#rimethursar

The upper thing is a map of the nine worlds of Yggdrasil. Most people draw them as separate world/planets/dimensions, but there are a few inconsistencies with that. To get them out of the way: Thor's said to go East when hunting trolls, the Aesir had a wall built around their fortress to discourage jotunns on the borders, Helheim is sometimes conflated with Niflheim, and the sea appears to be ever-present So they're all connected. Except Midgard because it's special. Some of the more important areas are marked, and a rough approximation of what it looks like from the outside is shown lower. That being said, I might revise this in a bigger, more detailed map later. Below that is a diagram detailing the differences between trolls, jotunns, and thurses. The truth is the difference is very hard to discern. Some beings are very clearly giants, some are trolls, and some waver between the lines. Even in their origins they're similar. Ymir's sweat became a legion of jotnar, his armpits produced a pair of jotunn, and his legs produced a monstrous, six-headed giant; trolls too descend from jotun, specifically Loki, and the words thurse and troll are etymologically similar. So here's my approximation of it: jotunn are basically wild gods, aging slower and having great, fantastic powers, trolls are to jotnar what humans are to the Aesir, and thurse are any monstrous giants, usually characterized by lesser intelligence, solitary attitudes, polycephaly, enormous size from which they can't shapeshift out of, or cannibalism. As with everything I do, it may change later.

On the opposite spectrum of eldojotnar are the frost giants, or rimethursar. The two differ in a number of ways. Firstly the obvious elemental one. Then the more important ones, like how they're much more common in Midgard, as they're able to traverse the world tree much more easily. Another is that most rimethursar are not uniform. Only a few, like the one pictured above, choose the "icy viking" look. Many are more comfortable in the shape of animals. It's commonly thought that beasts like lindworms and Bjarndýrakóngur are descended from jotnar in the shape of serpents and bears respectively. Those that do appear like humans are more in line with polar bears in anatomy. They have black, coarse skin, translucent hair made white with the polar sun, and a form of blubber. But easily the most important distinction is their temperament. Rimethursar aren't as quick to anger or passionate as eldojotnar, they're very, very slow to action. So slow to action that a few stay rooted in the ground covered in a thin layer of ice and snow. These are more likely to damage people as icebergs do rather than as other giants do.