as Muspelheim had lasted for eternity, long before our world was created. In the middle of Niflheim was a foaming and gushing well called Hvergelmir.
Another clamouring well in Nifelheim was called Elivagur. Some people claim that Hvergelmir and Elivagur only are different names for the same well. Anyway, Elivagur's water flushed over Niflheim's desolate snowland in the north and created big glaciers which formed a big mountain range of ice.
Above it, there were winds filled with hails, snowstorms and freezing rain.
But through Elivagur, there came a venomous foam which congealed into black ice. When the foam was stiff and didn't move any longer, it started to form big black ice mountains which just kept on growing as the foam continued to ooze from Elivagur. Hvergelmir's water had turned into ice and filled the entire north by then and soon Hvergelmir and Elivagur had filled all of Niflheim with heavy ice.

After eternities of time, these two worlds of fire and ice had to face eachother...
They finally did and then, the most mystical of happenings took place, somthing that no man can explain - the creation of life. When the ice touched the fire from Muspelheim, there was a great explosion.
The black, venomous ice was turned alive by the heat and over the entire Ginnungagap, a giant's body was formed. He had the appaerance of a man and from the beginning, he hardly moved at all. The boiling ice gave breath to his cruel face, his torso and his legs. His descendants, the Ice-giants, would later on give him the name Aurgelmir (THE FIRST RUMBLER) or Ymir (THE GIANT OF CHAOS), as the know the secret of his birth.
Aurgelmir lay sleeping in his porridge of venomous, stinking mud and ice. After some time, his body began to solidify and he started sweating. In his armpits, a man and a woman were created and his feet bred a son with six heads called Trudgelmir (THE GREAT RUMBLER). From these three creatures, the Ice-giants descend.