March 2021 - The Frost Giant's Daughter

[Jason Aiken]

Maybe something a little shorter for March...





"Gods of the North" etext: gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600751h.html

Read it via the Del Rey edition: amzn.to/3bjYvsj

Listen to it:

[kobeck]

My apologies for missing last couple of months... busy.

no excuse really but truth.

...

[kobeck]

hair like elfin gold...

Conan sees the frost giants daughter & his pulse hammers - LOL

always enjoy this one.

[karasuthecrow]

One of his most beautifuly descriptive stories, so rich in all the details.

I have reviewed the stoy on my podcast as part of REHs 115 years celebration, but is only in Spanish.

[linefacedscrivener]

I always thought that if a decent film was ever made of "The Frost Giant's Daughter," it should open up with the tail end of the fighting and the "Immigrant Song" by Led Zepplin:

[linefacedscrivener]

Hands down, my favorite Frazetta poster depicting Conan and the frost giants.

So, I have a question regarding this story. I know many people don't like this Conan story because it depicts a man trying to rape a woman. My take on the story has always been that the Frost Giant's Daughter is a northern Siren who lures in her victims, then controls them to do her bidding. In this case, she meet's a man who has a far superior control of his own will and while he is lured by her spell, she cannot control him. Hence, Atali flees to her brothers for help. 

[karasuthecrow]

[spidermay]

Radio drama: soundcloud.com/radiobigworld/the-frost-giants-daughter

Not my mother language, so I appreciated the different voices.

I used it many times to train my listening skills (to some avail).

[1F409]

I'm curious about what the giants are like. Visual interpretations range from the rather modest Frazetta cover to creatures several times the height of a man. Concerning the latter, sure, Conan can jump a bit, and his extra height lends itself to the length of a sword stroke, but the illustrations showing him bouncing around and practically climbing up his enemies as if he were prequel Yoda, is ridiculous.

He did not wonder at the strangeness of it all, not even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way. The scales of their mail were white with hoar-frost; their helmets and their axes were covered with ice. Snow sprinkled their locks; in their beards were spikes of icicles; their eyes were cold as the lights that streamed above them.

My impression from this is that they're either dormant or standing watch, perhaps dug in for camouflage or merely obscured by fallen snow. In any case, I notice nothing about them being oddly colored, unlike their sister.

Conan saw the remaining giant looming high above him like a colossus carved of ice...

I imagine that some artists have used that as an excuse to draw them as ice-monsters, but I see no evidence for such a wild conclusion. Not having absorbed a breadth of literature, I don't know whether the notion of today's D&D-style "elemental" creatures was common back then, or merely gained popularity with the advent of CGI.

The giant’s knees bent and he sank slowly into the snow, which turned crimson with the blood that gushed from his half-severed neck.

Clearly, the giants bleed like normal men, and are not so huge as to out-scale those sorts of wounds.

Do you think that Howard had in mind nothing more than gigantic men? Would they have been just proportionally scaled men, or something more biologically realistic? Where should we look to gain an understanding of how giants were conceptualized throughout the ages?