Ask and Embla

Linguist Gunlög Josefsson claims that the name Embla comes from the roots eim + la which would mean 'firemaker' or 'smokebringer' inflected for either gender.

[7] According to chapter 9 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, the three brothers Vili, Vé, and Odin, are the creators of the first man and woman.

Further evidence of ritual making of fire in Scandinavia has been theorized from a depiction on a stone plate on a Bronze Age grave in Kivik, Scania, Sweden.

[9] Jaan Puhvel comments that "ancient myths teem with trite 'first couples' similar to the type of Adam and his by-product Eve.

In Indo-European tradition, these range from the Vedic Yama and Yamī and the Iranian Mašya and Mašyānag to the Icelandic Askr and Embla, with trees or rocks as preferred raw material, and dragon's teeth or other bony substance occasionally thrown in for good measure".

By contrast the cultures of the Near East show almost exclusively the type of anthropogonic stories that derive man's origin from clay, earth or blood by means of a divine creation act".

[12] A figure named Æsc (Old English "ash tree") appears as the son of Hengest in the Anglo-Saxon genealogy for the kings of Kent.

[13] Connections have been proposed between Ask and Embla and the Vandal kings Assi and Ambri, attested in Paul the Deacon's 7th century AD work Origo Gentis Langobardorum.

[16] Ask to Embla is the title of a poem, parts of which are quoted, by R. H. Ash, one of the protagonists in A. S. Byatt's novel Possession: A Romance, which won the Booker prize in 1990.