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Home of the Frost Giants

© Linda Casselman

I live in Eastern Ontario, Canada and winter now has us firmly in her icy grasp. The landscape sparkles in layers of white snow and freezing winds whip up all around us, chilling us and thrilling us with such a magnificent sight. Being the mythology editor, such a wintry vision puts me in mind of another freezing and enchanting land - that of the Frost Giants.

From Norse mythology, the Frost Giants are the foes of the gods. From the beginning of creation when the gods ripped apart the evil giant Ymir's body to create the world, these two groups have been enemies, destined to meet again at the end of the world in the great battle of Ragnarok.

All Frost Giants, save Bergelmir and his wife, drowned in the chaos caused by dead Ymir's flooding blood. The pair survived by using a hallowed out tree trunk as a boat and lived on to continue their race of Frost Giants, making their home in Jotunheim.

The Frost Giants personified the icy landscape and the harsh forces of nature, especially of winter, for the northern peoples. They were huge, mighty and menacing, and were a constant threat to the Norse gods, just as the treacherous snowy and icy environment of the north was a constant threat to the Norsemen. Moreover, the Frost Giants took every opportunity to thwart the gods, to harm them or even kill them, just as a lingering winter chill would harm the Norsemen's efforts at cultivation in the Spring. So when cold blasts of air came down upon them or when an avalanche terrorized them, the Norsemen knew to blame the Frost Giants for their misery and misfortune.

The home of the Frost Giants, Jotunheim, is a snowy wasteland on the edge of the sea, a rugged land of misty mountains, vicious blizzards and freezing winds. One of the nine realms in the Norsemen's cosmic tree, Yggdrasil, Jotunheim is situated on the middle level of the great tree, near Midgard, the home of humans, and was the land given to the Frost Giants by Odin and his brothers at creation.

Several giant strongholds make up Jotunheim, but the main citadel of the Frost Giants is Utgard. Carved from blocks of snow and bedecked with glistening icicles, Utgard was a fortress of numbing cold.

Thor, the Frost Giants' greatest enemy, along with his companions Loki and Thialfi, once braved Utgard's freezing battlements in order to undergo several impossible tests. They, of course, failed - they could not outrun thought, drink the sea dry, eat more than a wildfire, or wrestle old age. Upon leaving Utgard, however, the gods realized that the great stronghold of the Frost Giants was a grand illusion.

The copyright of the article Home of the Frost Giants in Mythology is owned by Wayne Kreger. Permission to republish Home of the Frost Giants in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.