according to Old Norse Myth
In the lands far to the north, there is an old woman, Mara, who tells tales of life as it used to be in the days of your great great great grandmothers' grandmothers.
Those days when they used the juices of herbs for healing all sorts of ills and ailments. It was in those same days that the bards were the keepers of the entire history of their people. They knew of the hard lessons they had learned and how they honed their skills in time to overcome their losses. They wove their stories into tales; tales reflecting the rhythm of nature in rhyme.
In the quiet of a long night, the bards shared their wisdom often around a fire that would crackle and snap as a bit of tree sap caught fire.
As the years passed fewer and fewer story tellers were left. History was recorded in written books that would be read and interpreted by individuals. The essence of the living word became mundane and often misread or misinterpreted.
There are still a few storytellers left. The storytellers with the longest memories spoke of the awesome Great Mother, giver of life!
She was an obscure figure who has been given many names. She was as farfetched as the stars yet integrated into the bountiful earth beneath their feet.
She was the source of life itself, but she would also bargain life and was the broker of death. Her wrath manifested itself in draughts, storms, cataclysm and plagues. Her moodiness, her power to punish was tolerated by her pity and forgiveness.
Her physical being manifested in many ways; an old wrinkled very wise crone, a beautiful princess, a queen on occasion, a crow, or sometimes an old mare or a goat
I am Mara, a wise old crone and storyteller, and I remember her as a young goddess who lived in a time before time. A time when she was named Virgin of the Air. She was the daughter of the King of the Air. Floating in the empyrean, above the seas and hidden behind the northern lights was their castle.
A castle with eight thousand rooms, all empty. There were thousands of windows that looked out into emptiness. The hallways of the castles meandered forever. At times they were narrow and branching, then widening again. But far at the end of the hallway, beyond the vanishing point, the hallway ended.
And there is where the Virgin of Air lived. No one knows for sure what she ate, or what she did, or who she spoke to, but what they did know was that one day she grew as restless as the wind and she leaped through the crystal window in her room, that opened into the void. And nothing was there! She fell through the bottom of a cloud of nothingness and she screamed.
Her scream echoed through the universe. A current of wind caught her and carried her away gently to the ocean. The ocean had been patiently waiting for her. She fell upon a wave and reached for the crest, but it slipped away. The two elements, the wind and the water tossed her back and forth. The waves lifted her as the wind lovingly touched her body, but the waves quickly pulled her back to the sea.
The battle between the sea and the wind grew strong and serious. The crescendo of waves reached up into violent surges, and the wind lashed into a wrathful tempest creating a vortex.
The two opposing forces fought like barbarians for the Virgin and did not hear her distressful cries.
Then the whirlpool stilled. The booming gusts ceased and there was nothing but silence.
No longer a virgin, her enormous body floated upon the water.
Her body swelled with life growing inside her. Life planted by the forceful power of the opposing courtship of the wind and the sea.
As the mysterious fruit of her womb ripened, she swam through the waters of the sea. There was nothing but sea, so she swam back and forth. She would float on her back and look up toward where the castle, her old home in the realm of the air was. But she had fallen so far she was unable to see it. She was out of the view of her father, King of the Air so he had no idea what was happening to his daughter.
She was no longer the Virgin of the Air, but now the immortal Water-Mother. She drifted, according to ancient records for seven hundred years. Her belly grew larger and larger. The water bracing and comforting her as she thrashed with unrest. She drifted east, then west, north then south. She would drift into a trance not knowing where she was. The child was nourished with her life's blood and her divine powers.
There was no means of measuring time, but for all those years she waited. Fulfilled by her own energy. Complete in herself, she directed her awareness inward, and contemplated on the mystery of the life quickening in her womb.
The time came when she was no longer alone. A winged messenger came out of the void. It flew out of the void desperately searching for a piece of dry land. As the Water-Mother floated on her back she saw the great winged bird sweeping down toward the water. Their eyes met and they began a wordless communication filled with empathy for each other. It was a communication of god with god.
The giant woman could feel the bird's exhaustion as the beat of her wings grew weary.
