A Journey into Ginnungagap

Ginnungagap is the bottomless abyss that was all there was prior to the creation of the cosmos, and into which the cosmos will collapse once again during Ragnarok, the “Twilight of the Gods.” As the Eddic poem Völuspá, “The Insight of the Seeress,” describes the time before the cosmos existed:

That was the age when nothing was;
There was no sand, nor sea, nor cool waves,
No earth nor sky nor grass there,
Only Ginnungagap.[1]

The Old Norse word gap means the same thing as it does in modern English: a void, an empty space. The meaning of the ginnung element, however, is far less certain. The best guess anyone has come up with so far is Jan de Vries’s suggestion of “magically-charged,”[2] a theory that has gained widespread acceptance.[3] This surely refers to the capacity for something that can serve as the basis for creation to come out of its nothingness.

Enjoy this magical journey into this unknown and magical primordial void.