Jötunheimr

Jötunheimr is the land beyond the edge of the gods' world — the country of the giants, lying east and outward across freezing rivers and deep seas, where the old powers that were before the gods still hold their halls. To go there is always to leave safety: it is into Jötunheim that Thor journeys to fish for the Midgard Serpent, to fetch Hymir's mile-deep cauldron, and to be humbled by the illusions of Útgarða-Loki, and from Jötunheim that Loki's monstrous children come. The giants are not simply enemies; they are older, vaster, keepers of wisdom and of the great elemental forces — the sea, old age, thought, the mountains' roots. Jötunheim is the Norse image of everything beyond the small lit circle of the gods' order: immense, ancient, dangerous, and the source of both the doom that will end the world and the lore the gods must cross its border to win.