So, for some reason, people always kinda seem to write the Jötnar as having the same diet as those of Asgard, despite the fact that Asgard is a vibrant, lush land with farms, and Jötunheimr is... You know. Frozen.
So, let’s talk about what the Jötnar are gonna eat.
Brrrr. Looks chilly. (Source)
So, building on my already established idea that the Jötnar don’t put on too much fat, and instead have extra muscle, they’re gonna need some damned protein to sustain it. Because we’re dealing with such a cold climate, we’re probably going to be looking at animals who’ll withstand the cold, but what you won’t see much of is any bigger, greener flowering plants or the like.
So, Jötunheimr, in my view, has huge, wide, choppy seas. Big, massive waves, very salty, choppy water, and pretty much all the Jötnar are natural swimmers because, uh, they gotta be.
Being as the Jötnar are physically fit and muscular, as well as likely seafaring to at least some extent, we can expect them to eat:
various fish, as well as squid, crustaceans and molluscs
fish eggs
sea birds and their eggs
sea-faring mammals like whales, seals and walruses
sea weeds + plants
And because we’ve already seen some massive beasts that wander around Jötunheimr, I’d also expect them to hunt that sort of thing. The Inuits eat polar bears as well as animals like caribou, and I definitely don’t think the Jötnar would shy away from hunting and butchering a predator as much as a prey animal.
All of this meat is gonna be super heavy in protein, oils and nutrients that the Jötnar are gonna fucking need.
I feel like their diet is meat-heavy and meat-centred, but then they’re also gonna have what plant matter is possible to get hold of - I mentioned sea weed and other sea-centred plants, but I would also imagine they eat various edible mosses and fungi that survive the sub zero temperature in the relative warmth of the caves beneath Jötunheimr, and then there’s also stuff like tubers and hardy grasses that they probably eat a fair amount of too.
You know what they’re probably not used to?
Milk. They almost definitely do not eat milk, or cheese, or anything of the kind, except extremely rarely, and I imagine that while the Jötnar aren’t entirely lactose intolerant, they probably can’t stand to have more than a little bit of milk at a time once they’re no longer babes in arms, and definitely not processed into butter, cheese or any other dairy product.
Then, sweets. Notice how, uh, everything I’ve mentioned so far does not taste sweet. In fact, a lot of it is going to be heavily salty (much of the fatty meat and fish) or bitter (the weeds and tubers). I don’t think the Jötnar eat sweets, and in fact, I imagine they either have no capacity to taste it, or have a very small capacity for sweetness, and are swiftly overwhelmed by pretty much any sweet taste in their mouth. Even a little bit of honey or sugar would just make them gag.
Also, as a result of the stuff they eat - really heavy on meat which probably doesn’t come around that often, and subsequently is probably saved over time, as well as on very tough plants and tubers, I’m actually super attached to the idea of the Jötnar having mildly acidic saliva?
Firstly, it’d break down the plants and tubers easier, making them much, much easier to chew, but it also means they’d be able to withstand meat that had slightly rotted without any issues at all, as it’d just burn right through the acrid nastiness of it, and subsequently rotted stuff which is already a bit acidic would probably be considered a huge delicacy.
Also, I think the Jötnar do have alcohol, but now that you’ve listened to my acid delicacy theory... Yep, you guessed it! I feel like it’d be kind of similar to poitín, which we make here in Ireland out of potatoes (yeah, I know), but instead out of frozen roots and tubers. So it’d be like, very bitter and very acidic, and probably straight-up poisonous to most Asgardians.
it is very, very unlikely that jötunn funeral custom involves
a) burying their dead
or
b) burning their dead
re: burying their dead, there is very visibly a lot of layers of ice that people walk on, which is very thick, glacially thick, but ultimately isn’t actually on ground - think of it much like the arctic, which is basically a lot of tiny bits of land connected by a big frozen ocean in the middle.
you just wouldn’t be able to bury anybody on that. even assuming you sought out a point where there actually is frozen earth beneath you... it’d be nearly impossible to shovel down into that, and it’s very unlikely that once you did so the body would actually rot and break down.
re: burning their dead
dude, it’s too cold lol. fires would be doused by one breeze or one burst of icy sea spray, and the thing is like... if you just think of it from the perspective of the jötnar, who are comfortable in the cold and therefore do not need to make fires to keep warm, and honestly probably don’t use fire at all...
it’d feel like a very unnatural way to dispose of one’s dead. you have to remember that this is a completely different culture, and that their valueset wouldn’t necessarily look on fire as an impressive or very powerful force in the way most cultures do.
for me personally, I believe that the Jötunn funeral process probably involves stripping the meat from the bones (I actually love the idea of there being a specific plateau where bodies are strapped down/settled down with magic, and so animals, particularly carrion birds and the like, would eat the meat themselves, but another way of doing this would be via some sort of acid) and then disposing of the bones in a ceremonial fashion via the ocean.
disposing of the bodies just outright in the ocean would probably lead to them just being devoured or ripped from the sacking/funeral clothes they’re packed in, etc, and you wouldn’t want to think of burials at sea where sea animals are waiting for you to drop a body and snatch it from you before it’s ready to go down, etc.
