Jotnar: Enforcers of the Moral Order
I was in the east and battled jotuns,
Malicious brides who walked on mountains:
Jotun-kind would be great if all lived,
Humankind would be small upon Midgard.
—Hárbarðsljóð 23
Anyone who has ever picked up a book on Norse mythology knows about the epic conflict between the gods and the giants. Many accounts depict this as an endless cosmic struggle, with the gods as the forces of order, light, and goodness pitted against the giants as forces of chaos, darkness, and evil. However, as with many aspects of our mythology, “what everyone knows” isn’t always so. A more careful look at the lore suggests that relations among the gods, jotuns, and humanity are more complex than this simplistic view.
In fact, instead of enemies of the moral order, often in the literature the Giants (Jotuns/Jotnar) and other monstrous-seeming creatures like Trolls or Ogres (Thuses/Thursar) are the enforcers of the moral order. Where people stray too far into viciousness, greed, and cruelty… they eventually find themselves faced with a creature like a Jotun or a Thurs that metes out a punishment for that person–no matter how powerful they might fancy themselves.
A number of beings in both Scandinavian and Continental lore all tend to get grouped as “giants.” In Old Norse we have jǫtunn, flurs, and rísi, as well as trǫll (discussed later); jotynja is a female jotun, and flagð, gygr, and skessa all refer to huge, ugly, and dangerous female beings.
These words were sometimes interchangeable; in firymskviða, Thrym is called flursa drótinn, “lord of thurses,” but he lives in Jǫtunheimr and addresses his people as jǫtnar. This book will use the Anglicized Norse word jotun/jotuns for all beings of this class, unless it is necessary to be more specific.
The portrayal of “giants” in the sagas ranges from monsters who devour human flesh to stately rulers in well-appointed halls, and it’s unclear how the various names apply to the different sorts of beings that we see.
Jotnar and Ragnarok
Jotnar certainly can be destructive, and some of them will wreak destruction at Ragnarok. Fenrir, the wolf son of Loki and Angrboda, will swallow Odin himself. Skǫll (“Treachery”) and Hati (“Hater,” also called Mánagarmr, “Moon’s Hound”) are jotuns in wolf-shape, the sons of a hag who lives in Járnviðr, “Iron Wood;” they chase the Sun and Moon and will devour them at Ragnarok. Vǫluspá 50 claims that a thurs named Hrymr will fight the gods at Ragnarok.
Yet in Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál, the jotuns as a whole play little part in the destruction of Ragnarok; Vǫluspá states only that Jotunheim is as disturbed as the realms of the gods and the dwarves (48), and troll-women wander wildly when Surtr comes and their mountain homes collapse (52). Snorri adds that Hrymr will steer the ship Naglfar and all the frost-thurses will come with him (Gylfaginning 51)—but this is not stated in the poems. The chief source of destruction at Ragnarok will be Surtr and Muspell’s host.
Thus, although Ragnarok is sometimes thought of simply as a battle between gods and jotuns, the actual picture is more complex, and not all jotuns will necessarily take part.
Many Heathens remain leery of working with the jotnar—except for occasional vitkar (magicians) who might seek to learn their lore, or wanderers in the wilderness who need to stay on good terms with the powers that surround them. In some Heathen circles, honoring the Jotnar is considered almost heresy.
As we’ve said before: in polytheistic religions, there is no requirement that you worship every single being on the list.
You don’t have to honor the Jotnar if you don’t want to.
The Jotun as enforcers of the Moral Universe
There’s also something the Jotnar do that the Gods don’t seem to do (or at least they don’t seem to do it often): deal out punishments to humanity.
There doesn’t appear to have been a figure in Norse Mythology who acts as a kind of punisher of humankind. There is no God who unleashes a flood to destroy mankind for their wickedness. There is no jealous Adversary who waits for mankind to fall so that he can mete out their eternal punishment in a lake of fire.
It probably would have seemed strange for Norse Pagans in pre-Christian times that someone would worship the same God who would punish them for all eternity–that the same God who was responsible for their happiness and joy was also there to ensure their total annihilation should humanity break his rules.
Modern Times
But after thousands of years of getting used to that idea, for some in modern Norse Paganism, to have no one to punish humanity for our transgressions is a glaring gap. There is a sense now where at the very least some people, and at most all of humanity deserves some kind of punishment.
