#jotunnheim

Okay, so the First of the Three of Nifelheim is the First because it was her idea to go to Nifelheim and live there, in harmonious coexistence with Nifelheim’s perpetual winter. Only in Nifelheim are  First, Second and Third, specified in their title, as a common way of referring to each individual. The Three of Nifelheim are the first Jotunns to have altered their own natures so deeply as to allow them to channel elemental powers in regards to ice themselves, but also in such a stable manner in tune with the rest of their biology, that it was passed on to their offspring. Thus, those born in Nifelheim from those with ice in their blood would have ice as their birthright, but any other being (primarily Jotunn, but it was not unprecedented, at the peak of the Nameless City’s novelty to the nine realms, for other races to similarly transition) sufficiently captivated by the unique way of life to be had in the Nameless City can attempt to adapt and redesign themselves as the Three themselves did, by certain rites and devotions, and either their own power and sincerity of embrasure if they be mages, or by their own sheer force of will and surrender to the Three and the Casket of Ancient Winters if they do not have the Gift for mage-craft.

The First of the Three is Wanderer: the outside voice of reason keeping those for whom things are more personal and emotional grounded in objectivity. She stays on the outside looking in, always, because it is where she is most comfortable, and can give others the most freedom, but still be aware of when her people need aid, or are being mistreated.

The Second and Third of the Three in Nifelheim trade the remaining two positions in the triumvirate based on which of them feels the most comfortably objective when dealing with the government (or, as has been the case in the distant past in the Nameless City, plural governments) in charge at the time, because the position you wanted help to recall is that of Advisor: the one who walks amongst those in power, reminds them that they are never out of the reach of the Three on the rare occasion an overconfident ruler might dare forget, and provides advice if asked, or makes demands if there are important needs within the community that those in power are not meeting.

The rank of Voice goes to the member of the Three who walks always amongst the people. Only walks, and speaks to everyone, and listens to everyone. She also tells stories, and those stories are spread whenever a new one comes out, with an eagerness that has no comparison in culture on earth. Some of the stories the Voice tells are forgotten, with time, because newer ones obscure them, and the lessons of those older stories are no longer needed because the culture has already conformed to them, no longer requiring a parable of reminder. That, more than anything, is the power of the Voice, and the true reason that the Three have always been so respected. Because the two sisters, the Second and Third of the Three, absolutely love what they do, and their friend (and, it’s always suggested, sometimes-lover) the First of the Three appears frequently to call out abuses of power that the others might have missed, too caught up in what is right in front of them, rather than the bigger picture of the world around them.

Other places in the realms, in stories I write, tend to adapt a similar model of duties for semi-vigilante triumvirates of powerful mages who operate outside the laws of individual realms. The “who was First, Second and Third” is less important, overall, than who is Wanderer, or Advisor, or Voice. Maintaining the flexibility of the latter two, as well, is considered vital to the whole system ever being workable. In Jotunnheim, in past where some communities or provinces adopted a model like the Three in addition to their existing governments (it was a fad for a while in Jotunn history; it stuck in some places, but not in others, based on a bunch of other weird and unrelated factors) tended to consider Wanderer trade-able title too, should it ever need to be.

For the record, though, the First of the Three, in Nifelheim, just genuinely never wanted either of the other titles. That’s just kind of how Hretha is. She digs the peripatetic nature-wandering hermetic existence, watching over the civilisation that she and the other two brought to life, feeling the weight of responsibility for it like a parent watching their children make it through adulthood, making something all their own of their lives. And also laughing at them a lot, sometimes, in a manner that may or may not resemble Prak from the Hitchhiker’s Guide, post-truth-serum-overdose, but she also has a bit of a witch-doctor thing going on, too, along with her hermetic qualities, since unlike the others she has time to garden. So that’s mostly, uh, during certain seasonal rites, or after the harvest of some particular choice… herbs. (I want to be Hretha when I grow up, just a little.)

