Ask

Ask is the first man, shaped from a piece of ash driftwood found lifeless on the shore. Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve come upon two logs, Ask and the elm-woman Embla, and give them the gifts that make them human: Odin breathes spirit and life into them, the second brother grants wit and movement, the third gives faces, speech, hearing, and sight. From Ask and Embla descend all of humankind. He is the wooden form awakened into the first ancestor, the root of every mortal line in Midgard.