Before the Norse (a.k.a. the Vikings) were converted to Christianity during the Middle Ages, they had their own vibrant native pagan religion that was as harshly beautiful as the Nordic landscape to which it was intimately connected. The centerpiece of that religion was what we today call Norse Mythology: the set of religious stories that gave meaning to the Vikings’ lives

The Norse Mythology or religion that contained these myths never had a true name – those who practiced it just called it “tradition.” However, people who continued to follow the old ways after the arrival of Christianity were sometimes called “heathens,” which originally meant simply “people who live on the heaths” or elsewhere in the countryside, and the name has stuck.

The Norse legends do not have a single version. There are variations in the gods and descriptions of how the world was created. One of the myths says that Odin and his brothers killed a giant, Ymir formed of fire and ice. His body turned, then, the raw material for the creation of the world.