Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter I. Story of Creation

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This is a retelling of Norse/Germanic creation mythology drawn from the Prose Edda tradition, presented in a narrative literary style rather than scholarly analysis. The text covers the cosmogony from primordial void (Ginnunga-gap) through the emergence of the first giant Ymer from melting ice, the cow Audhumla, the origin of the Asa-gods and Vana-gods, the gods' war against the frost giants, and the fashioning of the earth from Ymer's slaughtered body ground through the World-mill. It goes on to explain the creation of the sun, moon, and stars from sparks of Muspel-heim, the myth of the children Hyuki and Bil carried off by the moon-god (an explicit euhemerism for the man-in-the-moon), and the wolf giants Skoll and Hati who perpetually pursue the sun and moon, threatening their apocalyptic destruction. Mackenzie's framing is notably syncretic and interpretive: he identifies figures across their variant names (Loke as Lodur and Vile, Mimer as Narve) and treats the mythology as a coherent theological system with an overarching "All-father" monotheistic presence behind the pantheon. The prose is elevated and deliberately archaic in register, positioning this as accessible literary mythology for a general Edwardian audience rather than a critical or philological text.

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter I. Story of Creation

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