Jötunn (plural Jötnar; a female is a gýgr)

Somewhere beyond the last farm, past the ranges that fence in the ordered world, the cold has a home. It rolls down out of Jotunheim as wind and rime and the long groan of shifting ice, and the beings who keep that country are the cold made flesh, given hands and appetite. They are older than the gods who fear them.

The jötnar are a race, not a single creature, and they were there before almost everything. The Old Norse name carries the sense of devourer, a hint at their hunger and at what they are: the primeval, untamed parts of the world, the ones that were never meant to be tamed. Snow that buries a valley, the sea in a killing mood, the fire banked under the mountains. The North gave these a body and a bloodline and called them giants, though giant is a loose word for them and often a wrong one.

They begin with Ymir. Before the earth, before the gods, there was a yawning emptiness with ice to the north and fire to the south, and where the two met the rime dripped and quickened into the first living thing. Ymir was that thing, the first jötunn, and while he slept the sweat of his armpits bred a man and a woman and his two legs got a son between them. From him the whole race came. Then the young gods killed him. They built the world out of his corpse, his flesh for soil and his blood for the sea, and that flood of blood drowned nearly every giant alive. One, Bergelmir, climbed with his wife into a hollowed trunk and rode the tide out, and every later jötunn descends from that escape.

After the drowning they scattered into kinds. The frost giants, the hrímþursar, went back to the ice and the mountain wastes, where winter never breaks and the citadel of Utgard hides itself behind illusion. The fire giants held Muspelheim in the south, where the air shakes with heat and Surtr sits at the border with a sword brighter than the sun, waiting. The mountain giants, the bergrisar, are close to the stone itself, slow and enormous and tied to the bones of the land.

What they look like depends on which one, and the sources refuse to settle it. Some are monsters outright, many-headed or many-armed, hulking things of ice and rock. Others are told apart from the gods by nothing at all. Ægir, who brews ale for the Aesir in a hall floored with gold, is gaunt and tall with a long white beard and green hair like weed off the tide. Skadi and Gerd are beautiful enough that gods marry them. The people who worked with these stories longest concluded that most jötnar stood about the same height as the gods, and that what marked a giant was never really size. It was family.

That family ran straight through the gods. Odin’s own mother, Bestla, was a giant’s daughter. Thor, the great killer of giants, was carried by the earth-giantess Jörð. Loki was jötunn to the bone and lived among the Aesir anyway. The gods raided Jotunheim for wives and wisdom and sons, then went home and picked up the hammer again. Skadi keeps to the high country her father held, running the winter forest on skis with a bow, hunting where the snow lies deep and no god cares to follow.

When the gods killed that father, Thjazi, Skadi came to Asgard alone and armed, ready to take the hall apart for the debt. They bought her off instead. Her price included a husband and, stranger, laughter, and Loki earned the laugh with a rope, a goat, and the last of his dignity. She chose her husband by his feet, picked the finest ankles in the hall expecting the shining Baldr, and got Njord of the sea. The marriage failed. She could not sleep for the crying of gulls and he could not sleep for the howling of wolves, and each went home to the country that suited them.

For all the marriages, the stories always end at war. The giants are the enemy the gods were built to hold off, and the holding is temporary. At Ragnarök the jötnar come. The ship Naglfar, built from the untrimmed nails of the dead, breaks its moorings and carries them to the final field; Surtr rides up from the south and swings the burning sword, and the fire he scatters eats the nine worlds down to the roots. Thor kills the world-serpent and dies nine steps later of its venom. The gods fall. The giants fall with them. Then the water closes over everything, and later a new green earth lifts out of the sea.

Their power is the power of everything the gods cannot permanently defeat. Raw force, first, enough that only Thor’s hammer answers it with any reliability. But also age and knowledge, because the wisest heads in the cosmos belong to giants. Mimir guards the well of memory. Vafthrudnir trades riddles with a disguised Odin, both their lives on the table. The mead of poetry itself was brewed and hidden inside a giant’s mountain before Odin stole it out. Some shift their shapes, some bend the weather, some can see what is coming. Their weakness is stitched into the same cloth. In tale after tale they are outfought by the hammer or outwitted by the gods’ cunning, and for all their bulk they lose the single contests almost every time. They are nature, and the myths are the long record of holding nature back. It works, barely, right up until the day it stops.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a jötunn in Norse mythology?

A jötunn (plural jötnar) is a member of a primeval race in Norse mythology that embodies the wild, destructive forces of nature such as frost, storm, sea, and fire. The jötnar are usually translated as “giants,” though the name means something closer to “devourer,” and they are older than the gods, serving as both the gods’ enemies and their ancestors.

Where do the jötnar live?

Most jötnar live in Jotunheim, a cold, mountainous realm beyond the settled world whose stronghold is the illusion-shrouded citadel of Utgard. The fire giants dwell separately in the burning southern realm of Muspelheim under the giant Surtr, while mountain giants are bound to the stone and high wastes of the land.

Are the jötnar always giant-sized?

No. Despite being called giants, the jötnar are not all enormous, and many sources depict them as roughly the same size as the gods. What defines a jötunn is lineage rather than stature, which is why some giants, like Skadi and Gerd, are beautiful enough for gods to marry.

How are the jötnar related to the Norse gods?

The jötnar are deeply intertwined with the gods through blood and marriage, even while remaining their chief adversaries. Odin’s mother Bestla, Thor’s mother Jörð, and Loki himself were all of giant descent, and gods repeatedly took giantesses as wives, so the boundary between the two races was constantly crossed.

What role do the jötnar play in Ragnarök?

At Ragnarök the jötnar are the destroying army: they sail on the ship Naglfar to the final battle, and the fire giant Surtr sets the nine worlds ablaze with his flaming sword. The gods and the giants kill one another in the conflict, the world burns and sinks beneath the sea, and afterward a new green earth rises from the water.

Related Entries

Ymir, Bergrisar, Surtr, Thor, Odin, Loki, Jörð, Freyja, Njord, Jörmungandr, Fenrir, Troll