Whether its the actions of individual cruelty and abuse (Fenrir), or the collective greed and overconsumption of humankind (Jormungandr), Heathens today don’t just call out for Gods to protect us from harm, but some have come to see the Jotnar as the ones who punish those responsible for that harm.
Enter the Jotnar, who are depicted in some myths and folklore as not only being sometimes hostile to humanity, but acts as their punisher when humanity crosses into their realm.
It should be emphasized that rarely are there stories about Jotnar seeking out humans to punish for wrongdoing. In most of the tales about Jotnar dealing out some kind of punishment, humans cross into their realm through their own greed, selfishness and pride. This is most apparent in Saxo Grammaticus.
Even otherwise good people, like you’ll see with King Frodi, can have a fall into the realm of the Jotnar when he gives in to his greed. So, in some sense, where the Gods may have set the moral order, the Jotnar act as its enforcers.
The Many Giants of Norse Paganism
The universe of Norse Paganism is full of spirits. And while some have attempted something like a “bestiary” there is nowhere near enough ink in the world (virtual or otherwise) that could be spilled over the complexities that exist therein. Jotnar appear in the literature sometimes as wise, sometimes as foolish, sometimes to reward and other times to punish (and sometimes both).
Here are a few of the most famous Jotnar in Norse Mythology.
Gudmund (Guðmundr)
Gudmund or Godmund is never mentioned in the Eddas, but he appears in several legendary sagas and Saxo’s History of the Danes. Heiðreks saga says that he was so wise and lived so long that his realm was thought to be Ódáinsakr, “Field of the Deathless,” and people worshipped him as a god after his death (U-redaction; transl. Tolkien, The Saga of King Heidrek, p. 66).
Other sagas place him as the ruler of Glæsisvellir, “Glittering Valley” or “Glass Valley” (probably originally “Amber Valley”). Samsons saga fagra 13 has Gudmund ruling Glæsisvellir, east of Risaland (land of the rísar giants), which is northeast of the Baltic and extends all the way to Jotunheim (transl. Waggoner, Sagas of Imagination, p. 272). To the extent that any of these lands can be placed at all, they would be in north Russia or Siberia.
In fiorsteins saga bæjarmagns, Gudmund’s land of Glæsisvellir is said to be a dependency of Jotunheim, which is ruled by King Geirrǫð; the realms are separated by the river Himra, which is so cold that any flesh that touches it immediately turns gangrenous (transl. Pálsson and Edwards, Seven Viking Romances, p. 264). Geirrǫð, of course, is the jotun who lures Thor into an ambush, but whom Thor kills by catching a glowing hot lump of iron and throwing it back at him.
In Saxo’s telling, Thorkil makes an expedition beyond Bjarmaland (the coast of the White Sea in present- day Russia) and meets Guthmund, the brother of Geruth (Geirrǫð). Guthmund’s land is bordered by a river that “formed a natural boundary between the human and the supernatural world” (History of the Danes VIII.288; transl. Fisher, p. 263). Guthmund is a sinister figure here: he offers food, but Thorkil warns his men that if they accept it, they will turn into monsters themselves and never return home.
Four of his men who sleep with Guthmund’s maidservants end up losing their minds. When Thorkil crosses the river and comes to Geruth’s town, he finds it a dark, filthy place haunted by phantoms and monsters, and finds Geruth with a hole through his body and his three daughters with broken backs.
Presumably this adventure is chronologically set after Thor had met Geirrǫð, flung hot iron right through him, and broken his daughters’ backs (History of the Danes VIII.286-292; transl. Fisher, pp. 262-267). When Thorkil’s men try to take treasure from Geruth’s town, they rouse the giants and monsters and barely escape.
Saxo’s description of Geruth’s domain resembles accounts of a sinister land of the dead (Malm, “The Otherworld Journeys,” pp. 169-172), but again, to the extent that we can place these locations, they would be somewhere in Siberia, at the farthest edge of where even the boldest travelers could go.