It’s presumed that if none of the Three of a particular territory feel comfortably objective and able to communicate easily with a particular political leader, that political leader’s days are numbered anyway, of course. This has been a pretty good strategy so far for Nifelheim; although in Jotunnheim it’s proved a bit more unstable. It depends entirely on the compatibility and balance of personalities and intellects amongst the Three themselves. Nifelheim’s Three are thus the first and most stable example of the whole model, adding to their sort of mythic status, while also making them further disconcerting, in many ways, to cultures like Asgard, who remain very happy that Nifelheim was peaceful back when they had their primary object of power (the Casket) and purely isolationist after it was stolen and used to ice-over all of Jotunnheim and thus kill off millions of innocent Jotunns who had been minding their own business until the freeze hit. In most of my stories so far, upon getting the Casket back, their first actions are usually to reach out to Jotunnheim, to reconnect and try to heal some of the damages done to it by the Casket. In the few I’ve had which sort of look further into the future of that, Jotunnheim and Nifelheim both begin to again communicate with the rest of the realms like Dvergarheim, Alfheim, and Vanaheim, as well as Asgard once Odin has either been off the throne a little while (*cough* impersonated by Loki *cough*) or at least otherwise taken down a few notches.

Alfheim in particular has a very… preservationist sort of culture, when it comes to all forms of life, and all sorts of ecosystems throughout the galaxy. They are like hippies, but most of their high-ranking families and races (for they are mostly elves, in the cities, but outside urban centres, which tend to be surrounded by dense communities of wilder and less organised communities, there are many other fae, far less elvish in their appearance and deportment) are high-elves, but the divide between races is not actually as hierarchal as it seems; it’s really just that the fae outside the more recognisably urban areas have entirely different societies and lifestyles. Some of them are nocturnal, some are not, some never sleep, and some rarely wake. Most cannot stand stone walls, but while the elves are adept at metal-working and fine crafts related to that, most other fae have a major metal aversion; pure iron, in particular, can poison or burn them. Elves thus have the advantage in trade with other realms where the use of metals is much more wide-ranging, but abuse of that power caused a lot of violent revolutions in past centuries, and the various nations of Alfheim are usually in competition, with even different ethnicities of elves competing based on some of their cultural and social differences. Also they’re all very competitive and well-mannered, but also ferociously sly, which means that amongst the aristocratic-seeming high-elves, there’s levels of competition economic and social, that would make the lives of all  of the Medici family of Florence from Cosimo De Medici forward, look simple, straight-forward, and prone to forgiveness. Non-urban fae tend to feed the fires of those competitions, pulling strings quietly from outside, to depose any in the high court who dares overly abuse their powers over those outside Aflheim’s major cities.

Alfheim has a larger population than realms like Vanaheim, or Asgard, or even Dvergarheim to an extent, in part because Alfheim’s peoples are not actually as long-lived as the rest of the races in the realms, except some of their more powerful mages. They aren’t nearly as brief as mortals in life-span, but they sort of take pride in their own brevity, particularly the wilder and more chaotic fae, who can be feral and so vibrantly alive than they seem to glow like torch-flames, and can live lives just as fragile and brief as fire, to those around them who remain alive far longer. Also, elves are more susceptible to some forms of fatal illnesses, or have health which may suffer due to how very sensitive some elves are to particular psychic and mystic influences around them.

Thus, with Jotunnheim’s recovery being a major head-canon of mine, Alfheim would tend to be the first of the other realms to send earth mages immediately upon hearing word of such a recovery. Their earth mages are a bit fanatical. They are like pokemon collectors, and they love biodiversity with an almost obsessive zeal, and can sort of come across as being only interested in the novelty of new information about forms of life they didn’t know everything about already, but in fact they really are just… obsessed. Driven. Straight-up nerdy. They would so want first dibs on bringing the Jotunnheim of old, and its ecosystems, out of winter and into the first new spring Jotunnheim’s seen in millennia. Vanaheim would probably also send aid, as a gesture of good faith, eventually. Dvergarheim doesn’t even notice until Alfheim traders started showing up with things that were clearly from deep under the long-undistubed ice of Jotunnheim, and immediately start trying to engage in trade, while their mages, historical scholars, and engineers would try to head there immediately mostly just to learn from the old, but then eventually would mingle with the Jotunns there and build actual bonds between the cultures beyond merely economic.

