In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap (old Norse: ; "gaping abyss", "yawning void") is the primordial, magical void mentioned in three poems from the Poetic Edda and the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording Norse cosmogony.
Etymology Ginnunga- is usually interpreted as deriving from a verb meaning "gape" or "yawn", but no such word occurs in Old Norse except in verse 3 of the Eddic poem "Vǫluspá", "gap var ginnunga", which may be a play on the term.
In her edition of the poem, Ursula Dronke suggested it was borrowed from Old High German ginunga, as the term Múspell is believed to have been borrowed from Old High German.The Poetic Edda, edited with translation introduction and commentary by Ursula Dronke, Volume II: Mythological Poems, Clarendon Press (1997), pp. 112–14, note to "Vǫluspá", line 3/7. Dronke notes that Þjóðólfr of Hvinir also plays on the term in his Haustlǫng, with "ginnunga vé". An alternative etymology links the ginn- prefix with that found in terms with a sacral meaning, such as ginn-heilagr, ginn-regin (both referring to the gods) and ginn-runa (referring to the runes), thus interpreting Ginnungagap as signifying a "magical (and creative) power-filled space".De Vries (1977:167); cf. also Dillmann (1998:118-123).
Creation Ginnungagap appears as the primordial void in the Norse creation account. The Gylfaginning states:
In the Völuspá, a supernaturally long-lived völva who was raised by jötnar tells the story of how Odin and his two brothers created the world from Ginnungagap.
Geographic rationalization
Scandinavian cartographers from the early 15th century attempted to localize or identify Ginnungagap as a real geographic location from which the creation myth derived. A fragment from a 15th-century (pre-Columbus) Old Norse encyclopedic text entitled Gripla (Little Compendium) places Ginnungagap between Greenland and Vinland:
A scholion in a 15th-century manuscript of Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum similarly refers to Ghimmendegop as the Norse word for the abyss in the far north.Dronke, p. 112.
Later, the 17th-century Icelandic bishop Guðbrandur Thorlaksson also used the name Ginnungegap to refer to a narrow body of water, possibly the Davis Strait, separating the southern tip of Greenland from Estotelandia, pars America extrema, probably Baffin Island.Seaver, Kirsten "Maps, Myths and Men", Stanford University Press (2004) pp. 247-253.
See also Abyss (religion) Chaos (cosmogony) Plane (esotericism) Void (astronomy)
Notes
References Dillmann, F. X. (1998). "Ginnungagap" in: Beck, H., Steuer, H. & Timpe, D. (Eds.) Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, Volume 12. Berlin: de Gruyter. .
External links Guðbrandur Thorlaksson's 1606 map of the North Atlantic