Jötunheim

Jötunheim (“giant-country”) is the home of the beings known as jötnar, or giants. It’s usually depicted as a wild, mountainous area that sits at the rim of Midgard, the world we know and live in. Jötunheim is inaccessible by regular means; oftentimes the gods have to fly using feathered cloaks or cross certain bodies of water to reach it.

Jötunheim was created when the first gods slew the giant Ymir and used his body to create Midgard. All the blood that gushed from Ymir’s body filled ginnungagap and swept the existing giants and trolls out to the farthest reaches of creation, drowning many of them. Those that survived quickly repopulated in these far-flung countries, and swore to take vengeance on humanity.

While Jötunheim is given a physical description in the Norse myths, it represents a specific kind of cognitive phenomena: It’s the space that sits on the border between “what we know” and “what we don’t know,” making it something we can always perceive but never reach. As soon as we try to approach the things we don’t know, they become known to us, and Jötunheim is pushed further out, like a mirage in the distance or the line of the horizon. This is what makes it “a place that sits at the rim of the world.”

But unlike mirages and the horizon, Jötunheim inspires a great sense of unease within us. Looking at and beyond the edge of what we know causes fearful “what ifs” to come to mind. If we avoid facing these fears, we’ll never expand the boundaries of our lives, and Jötunheim and its rímþursar (“frost giants”) will close in around us. But if we have the courage and curiosity to broaden our horizons (represented by Thor and Loki, respectively), then we constantly push the boundaries of Jötunheim further and further out, expanding our own bubble of possibility and preventing the giants from overwhelming us.

Perhaps it was by this mechanic that the vikings could explore the farthest reaches of the world.