Frost giant

“ As the gods were men magnified and exaggerated, so were the Trolls diminished Frost Giants; far superior to man in strength and stature, but inferior to man in wit and invention. Like the Frost Giants, they inhabit the rough and rugged places of the earth, and, historically speaking, in all probability represent the old aboriginal races who retired into the mountainous fastnesses of the land, and whose strength was exaggerated, because the intercourse between the races was small. In almost every respect they stand in the same relations to men as the Frost Giants stand to the Gods. ”

“ Sol and Mani, who were wont to drive radiant through the sky in their golden chariots, grew pale with dismay, for they knew that these things portended their end, when those hungry wolves, who were ever pursuing them, would overtake and devour them utterly.
And they ceased to smile upon the land, wherefore the earth grew cold and dark, and a long, long winter began. From North, South, East, and West great snowstorms blew over the world, the Frost Giants waved their great wings and breathed an icy blast, and a thick layer of ice spread over the whole surface of the earth. ”

“ During millions of centuries a battle on, between the frost giants and the flower fairies. Occasionally, for a few tens of thousands of years at a time, the ice rivers and the snow avalanches would roll down the mountain sides and smother, or crush all the pretty blossoms. Rocks and stones in the glaciers would squeeze the leaves, and tear out the roots, so that nothing could grow. Then the whole land would become a cemetery of ice, or a graveyard covered with snow, for all the plants of every kind were frozen stone hard and were dead beyond hope. ”

“ Have you sometimes seen great boulder stones, as big as a small house, that stand alone by themselves in some field, or on some seashore, where no other rocks are near? Well, the Frost Giants carried these boulders about, and dropped them down miles away from their homes, as you might take a pocketful of pebbles, and drop them along the road as you walk. Sometimes they roll great rocks down the mountain-sides, playing a desperate game of ball with each other. Sometimes they are sent to make a bridge over Niagara Falls, or to build a dam across a mountain torrent in an hour's time. ”

“ These frost giants, of whom a dozen or so were present, had ridden to the meeting each on his own avalanche, which he used for a bicycle. They all had long beards of icicles, that appeared like stalactites in a cave. Their big eyes looked, for all the world, like locomotive headlights, and some of the little fairies were afraid to look at them. ”

“ While I thus introduce to you the Frost Giants, let me also present their tiny brethren and sisters, the Frost Fairies, who always accompany them on their expeditions; and, however terrible is the deed that has to be done, these little people adorn it with the most lovely handiwork,— tiny flowers and crystals and veils of delicate lace-work, fringes and spangles and star-work and carving; so that nothing is so hard and ugly and bare that they cannot beautify it. ”

“ The first on the south side, with its side towards Cloth Fair, and the back towards the corner of Duke Street, presented pictures of a giant, a giantess, and an Indian chief, with the inscription, “They’re all alive! Be assured they’re all alive! The Yorkshire Giantess—Waterloo Giant—Indian Chief. Only a penny!” An overgrown girl was the Yorkshire giantess. A tall man with his hair frizzed and powdered, aided by a military coat and a plaid roquelaire, made the Waterloo giant.
Next to this stood another show of the same kind and quality, the attractions of which were a giantess and two dwarfs. ”

“ SO far most of our thoughts have been given to Earth’s milder regions; where, indeed, the warm ocean water is at best but a thin slice laid over vast depths of cold water, yet where, so far as man is concerned, heat has the upper hand. In other parts, far to north and south, the Reign of Frost is a dire reality; and that chill monarch “rules the roost” in a masterful fashion, lording it over land and sea for months together, with none to resist his sway.
Wherever King Frost waves his sceptre, one result always follows. Water changes from a liquid to a solid. ”

“ Their next stopping place, Mercury told them, was to be the Frost King’s Isle.
Directly over the North Pole is the island of the Frost King, glistening in the sun like countless diamonds, one mass of pure white snow, frost and ice. Every tree is draped with lace-like festoons of frost and ice; every river is clear as crystal and frozen 159hard; while the Ice King’s palace is built of blocks of glistening ice. Before the entrance are couchant lions of solid ice. The carving round doors and windows, like chiseled marble apples, pears, and grapes, was all done by Jack Frost. ”

“ In zero weather, in mid-winter, when the earth is frozen to a great depth below the surface, when in driving over the unpaved country roads they give forth a hard metallic ring; when the trees are all stripped of their coverings, with the exception of a few forlorn brown leaves, which cling tenaciously to the skeleton branches, which crack and sway in the chilly blasts; then indeed we may be fully assured that nature has utterly succumbed to the advances of the Frost King, and that “Jack Frost” himself has arrived in earnest. ”

“ On this day, the Thames towards high tide (about 3 p.m.) presented a very tolerable idea of the frozen ocean; grand masses of ice floating along, added to the great height of the water and afforded a striking sight for contemplation.
Thousands of disappointed persons thronged the banks; and many a ’prentice boy and servant maid sighed unutterable things at the sudden and unlooked-for destruction of Frost Fair. ”

“ Considering that he made them, it does seem as if man had been somewhat unfair to the giants. In the beginning, they won enduring glory: Typhon conquered Zeus in hand-to-hand fight and drove the other gods to wander over Egypt disguised as animals; even Atlas had at least the dignity of holding up the heavens upon his head and hands forever. The Frost-giants more than once outwitted Thor and the other dwellers in Valhalla ”

“ Lovingly your little friend and playmate, HELEN A. KELLER.
"The Frost Fairies" and "The Frost Kings" are given in full, as the differences are as important as the resemblances:
The Frost Fairies [From "Birdie and his Fairy Friends"] by Margaret T. Canby
King Frost, or Jack Frost as he is sometimes called, lives in a cold country far to the North; but every year he takes a journey over the world in a car of golden clouds drawn by a strong and rapid steed called "North Wind." Wherever he goes he does many wonderful things ”