Gudmund is presumably one of the jotuns with whom strong and bold humans can make deals. Yet his attitude towards humans varies. In fiorsteins saga bæjarmagns, he is helpful to the hero Thorstein and clearly one of the “good guys.” In Helga fláttr fiórissonar, his daughter seduces the hero Helgi, who is taken to live in Gudmund’s realm in luxury and comfort—but when King Olaf insults Gudmund, Helgi is brought back blinded and dying (transl. Waggoner, Sagas of Imagination, pp. 358-363).
As Saxo tells it, Guthmund is hospitable, but humans cannot enjoy his hospitality without losing their humanity.
Grid (Gríðr)
Grid’s name is related to the word gríð, “eagerness.” She is a jotun and never listed among the gods, but Odin fathered the god Vidar on her; Vidar is fated to avenge Odin himself at Ragnarok. She is helpful to the Æsir again in the myth of Thor’s journey to Geirrod (Skáldskaparmál 18). She gives him lodging for the night, warns him of the dangers ahead, and gives him a belt of strength, gloves, and a staff, which he uses to defend against Geirrod and his daughters.
Snorri states that Loki had tricked Thor into leaving his own iron gauntlets and belt of strength at home when he went to visit Geirrod, but Margaret Clunies Ross suggests that in the earliest version of the myth, Thor did not yet own these items, and Grid gives them to him as part of an initiation into manhood. In fact, comparing the story with other myths suggests that in the oldest version of the myth, Thor may not have owned his Hammer at the time that he went to Geirrod’s hall; the lump of hot iron that he catches and throws through Geirrod may have become his Hammer (“An Interpretation,” pp. 387-388).
The story parallels a number of legendary sagas in which a human encounters hostile and dangerous jotuns, but also finds a female jotun who is quite willing to help the hero. She sleeps with him, gives him weapons or magical items, and sometimes continues to protect him even after he has left her and taken a human wife (Waggoner, Sagas of Giants, p. viii-ix). Grid can thus be seen as an initiator and helper of those who must travel far from the settled lands and face the might of the wilderness.
Rind (Rindr)
Rind is the mother of Odin’s son Váli, who like Vidar is born for vengeance: he avenges Balder by killing Hodr. In Saxo’s History of the Danes (III.78-82; transl. Fisher, pp. 76-79), she is a human, a princess of the Ruthenians (Eastern Slavs), and Odin is rebuffed several times when he tries to seduce her in disguise.
He eventually drives her to madness with magic, pretends to be a healer to gain access to her, and rapes her. Kormák Ǫgmundarson’s poem Sigurðardrápa includes a number of halflines with mythological allusions, including seið Yggr til Rindar, “Yggr [Odin] worked seiðr on Rind,” presumably an allusion to the begetting of Váli (ed. Marold et al., “Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, Sigurðardrápa,” p. 277).
Snorri states that Rind is counted among the Ásynjur (Gylfaginning 36). If he is reporting the old tradition correctly, perhaps she won compensation for Odin’s act by being given a place among the Æsir, as Skadi was compensated for the killing of her father. We have little evidence that she was worshipped, but if her name was originally *Vrindr, the Swedish place name Vrinnevi might indicate a sanctuary to her (from an earlier form *Vrinda-vé), or it could derive from *Vrinda-viði, “Rind’s woods” (Simek, Dictionary, p. 266).
These places, and/or her name, might be related to rind, a Gotlandic word for ivy. These proposals are not universally accepted (Brink, “Reading Cult and Mythology,” pp. 160-164).
Bestla
Bestla is the daughter of Bǫlþorn (Bale-Thorn) and the mother of Odin and his two brothers (either Vili and Vé, or Hoenir and Lóðurr).
Odin mentions learning nine mighty songs from Bǫlþorn’s “famous son,” who would be Bestla’s brother and Odin’s maternal uncle (Hávamál 140). This uncle is unnamed, but several scholars have suggested that he may have been Mímir (Hollander, The Poetic Edda, p. 36 n70; Puhvel, Comparative Mythology, p. 218).
Her name might be related to English bast, a word for fibrous tree bark (Simek, Dictionary, p. 36). Jan de Vries suggests that her name comes from Proto-Germanic *Bastilōn, “bark-donor,” a name for the yew. Alternatively, it might come from the same root as Old Frisian bōst, “marital union” / bōstigia “to be married” (Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 34).