Hi, I'm making an Angrboda and have been furiously reading your Jotunn posts and saw a mention of "Jotun think gender is fake news" and since this Angrboda happens to be part of a Polyamorous Threesome of Fuck Gender i am curious to if you had any preliminary notes on that you were willing to share? cause a cool concept but i can tell literally nothing from Thor bc that movie has such dark lighting your posts have literally been my source of info.
Mmmm, so like... I have a lot of feelings about Loki’s genderfluidity and the way it fits into the Aesir way of life - now, different people interpret it in different ways, but I definitely feel that there’s a lot of misogyny present on Asgard.
It’s noted as particularly impressive that Sif should be a warrior beside the Warriors Three and Thor, despite the idea that the Valkyries are a legendary troupe of all-female warriors, and I think both Sif and the Valkyries are viewed very much as an exception to the general rule.
Loki, for his part, often drags out misogyny, but he only pulls it out specifically to hurt women who are in the room with him - Natasha and Jane are primary examples in the MCU, and in the 616 he often attacks Sif for her femininity.
Given that canonically, Loki is genderfluid, and that even his physical form is relatively fluid and flexible as a result of his shapeshifting abilities, and given that Loki favours certain styles and habits that are far more feminine than masculine in the eyes of the Aesir (Loki’s shortblades are feminine in themselves, but it is plain he learned his skill in those from Frigga, and Frigga’s style appears to be reminiscent of the Valkyries’ own; Loki often favours magic; Loki will favour talking and conniving instead of fighting head-on, etc.), and I think there’s a certain poetry in Loki’s true background being entirely genderfree.
So, re: sexual characteristics.
The vast majority of the population (say, 95%) present with the characteristics that will allow them to sire children, with an outward shaft and internal testes that are probably the warmest internal part of the Jötunn body, and then the characteristics that will allow them to bear children, with a vaginal opening, a birth canal and a womb.
Although there are words in Jötunn for “sire” and “bearer”, these things bear significance in terms of divination or the way one tracks one’s bloodlines - there is no shame in being one or the other, and the Jötnar as a whole consider siring and bearing to be quite equal, although bearing of course takes longer.
The Jötnar look upon children very fondly, and it’s advantageous for both spouses to be able to bear children at once, especially because (and I’m going to be expanding on this in later metas) the Jötnar have a heavy ban upon any bloodsports, and ordinarily do not engage in any kind of fighting or violence outside of protecting others. The secondary rib cage of the Jötnar, which expands and offers a stone-heavy, protective cage of bone around the expanding womb also means that they cannot be injured with a blow, et cetera, although this does mean that when there are miscarriages and the like, there’s no option for the equivalent of a Caesarean section without a lot of magic being used.
Now, because of these quirks of biology, there’s really no basis for gender to develop in this society. All Jötnar are seen to be nurturing and poetic, strong and hale, regardless of whether they are siring or bearing, or both.
Thus, there are no gendered pronouns in the frosty tongue of the Jötnar. Pronouns can be used to denote social class (I imagine there are different pronouns for elders as opposed to youths, as well as different pronouns for speaking about the nobility), but there aren’t specialized gender pronouns.
I think the vast majority of Jötnar would also be kind of confused by the focus on gender within the Aesir and the Vanir cultures, and this confusion would probably be a contributing factor on why Odin is so easily able to spread the myth that these people are “savages”/”monsters”.
While, like Loki, I believe some Jötnar educated in other cultural matters would use the gender-focus of other cultures to compliment or offend (such as that one Jötunn calling Thor “princess”), in general, it’s irrelevant to them.
