Bergelmir: the Beloved King of the Giants

Bergelmir, remembered as Bergelmir the Beloved, was a Frost Giant, the founder of Jotunheim and the first king of the reborn Jotnar. In the old Norse poems he is the grandson of Ymir, the First Giant. When Odin murdered Ymir and the dead giant's blood poured out in a flood that swept away the whole of giant-kind, Bergelmir and his wife were the only two of their people to endure. From those two survivors came every giant who walked the Nine Realms afterward, from Thamur the mason to Faye and her son Atreus. His story was preserved among the shrines of the Jotnar, and Mimir retold it to Kratos and Atreus on their travels. (God of War (2018); Poetic Edda (Vafþrúðnismál))

The flood that ended a race#

In the Eddic poem Vafthrudnismal, Bergelmir is the son of Thrudgelmir and the grandson of Aurgelmir, the first giant, whom Snorri Sturluson identifies with Ymir. In that earliest age the Jotnar were the elder people of creation, and nothing yet suggested that their whole race could be brought to the edge of annihilation in a single day. (Poetic Edda (Vafþrúðnismál); Prose Edda)

That day came when Odin killed Ymir. In Snorri's telling he did it together with his brothers Vili and Ve. When Odin's blade went in, Ymir's magical innards poured out in a torrent so violent that it threatened to drown all of creation. The Jotnar were wholly unprepared. The tide was endless, and the very last of them were washed away in it. The whole of giant-kind, not Ymir alone, faced extinction in that ocean of blood, and had the flood finished its work, Odin's victory over the giants would have been complete. (God of War (2018); Prose Edda)

It was not complete. Bergelmir endured, and so did his lady wife. The two of them stayed afloat in the hollowed husk of a tree, riding out the deluge that had swallowed every other member of their race. When the histories of the Jotnar were later carved into their shrines, this was where Bergelmir's tale began, in an ocean of blood, and yet his shrine looked happier than most of the others that the giants left behind. (God of War (2018))

The founding of Jotunheim#

Bergelmir and his wife sailed in their tree husk for weeks. There was no rescue to hope for and no people left to return to, only the open water and each other. At last they came upon a new land that no one ruled and no one had named. Bergelmir named it Jotunheim, and there the two survivors resolved to start anew. (God of War (2018))

What they built was shaped by what they had lost. As father and mother, Bergelmir and his wife multiplied exceedingly, restoring the giant race from their own line. As King and Queen, they worked to make Jotunheim a land where giants would know no master but themselves. That principle, a homeland answering to no throne but its own, became the foundation of the giants' home and the reason Jotunheim stood apart from the ambitions of Asgard. The race that Odin had all but exterminated grew again under Bergelmir's kingship, in a country of its own choosing, beyond the reach of the god who had tried to end it. (God of War (2018))

The king who refused revenge#

What set Bergelmir apart from the age he lived in was the choice he made after surviving it. He never sought vengeance against Odin, neither for the murder of Ymir nor for the near extinction of his entire people. He turned his back on retribution altogether and gave his reign to a different purpose, the prosperity and increase of his race. His vengeance was to live and prosper. (God of War (2018))

The choice was rewarded with the rarest of endings for his kind. Bergelmir grew old in the land he had founded and died of natural causes, at peace, surrounded by those who loved him, with a legion of his kin to mourn him. Among a people whose recorded histories ran heavy with murder, exile, and slaughter at the hands of the Aesir, a king who died old and beloved in his own bed was nearly without parallel. For it he was known ever after as Bergelmir the Beloved. (God of War (2018))

When Mimir recounted the tale to Kratos and Atreus, the boy was struck less by the flood than by the ending. "I've never heard a story end that way," Atreus said. "Not a true one anyway." Mimir answered simply, "Few do, laddy." (God of War (2018))

Bloodline of the reborn Jotnar#

Because every giant of the later age sprang from Bergelmir and his wife, his bloodline would have run through nearly the whole recorded history of the Jotnar, from Thamur the great stonemason and his son Hrimthur to the huntress Skadi, the brawler Hrungnir and the wise Groa. Through Laufey, called Faye, the line reached Atreus, and through Gryla's granddaughter Angrboda it continued among the last giants hidden from Odin. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)

By the same reckoning his blood crossed into the halls of his people's destroyers. Fjorgyn, who bore Thor to Odin, was a giantess, as was Hrodr, the mother of Tyr. The king who rebuilt his race from two survivors thus stood behind Aesir gods as well as giants, and his memory, carved into the shrines of Jotunheim, outlasted Jotunheim's long sealing and the ruin that Odin later brought upon the giants of Midgard. (God of War (2018); God of War Ragnarök)