She lifted one of her knees from the water. The bird circled around Warter-Mother's knee. Then she screeched a cry of loneliness similar to the sound of the cry of a seagull. The large bird was dwarfed by the size of the Water-Mother. She was but an infinitesimal spec on her knee. After the winged creature established its surroundings, it began to build a nest from its own feathers.
Soon the bird produced a golden egg. The Water-Mother watched. Then another egg emerged from the bird, and another, and another until there were six identical spherical eggs.
Then the bird brought forth one more egg, the seventh. It was different from the other eggs. It was heavy, like iron and dark in color. It was not bright like the others, but lacked luster.
This extraordinary egg made it apparent that the bird was not within the common bounds of nature.
Nevertheless, the big bird sat on the eggs in the nest that was built upon the Water-Mother's knee. The bird and the Water-Mother patiently waited and kept each other company while they were waiting. This was a time of serenity and peace.
The eggs were no longer cool, The metals they were made of began to grow warm, then hot. Soon they became so hot they glowed white-hot and they burned the flesh on the Water-Mother's knee. She was not immune to pain, despite being a Goddess. The agony prompted her violent scream expressing her discomfort. She writhed with pain that churned up the waters creating tidal waves. The nest was disrupted and one by one the burning eggs fell into the sea.
The eggs were tossed by the great waves that came about as Water-Mother thrashed her burning knee. The eggs broke into a million pieces. Water-Mother realized the inexplicable bird flew away and once again she was all alone.
Then a magnificent thing happened. The fragments of the eggs began to rise from the water. Not one small piece was missing.
Half of them became the earth itself, and the remainder became the sky curving over the earth.
A bright yellow yolk became the sun, and the whites formed the moon, and the small specs became the stars and clouds. The dark egg was converted into storms that darkened the sky.
Water-Mother was still afloat, but now she had the sun to warm her during the day and the moon to shine and light up the night sky. Once again, the peace and tranquility of her being became contemplative and induced a dreamy state. She watched the sunrise over and over and the moon replace the sun at night.
Now with the moon as a driving force of the tide, Water-Mother felt her time approaching. She remembered the bird and began to build her nest. Her all powerful fingers commanded a cliff to rise. Then her giant hands formed a sandy beach and coastlines. The sea at last was harbored by a shore.
She sculpted sand dunes, then hills and beyond the hills, mountains.
With her fingernails she gently carved cracks and indentations, then streaks in the rocks. The land was ready.
Water-Mother dove down into the sea with a giant splash that soaked the heavens. While under the water, she sculpted the ocean floor. She mounded earth into islands, large and small. She carved grottoes and caves. She built the reefs.
When she had finished she did one last thing. She pulled up the largest stones from the sea that she could find and built four gigantic pillars; one at each corner of the earth. The pillars would forever hold up the sky.
She was pleased. Her creation was complete and it was beautiful.
Her pleasure was interrupted with cruel and violent pain. The child she had so long nurtured in her womb was growing impatient now. It was time for him to become part of the world his mother had formed. She moaned as he began kicking and thrashing. He pushed against her bones as if they were prison bars holding him back from escape. She arched her back and gasped as her child emerged into the freedom and light of the world.
There was blood and foam everywhere in the raging sea. Then the pains of birth ended for Water-Mother. She looked down into the sea and saw her son, Vainamoinen. He was full size as he endured for so long within her womb. He was also filled with wisdom. Water-Mother quickly welcomed her son, but there was still a lot of work to be done. The earth still had to be clothed and covered. It was good that he was so big.
Water-Mother floated upon the water and rested while her son called upon his supernatural powers. She watched him bring about the forests and flowers, grasses and meadows. He filled the sea with fish and the land with all kinds of animals. He placed pine trees on the mountains, and rodasha on holy ground. Then he planted ferns, berries, willows and oak trees. He planted green plants for food for all the animals and for shelter and fuel. And he, Vainamoinen was the first farmer, the first forester, the first gardener, the first poet and storyteller to hand down the memory of the beginning of the world for eternity!
The
End