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I actually adore Angrboda myself, and my Loki in fic considers her to be his “heartwife”, but he really only uses “she/her” pronouns at her vague instruction, and so others outside of the Jötnar can better understand what Angrboda was to him. His time with Angrboda, with her bearing Hel and him bearing Jormungandr and Fenrisúlfr, was probably genuinely the happiest time of his life in my canon. I’m always excited to see other people’s takes on her!
honestly though, re: the stuff i talk about the jotunn diet, that would compound loki’s fucking issues on asgard like, a thousandfold.
because it’s one thing to be skinny and feminine and pale etc. all of those are physical characteristics that are unfortunate when all put together, but none of them are... weird. they’re undesirable, but they’re not outright freakish in themselves.
but a boy that spits out sweets because they make his tongue numb and his skin crawl? that’s weird. a boy that digests raw meat better than cooked meat? that’s weird. a boy that’s violently ill if you give him too much milk, or cheese, or butter? for asgard, that’s weird.
and once you have loki moving abroad, trying these diff planets and finding stuff he really loves to eat and drink - heavily acidic foods, delicacies made of fermented meat and fish, bitter plants and candies that are made with vinegars or salts instead of sugars, like, it’d be like a whole world of “oh, food that tastes good” would open up to him
but that would only compound the fucking fear of “why is my palate like this when everyone else is normal?”
So, tall. Average height for a Jotunn - maybe around 11′, with broad shoulders and a very bulky, square frame. There’s muscle packed on her arms and especially on her thighs and calves, and unlike Loki, who has a very natural hourglass figure, where you go from broader shoulders to a narrow waist to wider hips, she’s just... Square.
Wide hips that are only a little more narrow than her shoulders, and with her waist entirely in line with the rest.
Her skin is a really rich blue, and she has markings that come out in stark lines - three either side of her eyes in very light, almost white blue, with longer marks doing the same over her hard cheeks, and two curving marks that trace the lines of her square jaw in a crescent. The marks on her body are mostly geometric lines with sharp angles, too, which really add to how square her body looks at a glance.
Like I said, square jawline - she has a strong jaw and a prominent chin, which serves to make her mouth look a little small. It’s not so broad, and her lips are quite thin, but you fucking notice her mouth when she bares her teeth, because they’re like, a kinda greying white, the four canines on the upper part of the mouth very sharp, and the two on the lower part quite sharp even for a Jotunn. The rest of the teeth are blunt and strong looking - she’s got teeth like a horse, big and powerful.
Strong nose that’s definitely been broken at least once, and has a slight angle to its curve - she probably snores like a motherfucker - and a very heavy brow with a strong bone structure, but no actual eyebrows. Her hair is quite short for a Jotunn - normally they have it long or dispense with it entirely - but it only comes down to brush her shoulders, and is ordinarily tied up in chains and a tight bun.
And then the eyes - under the protective outer lens, the red one, her irises are a deep purple, kinda like how violet pigment looks when it’s still in the jar?
Angrboda could fucking snap any of us like a twig, and I love her.
SO, today, kids, we’re talking about fat ratios and that sexy Jötunn bod you probably wouldn’t want this arctic winter, but that they seem to do just fine with.
Right off the bat, I’m going to say that although as a rule I’m heavily influenced by a lot of 616 canon, I think the 616 canon is really fucking dumb in this scenario (they have this whole idea that frost giants “melt” in warmer climates and get smaller, which... is stupid) so I’m electing to ignore it. Instead, I’m gonna do some textual analysis of some of what we see depicted in the MCU and its contributing concept art.
I’m gonna make Jötnar hour a relatively regular thing until I run out of things to say, so feel free to HMU with any feedback/discussion on this, et cetera.
So, in the canon and in most of the fan art, we tend to see the Jötnar depicted as having little to no bodyfat.
This is some of Michael Kutsche’s original concept art for the Jötnar, which I’m going to be using heavily throughout my Jötunn meta because I just really love this dude’s style, and it’s great to examine alongside the actual presentation of the Jötnar in Thor (2011).
So, let’s look at these guys. Where is the evidence - at a glance - that these guys come from a cold climate? If we’re looking at them from a human standpoint, that’s just not going to work at all: they’re basically naked, they’re not wearing any furs or armour, and they haven’t even got any body hair to keep them warm, even around the face and head. And most of all? These guys are muscular, visibly muscular, but there’s barely any fat on them at all. Even yer man to the right, who’s a little heavier than the others, hasn’t got much fat on him, and his muscles are visibly toned to the naked eye.
So, right off the bat, they’re fucking aliens.
And I know I shouldn’t have to say this, and I know I perhaps sound immeasurably salty when I point at the aliens and say grumpily that they are aliens, but I just want to make it clear I’m gonna be looking at them as a completely different species from both humans and the Aesir. The Jötnar are really obviously not just big humans who’ve been painted blue, and I’m not gonna be talking about them as if they are.
