Who were the first two humans created by Odin and his brothers?

Who were the first two humans created by Odin and his brothers? Ask and Embla were the first two humans.

In Norse mythology, Ask and Embla are the primordial human pair and the ancestors of humanity. The Prose Edda says that Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé found two trees or pieces of driftwood on a shore and shaped them into a man and a woman.

The three gods then supplied different aspects of human existence. Odin gave breath or spirit, Vili gave understanding and movement, and Vé gave form, speech, hearing and sight. They also gave the pair clothing and names, and placed them in Midgard, the human world.

The Poetic Edda preserves a related but different version. There, Odin, Hœnir and Lóðurr find the pair, and the gifts are described with terms that translators variously render as spirit, sense, blood, warmth, movement or color. Those differences explain why retellings do not always agree on which god gave which quality.

Ask means “ash” in Old Norse; Embla’s name has uncertain origins and may relate to an elm or a vine.