Chronologically Speaking, Part Nineteen: "The Frost-Giant's Daughter"

Chronologically Speaking is a series focused solely on placing the Conan of Cimmeria stories in timeline order. It's an analysis of only the text of Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales. I'm examining the stories one at a time, in publication order, to show explicit chronological notes to order the stories.

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"The Frost-Giant's Daughter," like many posthumously-published Conan stories, had a pretty circuitous path to publication. I spent a while talking about that path in a recent video I did called "The First(?) Conan Story: The Frost-Giant's Daughter." If you want to go in-depth about the very interesting publishing history of the story, you can watch that video, but here's the much-abbreviated version.

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" was written in March 1932, very soon after "The Phoenix on the Sword," making it the second Conan story written, and the first conceived as a Conan story.

It was rejected by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright.

Howard sent the story to the fanzine The Fantasy Fan in late 1933 after having made edits to it, retitling it "The Frost King's Daughter," before the zine published it under the title "Gods of the North" in March 1934.

L. Sprague de Camp made further edits to the story and published his version in 1953 in the magazine Fantasy Fiction and then the Gnome Press book The Coming of Conan.

But the original, unadulterated Howard cut of "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" would not be widely available until it was published in 1976 collection Rogues in the House from the publishing house Donald Grant. That's almost 45 years from pen to publication! It also really muddies the waters as to what version you're reading at any given time. Many places online will present the edited de Camp text or the original Howard text and yet attribute them to The Fantasy Fan's '34 version.

But enough about our real-life placement of the story. This is one of Howard's shortest Conan stories (about 3000 words) and one of the most difficult to place chronologically. It's not overflowing with timeline markers and those that are there need to be interpreted pretty heavily. 

• Conan is in the northern reaches of the map with the Aesir, fighting a war with the Vanir. This area is never revisited in any other Howard stories. However, it is spoken of in a few other stories.
  • It is mentioned in "Queen of the Black Coast," in which Conan states that he is familiar with the gods of the north: "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla." This seems to suggest that "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" has occurred by the time "Queen of the Black Coast" takes place.
  • It is also mentioned in "The Phoenix on the Sword." When filling in a map of the areas north of Cimmeria, Conan tells Prospero, who thought that perhaps Vanaheim and Asagard were the stuff of legend, "You had known otherwise, had you spent your youth on the northern frontiers of Cimmeria! Asgard lies to the north, and Vanaheim to the northwest of Cimmeria, and there is continual war along the borders." Obviously, "Frost-Giant" needs to take place before some of Conan's latest adventures as a king.
• In speaking with Atali, Conan claims, "Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen."
  • This is perhaps one of the most vexing lines in the story. Conan seems to believe that he has wandered very far, but he doesn't say how far he's wandered. This brings up a very specific memory for me: sitting in my political science class during the first week of classes in my freshman year of college. As someone who'd been obsessively into Rage Against the Machine and had started reading Leonard Peltier and Howard Zinn in high school, I had felt a frustration with my peers, who weren't nearly as interested. I was such a prick. But I got a serious reality check that first week of college when I realized that the pond had just gotten way, way bigger and I realized I didn't know near as much as most people in the class and most people were more politically-involved than me. In other words, I had wandered way less far than I thought I had when I was 18. This colors my interpretation of the line.
• Atali says to Conan, "'Who are you to swear by Ymir?' she mocked. 'What know you of the gods of ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure among an alien people?'"
  • I suppose this could be interpreted as saying that Conan has come immediately from the south, meaning from Cimmeria, to Vanaheim, but that would imply that Atali had been watching Conan for a long time. We know that Atali was watching Conan's fight with Heimdul - she calls him "Conan of Cimmeria," a name that he doesn't ever say to her, but he did say to Heimdul before he killed him - but it seems unlikely that she had her eye on him before, especially considering the lore dump by "Old Gorm" at the end of the narrative detailing what Atali's modus operandi is.
    • Speaking of Gorm, he too saw Atali when he was young, perhaps suggesting that Atali chiefly targets younger men to lure them back to her brothers.
• Conan's characterization seems rather young, but this is tricky.
  • In the youngest Conan stories, Conan is often described as a youth. This is somewhat conspicuously absent in "Frost-Giant." Instead, Conan is referred to as a "man" three times.
    • From "The God in the Bowl:" "Arus saw a tall powerfully built youth..."
    • From "The Tower of the Elephant:" "He saw a tall, strongly made youth..."
    • From "Queen of the Black Coast:" "Young in years, he was hardened in warfare and wandering..."
  • Conan's alarm bells about magic and sorcery are not set off by any of the strange happenings that occur. He doesn't seem to consider that Atali might not be just a woman but instead a magical being, and he gets utterly ensorcelled by her fairly easily.
    • "He looked up; there was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not place or define—an unfamiliar tinge to earth and sky. But he did not think long of this."
    • "He did not wonder at the strangeness of it all, not even when two gigantic figures rose up to bar his way."
    • "Passion fierce as physical agony flooded his whole being, so that earth and sky swam red to his dizzy gaze. In the madness that swept upon him, weariness and faintness were swept away." Conan literally foams at the mouth for Atali, completely losing control of himself.