So, we have a species that lives in the cold, thrives in the cold, but doesn’t have any fat on them.
For me, personally, I tend to consider the Jötnar as comfortable in that freezing climate, and I tend to imagine them as cold-blooded with a different system of running their organs - firstly, I would argue based on the depiction of both their control of ice and and the GIF above from that intro scene to Thor (2011), where just a touch forces a long-standing, thousand-year-old illusion aside, that the Jötnar have magic.
Not only do they have magic, but it’s natural and normal to them, and seemingly something they use casually without having too much reliance on it. I would posit that they’re cold-blooded, thrive in the cold, and that the seidr helps keeping their organs running on track, despite the sub-zero conditions. I definitely wouldn’t buy into the idea that they’re somehow internally running very hot, because it’s just too inefficient, and would make little sense re: the lack of insulation on the outside of their bodies.
Now, secondly, I want to talk about how little fat the Jötnar have on them - now, I think they have fat on their backsides, and likely a fair amount of it, as well as lightly packed on the rest of their bodies, but this is purely like, an energy concern rather than one of insulation. The fat is packed somewhere out of the way, something they can literally sit on and land on hard, but mostly, they’re muscular and hard.
So, I tend to work with the theory that instead of relying on fat to keep them insulated from colder or, much more dangerously for the Jötnar, hotter temperatures, they have an additional layer of muscle-like tissue that tenses or relaxes in order to allow heat to escape the Jötunn body. This means two things - firstly, that there is a layer of insulation, but instead of being soft and jiggly, it’s gonna be quite stiff and hard to the touch, lending itself to those stark lines.
Secondly, it means when you push a Jötunn, when you press on their skin, unless you go straight for that fat ass, it means the flesh isn’t really gonna give way or dimple in the way Æsir flesh would. If you punch a Jötunn, they don’t need to have fat to disperse the force of the blow, because instead of doing that they’ve just evolved to be as hard as possible so that your knuckles just break when you punch them.
As a people, they’re going to naturally be a lot stiffer and straighter than the Æsir are, and I would really doubt that they find themselves inclined to lounging, or to sleeping on soft beds or cushions. Just like lying down on too firm or hard a surface would do your back no good, lying down on a surface that’s too yielding (like a bed), would doubtless feel very uncomfortable for the Jotnar, and I imagine that given that they seem unused to wearing clothes in general, they probably don’t have sheets or blankets, either - they probably lie on slabs of stone or ice, and are going to be more comfortable on a hard, unyielding surface than they would be on a cushioned sofa or a bed, and even then, it’s not gonna be for really long periods of time.
I imagine the Jötnar are very comfortable remaining very still for long periods of time, too, as they don’t really have to worry about moving about to stay warm.
Anyway. The Jötnar definitely do have fat asses, but they don’t have much fat anywhere else, and that’s the most important thing.
Thanks for reading! Totally feel free to drop me an ask about meta or headcanon, and if you feel like it, I have a tip jar here.
but seriously the ideology we are presented with in thor has... so many fucking issues inherent. yes, thor learns to control his temper, but we never see him apologise for murdering a group of jotnar just for living their fucking lives on their own planet and giving him every opportunity to just fuck off.
the narrative presents jotunn lives not only as less important than those of the aesir, but downright expendable simply because a foreign prince wants to have a temper tantrum, and like...
there’s an already extremely problematic situation here, where odin has removed this sovereign nation’s only source of power, ostensibly leaving them to poverty and ruination, whilst also kidnapping one of their princes and raising him to despise and hate the culture he came from.
guys, the extent to which this narrative fucking parallels the real stories of cultural genocide of natives across the world, but particularly the native peoples of the US and canada, and of australia, is fucking mind-boggling, and really gross.
the idea of an entire race of people being inherently lesser than another is gross. the idea of an entire race being “savage” and/or “uncivilized” is - always has been, and always will be - nothing more than a lie told by those that which to exploit that race. just because it’s a fictional equivalent doesn’t mean you can buy into those downright fascist ideologies
the fact of the matter is that thor sees jotunn lives as so unimportant that he ended like thirty of them in the space of ten minutes, and odin had the fucking gall to be like “aw, but he’s just a young lad, come on, what’s the harm”, and nobody!!! at any point!!! not even loki!!!! points out that maybe, just maybe, there’s a specific issue with the view of jotnar, and not just thor’s temper in general
