The primordial frost giant, from whose corpse all things were made
The beginning of everything. In Ginnungagap, the yawning void between the ice-realm Niflheim and the fire-realm Muspelheim, cold ice met warm air and the dripping melt-water froze into the first life — the frost giant Ymir. From its body all the frost giants sprang. Odin and his brothers slew it and made the sea from its blood, the land from its flesh, the mountains from its bones, the sky from its skull, and the clouds from its brains — the whole world is the reconstruction of a giant’s corpse.
Odin, together with Vili and Vé, slew Ymir. The gushing blood nearly drowned all the frost giants, save one pair who escaped by boat. The three brothers dragged the vast corpse to the center of Ginnungagap: its flesh and blood became sea and land, its bones the mountains, its teeth broken into gravel, its skull the arching vault of heaven, its brains flung skyward to become the clouds — the most sweeping scene in the Norse creation myth.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.