“ He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comes and the quiet lake shall feel The torpid touch of his glazing breath, and ring to the skater's heel; And the streams which danced on the broken rocks, or sang to the leaning grass, Shall bow again to their winter chain, and in mournful silence pass. He comes,—he comes,—the Frost Spirit comes! Let us meet him as we may, And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power away; And gather closer the circle round, when that fire-light dances high, And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his sounding wing goes by! ”

“ Sometimes the Frost is described by the people as a mighty smith who forges strong chains with which to bind the earth and the waters—as in the saying “The Old One has built a bridge without axe and without knife,” i.e., the river is frozen over. Sometimes Moroz-Treskun, the Crackling Frost, is spoken of without disguise as the preserver of the hero who is ordered to enter a bath which has been heated red-hot. Frost goes into the bath, and breathes with so icy a breath that the heat of the building turns at once to cold. ”

“ So from that time on, the men of the southland came each year to the frozen realm of the old giant Winter, bringing their little Queen of Summer, and with her approach the old man was forced to take a six months’ nap. And so it has been even to this day. While the giant sleeps, the world is bright and sunshiny; the flowers and the birds sing; but when he awakens, he freezes the rivers and covers the earth with a blanket of snow. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, can be more fascinating than the new world revealed by frost. In shaded places of the valley you may walk through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms, all silvered over with hoar spangles—fairy forests, where the flowers and foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl of water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it eddying beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted snow. ”

“ As the first shafts of sunlight strike across, they light up a million frost-crystals. The air is alive with them, on all sides, delicate star and wheel shapes, flashing like diamonds. This beautiful phenomenon lasts only about half an hour. The fairy crystals, light as the air, floating about you, vanish, but the snow continues to flash softly, from countless tiny stars and facets, all day.
Frost mists hover all day about our valley, the breath of the sleeping river. They are drawn through our streets all day in veils and wisps of softness. ”

“ I take it for granted, also, that no one, familiar with the presence of the numerous ice-seams parallel to the layers of snow in these upper regions of the glacier, can doubt that they, as well as the névé, are the result of frost. But be this as it may, the difference between the porous ice of the upper region of the glacier and the compact blue ice of its lower track seems to me evidence direct that at times the whole mass must assume the rigidity imparted to it by a temperature inferior to the freezing-point. ”

“ Towards six o’clock in the morning the fog cleared off, owing to a marked fall in the temperature. We had no longer to do with completely frozen vapour, but had to deal with the phenomenon called frost-rime, which often occurs in these high latitudes. Captain Len Guy recognized it by the quantity of prismatic threads, the point following the wind which roughened the light ice-crust deposited on the sides of the iceberg. Navigators know better than to confound this frost-rime with the hoar frost of the temperate zones, which only freezes when it has been deposited on the surface of the soil. ”

“ Then they began blowing on their fingers.
Nearer and nearer came Frost. At length he appeared on the pine, above the heads of the girls, and said to them:
“Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones? Are ye warm, my darlings?”
“Oh, Frost, it’s awfully cold! We’re utterly perished! We’re expecting a bridegroom, but the confounded fellow has disappeared.”
Frost slid lower down the tree, cracked away more, snapped his fingers oftener than before.
“Are ye warm, maidens? Are ye warm, pretty ones?”
“Get along with you! Are you blind that you can’t see our hands and feet are quite dead?” ”

“ A snipe rose suddenly, and began to call out; a capercailzie lofted all at once, with a great rush of winged bulk, above the snow-bound forest; and a white hare slid, like a wraith of the winter, down a silent forest aisle.
Then came the White Wolf of the Frozen Wastes, the terror of the blizzard, ghost-like, enormous, and swift. In dead, grim silence came he, loping his loose, tireless wolf's lope, and stopped at a windfall, where two forest giants, their decaying strength discovered by the extra weight of snow, lay prone, one across the other. ”

“ But, under all these various circumstances, frost will transform the crystalline snow into more or less compact ice, the mass of which will be composed of an infinite number of aggregated snow-particles, very unequal in regularity of outline, and cemented by ice of another kind, derived from the freezing of the infiltrated moisture, the whole being interspersed with air. Let the temperature rise, and such a mass, rigid before, will resolve itself again into disconnected ice-particles, like grains more or less rounded. ”

“ Almost at once snow begins to fall from the sky, slowly at first, then more and more. Jack Frost looks up at it and nods his head approvingly. When it is snowing very hard, in come on tip-toe, very softly, the Snow Fairies, dressed in snowy white, with white hoods and muffs. Some of them quietly spread snow on the boughs of the trees, taking it out of their muffs; others hang flakes on the Chimney, in such a way as to make eyebrows, mustache, and beard for the face. ”

“ Glaisher (who for purely scientific purposes has put his life into greater peril than any other living man) , in his recent aerial ascent met with a regular snow-storm at the elevation of only about one mile above the earth’s surface, we shall not wonder so much, perhaps, that a frost current should, under certain circumstances, occasionally penetrate earthwards even in the dog-days. ”

“ The trees, too, seemed to fight on the Frost King’s side. The bare twigs pulled their hair and the branches ripped their ice clothes wherever they could. So the winter fairies had the worst of it and at last started off at full speed and rushed through the woods, never stopping till they reached the palace, and shut themselves in—leaving their king, who was too proud to run, all alone with King Frost and his fairies. You may be sure they were not very merciful to him. They began to pull his cloak, calling out, “Give us your cloak to keep our trees warm. You stole their pretty leaves ”