Hyrrokkin
Hyrrokkin (“Shriveled by Fire”) is the jotun who is summoned to push Balder’s funeral ship out to sea, when none of the Æsir can do it. She rides a wolf with serpents for reins; her steed is so strong that it takes four of Odin’s berserks to hold it. When she pushes the boat out, the rollers catch on fire and the earth shakes. Snorri says that Thor was so enraged to see this that he would have killed her if the other gods had not restrained him (Gylfaginning 49).
She may be depicted on one of the stones of the Hunnestad monument from Skåne, Sweden. Thor may in fact have killed Hyrrokkin in another myth, although the specifics of the story have not come down to us. A verse by the skald Thorbjorn dísarskald lists jotuns that Thor has killed, and although it says only that “Hyrrokkin died first,” the context implies that Thor killed her (Skáldskaparmál 4, ed. Faulkes, p. 38).
Austin Lawrence feels that Hyrrokkin may be called on by those who must bear unspeakable grief:
None of the Æsir had the strength, physical or emotional, to finalize the funeral of Balder, to finally say a last goodbye, because their love for him was so strong, and the trauma of the circumstances of his death so deep. Even Thor could not act. It was only a member of the most dangerous foreign allied group to the Æsir that had enough emotional distance from Balder and the powerful destructive nature to do the job properly, Hyrrokkin.
She arrives at the stalled funeral riding on a lone wolf, a warg, the Old Norse symbol for an outlaw or criminal. The way she steers this steed is through the use of two serpents; a slippery symbol of corruption, power, trolldom, and poison. However, her power is immediately checked by martial representatives of Odin, four berserk warriors, who kill her warg steed, thereby domesticating the overtones of criminality from the scene somewhat.
She immediately returns this death with one of her own, because she finalizes the death of Balder for the Æsir: she pushes out his funeral pyre to journey to another world. She does this all silently, without saying a thing.
Thus, one way of interpreting her is as the wordless raging of fresh grief and simultaneously that store of otherworldly power that pushes us through dark emotional states without any kind of rational thought. It can feel like a betrayal of our loyalties when we start to let go of a loved one after they die, both corporally or emotionally.
We feel this conflict as an experience of rage and guilt at the same time. Those that take this lesson from our mythology can call on Hyrrokkin to become part of the process of moving through loss of life, existential confusion, or similar situations that are grieved (like the loss of a career, onset of chronic illness, miscarriage or infertility).
Austin has invoked Hyrrokkin in rituals meant to release long-held grief, and represented her by a charred pole, as an emblem of Balder’s pyre and the flaming rollers below his ship.
Fenja and Menja
The legendary King Fróði ruled Denmark at a time of peace and prosperity known as Fróðafriðr, the Peace of Fróði, during which time no one hurt anyone else or stole anything. (Medieval Christian writers dated this to the time of the birth of Jesus.)
The introductory prose in the Eddic poem Grottasǫngr tells how Fróði visits King Fjǫlnir of Sweden and buys two strong female slaves named Fenja and Menja. Denmark is said to have had two huge millstones, collectively called Grotti, that were too heavy for any human to turn, but that would grind out anything that the user asked for.
Fróði receives these millstones from Hengikjǫptr (“Hanging Jaw” or “Hanging Chops,” a jotun’s name) and sets Fenja and Menja to turn these millstones and grind out gold and blessings for him.
Unfortunately, Fróði grows greedy and refuses to let Fenja and Menja rest. They speak the poem Grottasǫngr as they grind, revealing that they are mountain-giants (bergrísar), renowned warriors and kinswomen of Hrungnir and Þjazi. They announce that they are grinding out the end of Fróði’s rule, summoning into existence an army to overthrow him.
Their grinding reaches such a fevered pitch that the mill shatters.
That night, the sea-king Mysingr attacks Fróði’s hall and kills him, taking his wealth—including Fenja, Menja, and the mill. On board his ship, he tells them to grind out salt, but before he lets them finish, his ship sinks. This creates a whirlpool, where water still pours through the hole in the millstones, and the sea has been salty to this day.
The moral here is about greed and the seductive power of technology. Both Fróði and Mysingr are seduced by the power that Fenja and Menja provide. A power that has the potential to provide massive benefits to them and their society. And in both cases, they are consumed by this power. Fenja and Menja could be any technology. They could be the automobile. They could be Generative AI. When we give into greed and are seduced by the power something provides rather than thinking of the further ethical implications of its use (and potential abuse) we fall once again into the realm of the Jotnar.
