Auðumbla
The primeval cow of Norse myth, whose milk fed the first giant and whose licking freed the first god.
Also: Audumbla, Audhumla, Auðhumla
In the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson in Iceland in the thirteenth century, the world began where ice met fire. From the melting ice came the giant Ymir and the cow Auðumbla. Four rivers of milk flowed from her udder and fed Ymir. She fed herself by licking the salty blocks of ice, and over three days her licking uncovered a man, Búri, grandfather of the god Odin. The cow thus stands at the very beginning of the Norse account of creation, as the nourisher of giants and the one who freed the ancestor of the gods from the ice.