Odin And Pan Gu Wa Similarities

Comparing Creation Myths Ancient myths have helped to shape some of the things we know today, such as religions, movies, and children’s bedtime stories. When exploring the world of mythology, it is not uncommon to find that many aspects of a variety of myths turn out to be incredibly similar. Sometimes, these aspects can even be identical simply by chance. This is a fascinating thing to witness because many myths were constructed from various places around the world in separate times. Two creation myths that have their own similarities and dissimilarities are the stories ‘Odin and Ymir’ and ‘Pan Gu and Nu Wa’. One of the noticeable similarities between these two stories is the formation of the earth from the body of an important character

Within the myth ‘Odin and Ymir’, melting ice in the land of Ginnungagap formed a frost-giant named Ymir. In the myth, it states, “…the ice thawed and dripped, and from the drips thickened and formed the shape of a man. His name was Ymir, the first of and ancestor of the frost-giants” (Sturluson). Following shortly after this in the myth, a cow was created from the very same dripping ice and fed Ymir with its milk, stated in the myth as, “As the ice dripped more, it formed a cow, and from her teats flowed four rivers of milk that fed Ymir” (Sturluson). This is not the only creation of life through nature found in this story, however, as in a later paragraph, it states that Bor’s sons created humans out of two logs and gave them the features people are known to naturally have when they are born. As follows in the story, “On the sea shore, Bor’s sons found two logs and made people out of them. One son gave them breath and life, the second son gave them consciousness and movements, and the third gave them faces, speech, hearing, and sight” (Sturluson). This is where moving onto the second myth will catch the attention of anyone reading because in ‘Pan Gu and Nu Wa’, it is found that the goddess Nu Wa created beings that would be like herself, since there was nothing else in the world that resembled her. In order to do this, she took and shaped mud from the edge of a pond, which formed a human once it was placed back onto the soil. In the myth, it reads, “From the edge of the pond she took some mud and shaped it in the form of a human being. At first her creation was lifeless, and she set it down. It took life as soon as it touched the soil…” (“Pan Gu and Nü Wa.”). Of course, there is more than one example of human creation from nature in this myth as well, however it is from the same method. Because she wanted to make more humans in a quicker manner, the goddess Nu Wa swung a