Buri was the first of the Norse gods — the primordial ancestor of the entire divine race, freed from the salty ice at the dawn of creation by the licking of the great cow Audhumla, and the grandfather of Odin himself. From him descends the whole line of the Aesir, making him the very root of the family tree of the gods.
The First God
Buri (Old Norse Búri) came into being in the primordial dawn, in the time when only the first frost-giant Ymir and the great cow Audhumla existed in the void. Audhumla nourished herself by licking the salty rime-stones of the ice — and as she licked, a being slowly emerged from the ice under her tongue. On the first day, a man's hair appeared; on the second, his head; and on the third day the whole man came free of the ice. This was Buri, the first of the gods, fair and tall and strong — the divine counterpart to the giant Ymir, the first ancestor of the Aesir as Ymir was the first ancestor of the giants.
The Root of the Divine Line
Buri had a son named Borr (Bor), who married the giantess Bestla, daughter of a giant. From the union of Borr and Bestla — god and giantess — came three sons: Odin, Vili and Ve, the brothers who would slay Ymir and create the world. Thus Buri stands at the head of the genealogy of the gods: the first god, father of Borr, grandfather of Odin the All-Father. Through him the entire Aesir race traces its origin back to the being who emerged from the ice beneath Audhumla's tongue.
The Mingling of Gods and Giants
Buri's line reveals something essential about the Norse divine: that the gods and the giants were intertwined from the very beginning. Buri himself emerged from the same primordial ice that gave rise to Ymir; his grandsons were born of a god and a giantess; and throughout the myths the Aesir would continue to take giant wives and lovers. The gods and the jötnar were not utterly separate races but kin, sprung from the same dawn of fire and ice, forever bound together as cousins even as they warred as enemies. Buri stands at the root of that deep entanglement.
The Ancestor of the Aesir
Buri endures as the first of the gods and the ancestor of the entire Aesir race — the being licked free of the primordial ice, the grandfather of Odin, the root of the divine family tree. Though no stories of his deeds survive, his place in the Norse cosmogony is foundational: he is the origin of the gods, the first divine being to step out of the ice at the dawn of all things, from whom every god of Asgard ultimately descends.
The great cow licked him free of the primordial ice over three days — and from this first god, emerged from the rime, descends the whole line of the Aesir, down to Odin and all his kin.