{
"post": {
"title": "Just how big was Ymir?",
"selftext": "I was told the gods used his eyebrows to build a wall around Midgard, as protection from Jotunheim, so if his eyebrows were enough to surround a whole realm (or at least cover a side of it) just how big was he?",
"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/norsemythology/comments/1dpxwbb/just_how_big_was_ymir/"
},
"comments": [
{
"body": "So here’s an interesting fact for you: the sources never tell us Ymir was any larger than a normal human. In fact, most of the so-called “giants” of Norse mythology are actually regular-sized beings.\n\nThe fact that the gods used Ymir’s body to create the world _might_ indicate that he was very large, but it also doesn’t have to. Compare this, for example, to the story in which Jesus feeds 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish in the New Testament. There is no reason the gods couldn’t just be using godly powers to make a whole world out of a regular-sized guy.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "MAKE THE WORLD WITH HI-\nI forgot that the ocean is his blood and stuff like that, so that was a surprise, also i knew it about some of them, but like, Hrungnir was probably very big (with most people there not being able to pick him up from being on Thor), Fenrir swallowed Odin whole, and holy shit that's only 2 people i can name with proof of size, holy fuck",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yeah, I used the phrase “most of” very deliberately. Wrt Hrungnir, regardless of his weight, consider that his leg only lays across Thor’s neck. If he was enormous, we’d expect it to cover more of Thor’s body. Rather, it covers just the same area a person’s leg would cover if they were the same size as Thor.\n\nFenrir is huge. Jormungrundr is huge. Mökkurkálfi is huge. Skrymir is huge. (However the the entire story of Skrymir is about illusory magic designed to make Thor feel small and weak. The size may have been one of many magical illusions in that story.)\n\nAside from these, jötnar are overwhelmingly treated as normal sized, anthropomorphic beings.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Well, i don't know that much about norse myths yet, so i didn't know it was just on Thor's neck, but also, do the gods have the power to just,.make someone bigger?\nOr duplicate someone?\nAlso, what's \"wrt\"?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "“Wrt” means “with regard to”. \n\nThe gods essentially have whatever power a story needs them to have. The thing about mythology is that we can’t expect to nail down perfectly consistent narratives without plot holes and we can’t expect to nail down “stats” for each of the gods and that sort of thing. What we can do though is notice consistent trends that show up in lots of stories over time. We can also notice things stories _don’t_ say.\n\nSo like with a character like Odin, we see him creating life, creating worlds, shape shifting, manipulating the weather, and doing all sorts of things. So we might be tempted to assume he is all knowing and all powerful. However, a repeated theme that shows up in several stories is that he can’t control fate and he doesn’t know everything about the future. So this tells us that these particular limitations were _commonly_ agreed upon by ancient believers but even then, there could have been people who disagreed in their personal belief at some particular time and place.\n\nLong story short, when it comes to figuring out what certain characters looked like and what they could do, we can avoid choosing to believe things we are never actually told by our sources, and we can take note of common trends we see. But that’s about it :)",
"replies": [
{
"body": "That is a very good point, i have a kinda related question, do you think there's a reason why Odin made Baldur stand in one place until ragnarok starts even though he has the golden chickens which will starts screaming when it does start?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "> Odin made Baldur stand in one place until Ragnarok starts\n\nI’m not sure where this idea came from. According to the medieval manuscripts Norse mythology was originally recorded on, Baldr dies long before Ragnarok begins.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I remember being told that Baldr was standing guard (I don't remember where) waiting for Ragnarok to start, so that he will immidietly inform Odin when it does start",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Are you sure you’re not thinking of Heimdall?"
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Well assuming he's sort of proportional to a human body and his skull is used to form the sky, that would make him at least 120,000 kilometers tall.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "First off, holy fuck, that's almost as big as North Korea (around 500 kilometers off).\nSecond off, how do we have the size of midgard?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "First of all, it's much much much bigger than North Korea, because North Korea fits in his head. Second off, with same assumptions, Midgard would be about the size of Greenland. It could definitely fit Norwway, Sweden, Denmark and few surrounding countries inside Ymir's eyebrows.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "North korea is 120,540 square kilometers, his height is north korea's area (kinda).\n\nWhy is midgard greenland?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Area is different than height. Lenght of North Korea is 1,200 km. Midgard is not Greenland, I said it would be approximately the same size based on the size of eyebrows.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "You know what, nevermind.\n\nBut how do you know the size of the eyebrows",
"replies": [
{
"body": "It's an assumption based on the size of the Earth average size of human eyebrows.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "So did you compare midgard to the 9 realms, and then checked that ratio for earth?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "No, we know how big Earth is.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I know, i just don't realise, do we know how big the 9 realms are?",
"replies": [
{}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Beings from myths usually have varying sizes, they can be big or small in different mythological scenarios."
}
]
}