In the south of the world-order blazes Muspelheim – the world of fire. Embers, sparks and flames, so hot that only its own dwellers can endure it. At its border sits, since the beginning, the fire giant Surt with the flaming sword, waiting for the end.
Muspelheim (Old Norse Múspellsheimr) is the fiery counterpart to icy Niflheim. From the meeting of frost and fire over the primal void Ginnungagap arose the first life.
When the gods ordered the world – so Snorri – they caught the sparks and embers flying out of Muspelheim and set them in the sky: thus were sun, moon and stars made. The fire that threatens the world also gives it its light. At the end of time, though, the sons of Muspell ride in a gleaming host over the rainbow bridge Bifröst – and it breaks beneath their weight.
“Surt fares from the south with the scourge of branches, / the sun of the battle-gods shone from his sword.”Völuspá 52, translation after Henry Adams Bellows (public domain)
Muspelheim is in Norse cosmology the world of fire – hot, bright and blazing. It lies in the south of the primeval space and forms the glowing counterpole to the icy mist-world Niflheim. Between the two life arises at the beginning.
When the sparks and heat of Muspelheim met the ice of Niflheim, the ice began to melt. From this meltwater in the primeval chasm Ginnungagap arose the giant Ymir and the primeval cow Audhumla – fire and ice as parents of the world.
Over Muspelheim watches Surtr, a mighty fire giant with a flaming sword. He stands at the beginning of time and will, at the end, at Ragnarök, break forth with the sons of Muspell and set the world ablaze.
According to Snorri the gods took sparks from Muspelheim and set them in the sky as sun, moon and stars. Thus the world of fire gave the world not only its beginning but also its light.
Niflheim – the ice world · Ginnungagap · Ragnarök · Jötunheim · The Nine Worlds.
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning (c. 1220). Völuspá (Poetic Edda), English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Old High German Muspilli (9th c.). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology.
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