In ancient Greece, the universe was believed to have started as a dark emptiness in which lived a black-winged bird. After a long time, the egg hatched, and one half of the shell became the sky while the other became the Earth.
The Norse, on the other hand, had a far more complicated explanation for how the universe came to be. An old Norse poem, the Völuspá, describes a cosmos that began with nothing but ice to the north and fire to the south. In the gap between those two regions, the fire melted some of the ice to form a life-creating substance known as Eiter. From the Eiter came a giant, Ymir, and a cow, Auðumbla, who then licked ice to uncover a man known as Búri. One of Búri's grandsons eventually went on to kill Ymir, using the giant's body to create the universe: flesh became dirt, bones became mountains, brains became clouds. The sun, moon and stars were then created using sparks from the fiery south.
