Jötunheimr

Summary

Jötunheimr is the land of the giants in Norse myth; the poems usually name it in the plural, Jǫtunheimar, "the giants' homes". Snorri tells in Gylfaginning that when the sons of Borr, Odin and Vili and Vé, made the earth from the body of the first giant, Ymir, they made it round with the deep sea around it, and "along that seashore they gave lands for the races of giants to dwell in". Further in they built a stronghold around the world from Ymir's eyebrows against the giants' hostility and called it Midgard. The giants' land lies at the edge, between the human enclosure and the sea no one can cross.

The texts place it in the east and beyond rivers. The giant Vafþrúðnir asks his guest Odin the name of the river that divides the ground between the giants' sons and the gods, and Odin answers: it is called Ífingr; it runs open through all the ages and never freezes. Vafþrúðnismál 15–16. The giant Hymir lives east of the rivers Élivágar, at heaven's end; from the venom that dripped from those rivers the first giant arose. Gylfaginning 5; Hymiskviða 5. When Thor is away from the gods it is said that he has gone east to smite trolls. On his longest journey he went east into Jötunheimr as far as the sea, crossed it, and entered a great forest where he walked all day until dark; there he met the giant Skrýmir, who pointed him east to the stronghold of Útgarðr, the seat of Útgarða-Loki. Gylfaginning 42 and 45. East of Midgard lies a forest called Járnviðr, the Iron Wood, where an old giantess bears giants in the shape of wolves; from her brood come the two wolves who chase the sun and the moon, and the mightiest of her line swallows the moon at the end of time.

From this land the gods take what they lack, and there they go to get it. Brides come from it: Skaði, daughter of Þjazi, and Gerðr, to whom Freyr's messenger rides in the dark "over the dank fells, over the giants' folk". Skírnismál 10. From it come Hymir's cauldron, in which the gods' ale is brewed, and the mead of poetry, which Odin brought "out of the giants' courts". Hávamál 105 and 107. Loki's three children by the giantess Angrboða were reared there, and the giantess Hyrrokkin was sent for from there to push Baldr's ship into the sea. Gylfaginning 34 and 49. And its people ask the gods for Freyja: the builder wanted her as the price of Asgard's wall, and Þrymr as the price of Thor's hammer, so that Loki flew "beyond the Æsir's courts and within the giants' worlds". Þrymskviða 5–8. The gods' golden age ended when three giant maidens came "from Jötunheimr", and at the end "all Jötunheimr resounds" and the giant Hrymr drives his host "from the east".

The idea the story turns on is that the world of gods and people is an enclosure in the middle, surrounded by a wide country of mountains, forests and icy rivers inhabited by the offspring of the first body. The gods need it: from it come wives, the cauldron and the mead, and under the root of Yggdrasil that turns toward the frost giants lies Mímir's well, where wisdom is kept. And they fear it: from it come the suitors, and from it comes the end of the world. The border between the two worlds is a river that never freezes, so no one can walk across it on the ice.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Jǫtunheimar is a compound of jǫtunn, giant, and heimar, homes, the final -ar marking the plural. The Arabic essay reads the first part as juththa and the second as hāma, and glosses the whole "the homes of the bodies, that is, of the giants". Norse j is pronounced y, and Arabic j becomes y in the Juthoor correspondence table; Arabic th becomes t; the n after it is a Germanic suffix. In Lane, juththa is the body of a man sitting or lying down, and a corpse; it is also raised ground whose form is seen from afar, like a small hill. On this reading the giant is the juththa, the huge body lying on the land like a hill, which is what the story makes him: the world was made from the body of the first giant, Thor and his companions slept in Skrýmir's glove thinking it a hall, and poetry calls the inside of a mountain "the giants' roads". Hāma in the dictionary is to go off at random, not knowing where one is going, and Jötunheimr is the land where travellers lose their way: Thor walks all day in its forest until dark, and Freyr's messenger crosses it by night over the dank fells.