Asgard would probably be forced to offer at least as much aid as Vanaheim, but once Loki finishes teaching Asgard, in one way or another, about the new balance of power in the realms with the recovery of Jotunnheim and the return of Nifelheim out of their previous long isolation, though, cultural change would naturally lead to Jotunns being less stigmatised in general Asgardian culture, but that still takes time. A lot of time. That’s part of why there’s still only hints of anything that far ahead in these head-canons of mine, seen through the Dare to Believe in Us series I’ve written.

In some stories, Loki is one of the Three of Jotunnheim. In a few, I’ve made him one of the Three of Asgard. In The Trickster God and the Infamous Inventor-Thief, Loki was Wanderer of Asgard, Frigga was Advisor, and Hlín (I like her too much not to keep having her show up as a recurring character) as Voice, if anyone happened to wonder.

Also, um. [Embarrassed throat-clearing]

So I’m working on a new original universe based on the nine realms of Yggdrasil. And Nifelheim… Nifelheim will still have their Three, and their Nameless City. I don’t know what stories I’ll be telling in this universe yet, and I don’t want to reveal too many details, but Jotunnheim society might be the complete polar opposite of patriarchy in such a way as to break down all of its assumptions at their very foundation.

As you can all probably guess, I’m having so much fun with that, I can’t even begin to tell you. Also apparently I really like designing planet ecologies to the point of obsessive detail. I have world maps drawn that include oceanic currents and trade winds. I might have drawn them while I was at work and could have done more work-related things, but no one noticed and I loathe that place, so hooray.

It's now my head-canon that gender among Jotunns isn't a mandatory thing, and it's not at all uncommon for those who either don't settle on a gender and swap at will, or those who just don't bother with either male or female and do their own thing, to use "hän" as their gender pronoun. This has no effect on their social rank or their position/duties as part of their community within Jotunnheim, but Jotunn communities outside Jotunnheim and Nifleheim, due to contact with other cultures like Asgard and Alfheim can tend to have more rigid ideas on gender.

Also the choice between matronymic and patronymic within Jotunnheim is that they're actually highly interchangeable, and it's whichever parent is most likely to be familiar to the person someone is talking to (informal/or just with other Jotunns who live in the same community) or whichever parent was of a higher social rank within their community (formal/or when speaking to someone from outside the local community, an outsider).

Nifleheim, by contrast, uses only matronymics, when possible, or nicknames (like Lie-smith) for particularly accomplished/well-known/notorious individuals, like they've earned a title. Nifleheim leans more toward matriarchal structures and women are more likely to be leaders of their communities and families. This is due to the importance of the three, and a long line of queens, very few kings, having ruled from Nifleheim's throne. It's not that men are valued less, it's just considered more natural for women to be put in charge almost out of habit, gained by generations who were used to looking for women (the three, the queen, etc) when looking for the most important people in a room, or a public procession, or what have ye. Gender binary itself, though, is as un-rigid as in Jotunnheim, same pronoun usage (hän, seriously Finland I already love your metal and your trolls and your twisted sense of humour, and I find your awesome intimidating) and same notable complete lack of stigma over individuals changing gender, or abandoning it altogether; although, individuals of such identities tend to lean more towards feminine gender expression in dress or demeanor if they move up in social rank to a leader position, because feminine gender expression is associated with authority in Nifleheim culture. Because hella-badass matriarchs are common.

... I swear this is stuff that's been percolating in the back of my head ever since I came up with the Three for "Who We Are And Why We Are Here" and I really am addicted to world-building now. I then recently realized, upon re-listening to Therion's "Secret of the Runes" album that the female vocals in the track "Nifleheim" are probably directly responsible for inspiring The Three. That then got me thinking about my Nifleheim head-canons again. I'm not even a little bit sorry.

I really dig Jotunns. It's a thing.

Edit #2: the lovely lovely Tygerc helped me with Finnish. YAY!