Cold Splashes of Elivagar

The Eddas say that the source of all being is the cold stream Elivagar (“Stormy Rivers“), composed of twelve separate flows and that it filled the world’s abyss Ginnungagap (“The Wide Chasm“).

Elivagar’s source is the spring Hvergelmir (“Boiling Cauldron“), fed by the opposition of Fire and Ice, Muspellheim and Niflheim. From the moisture of these rivers and Muspellheim’s fiery sparks, frost condensed and gave rise to Ymir. One might say that Ymir himself is the manifestation of Hvergelmir, its subjective aspect.

It is said the waters of these rivers are poisonous, but that did not prevent them from being the source of all creation and all beings. The poisonous and cold waters of Elivagar are still too icy, too unconscious, and therefore lifeless.

In Niflheim, the world of void and cold, Hvergelmir is the only moving element, and it is precisely thanks to it that the world’s passivity gives rise to life. It is in this sense that, in later creation, all worlds are fashioned from the body of Ymir — the embodiment of this Source. Elivagar, flowing from void to void (from Niflheim into Ginnungagap), forms worlds and all they contain on its way.

At the same time, the emergence of this life required a second element — warmth coming from Muspellheim. Thus, Niflheim supplies substance to the Flow, and Muspellheim imparts motion to it. Thus, Elivagar is Ice awakened into motion by Fire.

Such a description accurately reflects the essence of the world process: creative activity, penetrating to the very heart of inert passivity, imparts its properties, which are perceived as the Flow. Light, forcing its way through darkness, begets a diversity of shadows, whose play is life. Neither homogeneous light nor utter darkness have distinctions, and thus in them mind, differentiation, and “determination” are impossible.

The “Stormy Rivers” are very cold yet highly mobile — they freeze as they approach the World Abyss. And from their crystals, their “rime”, the primordial beings — Jotuns — appear. At the same time, the Jotuns are themselves the very nature of Elivagar; they are the expression of its essence and foundation. They constitute the “inner manifestation” of the interaction of the Primal Forces — Ice and Fire, Darkness and Light, Abyss and Heaven. Meanwhile, the “outer” manifestation of the Flow is formed by the “rime-giants”, Hrimthursar, who thus pair with and descend from the Jotuns, inseparable from the Flow.

In other words, the initially neutralized pair cannot manifest on its own; the Fire within it gradually dies, absorbed by ice, and to continue the process, a second pair emerges — the Jotuns and Hrimthursar — who neutralize fire by being alive and neutralize ice by being cold. Meanwhile, the cooled Elivagar, losing its original impulse, rushes into the Abyss, returning to its pre-creative state. The Progenitors, who appeared at the boundary of the initial manifestation, see that the duality of Fire and Ice is being consumed by Ice’s inertia, and thus conclude that the manifestation was pointless and must disappear into the Abyss. Hence the Jotuns’ hostility (and their children — Hrimthursar and Tursar) toward further creation and the Aesir (and later, of course, to humanity).

The first manifestation of activity set the Ice in motion; its second manifestation gave rise to proto-life — the Jotuns; and the third found expression in the gods — bearers of mind and creative power. Over three tides, Fire gradually entered the ice, turning the “cold Elivagar” into the never-freezing Ifing, the river of the gods. And then the bearers of this Fire — the gods — continued the process of “melting the ice” in their struggle against the opponents of mind and creativity.

As ages pass, Fire gradually penetrates the world, and in the end, the cosmos born of Ice dissolves in the Fire of Ragnarök. In other words, light penetrating darkness, mind into matter, actual being into potential, gradually brings the world process to fruition. It is no accident that at Ragnarök Freyr — incarnate Life — falls to the sword of Surtur — the embodiment of fiery activity. Having accomplished all that it could, life is consumed by Fire.