Linguistic Root

Jötunheimr and juththa

Cleasby and Vigfusson note that the word is common in Icelandic but hardly occurs in German or Saxon, except Old English eoten a dozen times. Among its uses they give "the giants' ways", the mountains, "the giant's skull", the sky, and "the giant's wound", the sea. Orel derives it from Germanic *etunaz and calls a connection with the verb "to eat" tentatively probable, which would make the giant "the eater".

Lane gives jaththahu, he pulled it up by the root; ujtuththat ash-shajara, the tree's whole juththa, its whole body, was taken; juththa, the body or person of a man sitting or lying down, and a corpse, as in the prayer "O God, keep the earth from pressing on his juththa"; and juththa also as raised ground whose form is seen from a distance, like a small hill. Lane, j-th-th. The comparison sets Norse y against Arabic j, as the Juthoor table records that Arabic j surfaces as j, g or y in the European languages, and Norse t against Arabic th, which becomes t on most routes into Europe. The Germanic dictionary reads the word from eating; our reading takes it from the body, and reaches it through what the giants do in the stories and through what the earth is made of.

The homes and hāma

The essay gives heim two paths: hāma, to go off wandering, the home being where one settles after wandering, and ḥimā, the protected place. In its table of the nine worlds it reads Jötunheimr by the first. The pages for Niflheimr and Muspelheimr put ḥimā first, as closer to the sense of a home, while hāma is closer in sound, its y answering the diphthong. Hāma suits Jötunheimr in particular, because it is the homeland without a fence, beyond the wall.

Key Mythic Narratives

The border and its crossing

The gods reach the giants' land only by riding, flying or sailing. Loki flies twice in Freyja's feather cloak, out "beyond the Æsir's courts and within the giants' worlds", then back the other way, and the poem sets "the Æsir's courts" against "the giants' homes" in the same words each time. Freyr's messenger rides a horse through the fire around Gymir's house. Thor crosses the deep sea to Útgarðr.

The outer house

Cleasby and Vigfusson record another name for the edges of the earth where the giants live, in the poem Þórsdrápa: Út-vé, "the outer mansion", like Útgarðr, "the outer enclosure". Its second word is the name of Odin's brother Vé. Cleasby–Vigfusson, vé.

Frost giants and mountain giants

Snorri distinguishes the frost giants, who came from Ymir, from the mountain giants. Both came to Baldr's pyre, and both "would go up to heaven if Bifröst were open to all who wished to cross", which is why fire burns in the bridge.

Symbolic Reading

The essay Rereading Norse Myths reads Jötunheimr on the map of Yggdrasil as the frozen wilderness: the glaciers and dense forests where no one lives, beyond the mountain ranges. The giants are the forces of nature beyond control, and Thor's fight against them is the human fight against cold, storms and avalanches.

The texts support this reading at particular points: the giants live beyond icy rivers, some of them are mountain giants, their roads run inside the rock, and the Iron Wood lies in the east. They also support a social reading: the land whose people are feared is the land one marries from, trades with and learns in. The gods take wives from the giants but do not give them Freyja, carry off the cauldron, the mead and wisdom from their country, and then close the border with fire and a river that never freezes.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Gilgamesh and Enkidu go out from the land of cities to the Cedar Forest beyond the mountains, whose guardian Humbaba was set there by Enlil, as Thor and Loki go out to the giants' land beyond the sea. In both journeys the hero crosses a country where no people live to bring back what his own city lacks: timber there, a cauldron, mead and brides here. They differ in that Gilgamesh kills the guardian and fells the forest, while Thor comes back from Útgarðr defeated by illusion.

On the map of the worlds Jötunheimr has its place in the world tree: Yggdrasil's second root turns toward the frost giants, where the first gap once was. Its inhabitants came from the body of Ymir that became the earth, as in the cosmic body pattern, and from it the giants march at Ragnarök.