Grotti Minnie (or Luki Minnie)
Remembered as the giantesses who ground out salt and made the sea salty, and who created the Swelchie (ON svelgr), the whirlpool in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the Scottish mainland.
Their stories were used to frighten naughty children into better behavior (Johnston, “Grotta Söngr,” p. 297). One tale relates that there were once four giantesses on Fair Isle, between Orkney and Shetland: Grottie Finnie, Luckie Minnie, Tushie, and Tangie.
While chasing a boy who had escaped her clutches, Luckie Minnie fell into a deep inlet called Hestigeo. People used to say that the sea foam in Hestigeo was caused by Luckie Minnie churning butter (Marwick, The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, pp. 163-164). A sea-cave on Bressay in Orkney, noted for the swirling flow of water inside it, was called the Gore’s Kirn (ON gýgrs kjarni, “ogre’s churn”), and this may also be a memory of the myth (Jennings, “The Giantess as Metaphor,” pp. 6-7).
Kvasir
All we know about Kvasir comes from Snorri Sturluson.
In Skáldskaparmál G57, Snorri relates how the Æsir and Vanir ritually sealed the truce between them by spitting into a communal vat. The gods took the spittle and made Kvasir, “so wise that no one could ask him anything to which he does not know the solution.”
Kvasir was killed by the dwarves Fjalarr (“Hider” or “Deceiver”) and Galarr (“Screamer”), who brewed the mead Óðroerir (Wod-Stirrer) from his blood mixed with honey. Anyone who drinks it becomes a skald or a scholar. The dwarves told the Æsir that Kvasir had drowned in his wisdom. Ever since, poetry has been called Kvasis blóð or Kvasis dreyra, “Kvasir’s blood” or “Kvasir’s gore.”
Ynglinga saga 4 claims that when the Æsir and Vanir made peace and exchanged hostages, the Vanir sent Njord and Freyr, their finest men. The Æsir sent Hoenir and Mimir, their handsomest man and their wisest man, and in exchange for Mimir, the Vanir sent Kvasir to the Æsir. Gylfaginning 50 tells that Kvasir was the first to enter the house by the Franangr waterfall, where Loki had been living in exile. Loki had made a fish net, but when the gods found his hiding place, he had burned it before fleeing in the form of a salmon. Kvasir traced the pattern of the netting in the ashes and was able to construct a new one, which the gods used to capture Loki.
The name Kvasir probably comes from a Proto-Germanic root meaning “to crush” (also ancestral to modern English to quash), referring to the crushing of berries to make drink (Sturtevant, “Etymological Comments,” pp. 1149-1150). The word seems to be related to Russian kvas, a drink made from fermenting a mixture of water, fruit, and bread. In modern times, kvas is not made using saliva, but in ancient times people were known to chew berries and spit out the juice to ferment. (Note that Odin uses his spittle to induce fermentation in Hálfs saga; see Chapter 2.)
Krappe (Études, p. 66) compares Kvasir to “John Barleycorn,” the personification of barley in a well-known British folksong, who grows up tall in the spring and is killed at harvest time, but proves stronger than his killers:
And they hae ta’en his very heart’s blood,
And drank it, round and round,
And still the more and more they drank
Their joy did more abound.
Kvasir has also been compared to Soma, the ritual drink prepared by pressing plants in Vedic India, and also the name of the drink’s presiding deity. A Vedic myth tells how soma was once held in a heavenly citadel by the archer Krsanu, until an eagle stole it and brought it to the first sacrificer, Manu (Rig-Veda IV.26-27; transl. Griffith, Hymns of the Rigveda, vol. 2, pp. 428-429).
The similarities with the myth of Odin’s winning the mead of poetry should be obvious. In Greek mythology, Dionysus was sometimes seen as both the god of wine and the wine itself, his body torn to pieces so that his blood might flow (Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historiae III.62.3-8, transl. Oldfather, vol. 2, pp. 286-289). Thus we may be dealing with a very old Indo-European myth, although some scholars are skeptical (Puhvel, Comparative Mythology, pp. 65-66).