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While this is great art, a small part of me always bristles at dark depictions of this story. The story is blindingly bright.

With just the above to guide us, I don't think that the story is very strongly anchored to any specific point in Conan's life. In this series, I ignore all paratext and focus only on the text of Howard's stories, but just for fun, let's see what others have said.

John D. Clark's revised chronology places the story after "Queen of the Black Coast," but I think his reasoning is thin: Conan wears a horned helmet in both: "His horned helmet was such as was worn by the golden-haired Aesir of Nordheim." As I've explored before, I find it more likely that Conan wears or comes across or owns similar items like a horned helmet or red cloak more often than once.

Howard himself had a word on the subject in his famous correspondence with Clark and P. Schuyler Miller that helped birth "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" in 1936. Howard wrote, "There was a space of about a year between Vanarium and his entrance into the thief-city of Zamora. During this time he returned to the northern territories of his tribe, and made his first journey beyond the boundaries of Cimmeria. This, strange to say, was north instead of south. Why or how, I am not certain, but he spent some months among a tribe of the Aesir, fighting with the Vanir and the Hyperboreans, and developing a hate for the latter which lasted all his life and later affected his policies as King of Aquilonia. Captured by them, he escaped southward in time to make his debut in print." So it seems likely that Howard considered this the first story too, even prior to its official publication.

Dale Rippke's Dark Storm Chronology, which I think is one of the best out there, opines that "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" may have been moved out of first place because of the rapey vibes, choosing a more palatable story to be the introduction if someone was choosing to read chronologically.

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Here's a fun side note: in the "Gods of the North" version published in The Fantasy Fan in 1934, Conan is swapped out for "Amra of Akbitana." This version, assuming Amra and Conan have the same life trajectory, would have to place the story much, much later in the chronology, since Amra states exactly how far he has wandered: "Far have I wandered, from Zingara to the Sea of Vilayet, in Stygia and Kush, and the country of the Hyrkanians; but a woman like you I have never seen." This would place the story at least after a mercenary and pirate period.

Ignoring everyone else's two cents on the subject finally brings me to sharing my placement. I am indeed putting "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" as the very first Conan tale. This is not because I think it's strongly tied to his youth - it's not - but because it doesn't really fit anywhere better. Howard had conceived of Asgard and Vanaheim and the wars between their people in "The Phoenix on the Sword," the very first Conan story to be published, so perhaps he felt he'd expand on the idea in the second. In relation to other tales, it probably needs to happen before "Queen of the Black Coast," which I have listed sixth. But the characterization of Conan seems closer to the "God in the Bowl" Conan than any other, so I place it first.

Here's the updated chronology:

1. The Frost-Giant's Daughter
2. The God in the Bowl
3. Rogues in the House
4. The Tower of the Elephant
5. The Nestor synopsis ("The Hall of the Dead")
6. Queen of the Black Coast
7. Xuthal of the Dusk
8. Iron Shadows in the Moon
9. The Devil in Iron
10. The People of the Black Circle
11. A Witch Shall Be Born
12. The Man-Eaters of Zamboula
13. Black Colossus
14. The Pool of the Black One
15. The Servants of Bit-Yakin
16. Red Nails
17. Beyond the Black River
18. The Phoenix on the Sword
19. The Scarlet Citadel
20. The Hour of the Dragon