THE FROST-GIANT'S DAUGHTER

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is a short story written by Robert E. Howard in the early 1930s, but not published until 1953. It seems to be the very first Conan story chronologically. However, I'm not going to go all the way and say that this is for sure, because different chronologies put it in wildly different places. The Dale Rippke chronology puts it at the very beginning, and the Joe Marek order puts it third, while Sprague de Camp and Robert Jordan put it at the twenty-second and twenty-fifth(!) story, respectively. I totally get the argument for putting "Legions of the Dead" and "The Thing in the Crypt" ahead of this story, but later than that and I would argue against it.

Putting these three stories (Frost-Giant, Legions, and Crypt) together makes a lot of sense to me. Conan is definitely young in all three of them and he is traveling with the Aesir, up north in Nordheim. While Conan's age isn't explicitly stated and his characterization in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" isn't juvenile or anything, he definitely seems a little bit more foolish in this story than in others. He falls for the wiles of Atali, the frost-giant nymph daughter of the god Ymir, which feels out of character with a Conan any older- he's usually very shrewd and distrusting. I could see placing this story last of the three aforementioned, but any later doesn't make much sense. As far as I'm aware, Conan never ventures this far north again in any of his stories, nor can I recall any return to Cimmeria, which he would likely cross through to get back to Nordheim, limiting when this story could take place. [Note: After having read "Legions of the Dead" and "The Thing in the Crypt," I've realized this story has to come first. read more about why in my posts for those stories.]

While it seems that all sources agree this story takes place in Nordheim, it's not actually explicitly stated. He speaks of those in Vanaheim (his enemies) and those in Asgard (his friends), but it doesn't name the region.

Because this story wasn't published during Robert E. Howard's lifetime (it debuted nearly twenty years after his death, in 1953), it isn't included in the "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" by P. Schuyler Miller and John D. Clark, which Howard generally approved of.

This is a pretty great Conan story, extremely brief but full of magic and danger. In just a couple of pages, we see the bloody end of a battle as well as Conan's magical encounter with the duplicitous Atali. She's a great villain who's obviously up to something from the start, she has a very memorable appearance with her ice-like skin and blazing orange hair, and the way she laughs continually is very threatening. I don't love the implications of what would happen to her if she hadn't escaped Conan at a certain point in the story, but she's a really cool character. I love that the story does almost a fake-out at the end, with the Aesir wondering if Conan simply hit his head and imagined the whole thing, right before Conan realizes he's clutching a diaphanous piece of fabric that could only have come from Atali.

The setting is really fun as well; the way Howard plays with color and light to liven up a frost tundra reminds me of "The Blazing World," a piece of speculative fiction from the 1600s that I only know because of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic series.

​"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" was originally rejected by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright (mentioned in my last entry as well), but Howard made some slight adjustments to the story and published it as "The Gods of the North" in a magazine titled The Fantasy Fan. It does appear that there are two surviving versions, one published in 1953 and a seemingly more-finished version that was first published in 1976. Additionally, this is one of the most widely-adapted Conan stories. My first encounter with it was the first-ever piece of Conan media I ever came across, as it was the first story in The Savage Sword of Conan volume 1, with the adaption written by Conan comics GOAT Roy Thomas and drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. I think it's even the inspiration for the cover of the omnibus. This is a good adaption, but Windsor-Smith's Conan doesn't really jive with most interpretations of him, lacking the darker skin and swooping, black bangs.

Overall, "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is a very good work of might and magic fiction. I may be rating it slightly higher than it deserves; I just read a very long adaption of Conan the Liberator, which I thought was a pretty mediocre Conan story, but this one is a classic. The more time passes, the more I like this story, too. 

"Legions of the Dead" is up next!

As a fun bonus: the hard rock band The Sword has a song called "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," based on the short story.

​★★★★☆