"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" | |
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by Robert E. Howard | |
Original title | Gods of the North |
Country | US |
Language | English |
Series | Conan the Cimmerian |
Genre(s) | Fantasy |
Published in | US |
Publication date | 1953 |
"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is one of the original fantasy short stories about Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard.
The story is set in the fictional history of the Hyborian Age and details Conan pursuing a spectral nymph across the frozen tundra of Nordheim. Rejected as a Conan story by Weird Tales magazine editor Farnsworth Wright, Howard changed the main character's name to "Amra of Akbitana" and retitled the piece as "The Gods of the North", as which it was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan . It was not published in its original form in Howard's lifetime.
"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" is the earliest chronological story by Robert E. Howard in terms of Conan's life. The brief tale is set in frozen Nordheim, geographically situated north of Conan's homeland, Cimmeria. Conan is a young warrior traveling in a war party of the Aesir, a barbarian people inspired on the main gods of Norse mythology. Shortly before the story begins, a melee has occurred on an icy plain. Eighty men have perished, and Conan alone survives the battlefield where Wulfhere's Aesir "reavers" faced the "wolves" of Bragi, a chieftain of the Vanir, another barbarian group based on Norse gods.
Following his battle with the red-haired Vanir, Conan, lying exhausted, is visited by a beautiful partially-nude woman identifying herself as "Atali". Upon her bodice, she wears a transparent veil: a wisp of gossamer that wasn't spun by human origin. The sight of her awakens Conan's lust and, when she repeatedly taunts him, he chases Atali across the snow-covered region.
Mocking him with each step, Atali lures Conan into an ambush. Undaunted by the snare, Conan slays her twin brothers, two Frost Giants, and captures Atali in his arms. Atali calls upon her father, Ymir, to save her. Before Conan can ravish her, Atali disappears in a stroke of lightning which transforms the landscape and renders him unconscious.
When his Aesir comrades arrive, Conan believes he dreamed the encounter. Then Conan realizes he's still gripping a veil, the sole garment of the Frost-Giant's daughter.
While Robert E. Howard had already written many fantasy stories featuring northern Viking-like characters, the names and plot structure for "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" were derived in their entirety from Thomas Bulfinch's The Outline of Mythology (1913). Howard combined the legend of Atalanta with another reworked Bulfinch legend, that of Daphne and Apollo, but he reversed the roles. Whereas Apollo was a god and Daphne a mortal, Howard made Atali a goddess and Conan a mortal. In the original, Cupid had struck Apollo with an arrow to excite love for Daphne but struck her with an arrow to cause her to find love repellent. Howard kept the idea of the love-maddened Apollo (here a lust-maddened Conan) pursuing the girl until she invokes aid from her divine father. [1]
The earlier version of the story was published in the collections The Coming of Conan (Gnome Press, 1953) and Conan of Cimmeria (Lancer Books, 1969). The last version, as left by Howard before his death, was first published in 1976 by Donald M. Grant in an edition of the Conan story Rogues in the House . This version has most recently been republished in the collections The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle (Gollancz, 2000) and The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2004).
The story has been adapted into comics:
The story was also adapted into the prologue to the unproduced sequel King Conan: Crown of Iron [2] written by screenwriter/director John Milius. In the screenplay, Conan encounters the Frost-Giant's Daughter and defeats her brothers, as in the original. But in Milius' adaptation, he is not interrupted by Ymir and impregnates Atali, who then disappears in apparent fear of "The Ice Worm". She bears him a son named Kon, whose parentage is important to the story.
The 2018 video game Conan Exiles features a boss NPC named Ladagara, Daughter of Ymir, a larger than normal NPC which may spawn in the Nordheimer settlement of New Asagarth who is the daughter of the frost giant god, Ymir. Upon slaying Ladagara, Daughter of Ymir, the player receives a Horn of the North drop that summons a frost giant pet to their side when used. The Warmaker's Sanctuary dungeon in Conan Exiles also features a nod to The Frost Giant's Daughter, with the Archivist's Assistant miniboss dropping a manuscript entitled The Daughter of Ymir that grants a player a temporary +4 buff in agility for 60 minutes after use.
Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, films, television programs, video games, and role-playing games. Robert E. Howard created the character in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine.
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"The Vale of Lost Women" is a fantasy short story by American author Robert E. Howard. It is one of his original short stories about Conan the Cimmerian that was not published during his lifetime. The Magazine of Horror first published the story in its Spring, 1967 issue. It was republished in the collection Conan of Cimmeria. It has also been republished in the collections The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932-1933). Set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, "The Vale of Lost Women" details Conan's rescue of a female Ophirean captive from the Bakalah tribe, on the (apparent) condition that he will receive sexual favors in return for his generosity.
"The Hyborian Age" is an essay by Robert E. Howard pertaining to the Hyborian Age, the fictional setting of his stories about Conan the Cimmerian. It was written in the 1930s but not published during Howard's lifetime. Its purpose was to maintain consistency within his fictional setting.
Ymir is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is based on the frost giant of the same name from Norse mythology.
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"Wolves Beyond the Border" is one of the original stories by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring Conan the Cimmerian, a fragment begun in the 1930s but not finished or published in Howard's lifetime. It is a peripheral story in the canon in that while it takes place in Conan's "Hyborian Age" and during Conan's lifetime, Conan does not actually appear, but is merely mentioned. The story was completed by L. Sprague de Camp and in this form first published in the collection Conan the Usurper (1967). It has since been published in its original form in the collection The Conan Chronicles Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932-1933).
The Coming of Conan is a collection of eight fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Kull and Conan the Barbarian, together with the first part of his pseudo-history of the "Hyborian Age" in which the Conan tales were set. It was first published in hardcover in the United States by Gnome Press in 1953 and by Boardman Books in the United Kingdom in 1954. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split and distributed among other "Kull" and "Conan" collections.
The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2006 by Gollancz and is an omnibus of their earlier collections The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle and The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon, though the stories are rearranged. The collection is edited by Stephen Jones and was issued to celebrate the centenary of Howard's birth. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Phantagraph, Weird Tales, Super-Science Fiction, Magazine of Horror, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Magazine and The Howard Collector.
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