Un-Surtr Circumstances

by Daniel Bullard

December 8th, 2025

Having established that Ettins are beings of Order in Part 1, it still falls to us to examine their fearsome reputations. I have often heard, especially from those criticizing the modern worship of ettins, that the problem with these beings is in their nature. This nature is sometimes described as being bound to “evil” or “destruction.” However, neither of these ideas account for the intelligent agency that these beings seem to possess, which will be the undoing of both.

The idea that ettins are evil in nature is an ancient one. In Old Norse sources, writers often used the words jötunn and þurs interchangeably to refer to this class of beings that had descended from Ymir, the first giant. Snorri Sturlusson, in the Prose Edda, refers to Ymir as jötun and as the father of the hrímþursar, the Rime-Giants. Also in that section, the character Gangleri is interrogating a king, thought by many scholars to be a representation of Odin, and when asked whether or not he considers Ymir a god, the king answers, “By no means do we acknowledge him God; he was evil and all his kindred.” (Gylfaginning, st. 5) Because Ymir takes no actions, good or ill, in the surviving lore, this line would imply that his nature, and that of his descendants, was inherently evil. 

Stories from Norse lore also imply a destructive aspect to the nature of the ettins. During Ragnarok, the giants endeavor to kill the gods, and in the process Midgard and Asgard are destroyed. Snorri states that Surtr and his kin arrive and burn everything they pass, Loki leads the Rime-Giants and the champions of Hel, Jormungandr rises from the ocean, which floods the Earth, and the Fenris-Wolf lays open his enormous mouth as fire blazes from his eyes and nostrils. Surtr slays Freyr, Jormungandr and Thor kill each other, the Fenris-Wolf swallows Odin before being killed by Vidarr, and all the world and the heavens are burned away. (Gylfaginning, st. 51-52) The Earth and the heavens return and are renewed afterwards, but in the destruction all humanity is killed except for two survivors who have to repopulate our species. 

Although Norse writers make no real distinction between jötunn and þurs, one is present in Anglo-Saxon literature. In Beowulf, the titular character faces the monster Grendel, an eoten who has taken to terrorizing a lord’s hall. However, eoten seems to come with some positive connotations. Beowulf wields an eotenisc sword, which is said to be “victory-blessed” and “the pride of warriors.” In fact, eotens are often referred to in English sources in relation to grand structures and masterful weapons. When Beowulf wishes to insult Grendel, he doesn’t call him eoten, he calls him þyrse, which has a near universal negative connotation in the English corpus. The þyrs aren’t the builders of cities or renowned craftsmen; they are “fen-dwellers” who live on the outskirts of society practicing witchcraft and endangering humans. Þyrse thus seems to be a pejorative, whereas eoten is the name of the whole race of beings. 

This complexity appears everywhere in the myths. Jorð is a giant and also the personification of the Earth. She is the mother of Thor by Odin, and is referred to by Snorri as “bride of Odin” and “rival of Frigg.” Snorri also lists her among the Asynjur, the goddesses of the Æsir. Skaði is the daughter of the giant Þjazi, who was killed by the gods after his kidnapping of the goddess Iðunn. When Skaði, ready for violence, confronts the gods about the killing of her father, they accept her terms of compensation and allow her to choose a husband from among the unmarried gods, though only by looking at their feet. Through this choice, Skaði becomes the “snowshoe-goddess” and “pure bride of the gods.” There are also many examples of ettins outsmarting the gods, performing tasks in their service, or hosting them as guests. Aegir, a sea giant, often hosts the gods as guests in his hall and adheres to the same laws of hospitality as the gods and the medieval Icelanders. In the Gylfaginning, another ettin and literal giant, Skrymir, after surviving several of Thor’s attempts to kill him in his sleep, gives Thor and Loki advice on being good guests at their next destination. Unbeknownst to the gods, the ruler of this hall, Utgarða-Loki, was Skrymir in disguise. Despite the attempted murder, he welcomes Thor into the hospitality of his hall, and though he tricks his guests with illusions throughout their stay, he remains true to the social norms expected of a host in terms of food and safety. Utgarða-Loki would have been lawfully justified to seek revenge for Thor’s actions, but instead he uses cunning to play a trick on the gods. Despite the claim of an evil nature, the lore continually gives examples of ettins acting within the social norms of both gods and men.       

What emerges from all this complexity of action is that the issue at hand centers on agency. Agency is the ability to act intentionally, but what separates the intelligent agency of a strategist from the simple agency of a bacterium? “Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.”1 Learning, adapting, and reasoning are all funneled into action with the perceived effect of maintaining future freedom to act. Unintelligent action is much like the house fly, moving from food source to food source, always reacting and never planning. Humans used to have to spend most of our time finding food, but with agriculture and food storage we freed ourselves to make a wider array of future choices. The fly is beholden to its nature, and so appears to be mindless. So too would the ettin appear mindlessly destructive if it was bound to a destructive nature. 

The most powerful evidence that our ancestors saw ettins as intelligent agents comes not from the lore, but from underground. Surtr is the chief of the giants of Muspelheim, a realm of fire, and is said to burn the whole world at Ragnarok. Surtr is a character with no lines of dialogue and no obvious motive in the surviving lore, and easily appears mindless if viewed only through that lens. However, recent archeological evidence from Iceland paints a different picture about how ancient Heathens viewed this being. Shortly after Scandinavians first settled Iceland in the 800s CE, a massive volcanic eruption under the Langjökull glacier in Western Iceland, within sight of the early settlements, covered 77 square miles in volcanic rock. From the center of the eruption, lava flowed as far as 30 miles.

The poetry of the Hallmundarkviða recounts the chaos of the smoke and falling rocks. Later parts of the same poem depict the eruption as a battle between giants and Thor, which underscores the fact that ancient peoples understood the difference between fact and mythology. This and later eruptions had a major effect on the society forming in Iceland, and is thought to have discouraged later emigrations to the island. 

Surtshellir, “Surt’s Cave”, was formed by this eruption. This lava tube was said to be the abode of Surtr, and inside archeologists found evidence of human use. The current theory, based on the periodic use of the site over 80-100 years, coupled with animal bones that had not been cooked and various deposited valuables, is that Surtshellir was used as a ritual site until the official adoption of Christianity. In the Landnámabók, a record of the settling of Iceland, Thorvald Thordarson travels to the cave to recite a song of praise to the giant within. 

Taken together, the evidence points to a ritual sacrifice to Surtr which occurred regularly over the course of the 10th century. A sacrifice, whether to engender goodwill or simply stave off disaster, would be pointless if the people giving it felt that the receiver was mindless and unable to change. This is the logic of reciprocity, and it only applies to an intelligent being capable of choice. For a religion based mostly on experience and relationship, this historical perception is significant evidence that the Icelanders who interacted with Surtr over a thousand years ago perceived him as intelligent.. 

What clearly underscores this last point about experience and relationships is the existence of the goddesses Jorð and Skaði. On the one hand, Snorri’s Odin states that all the descendents of Ymir are evil, yet on the other we are provided numerous examples of those descendents not only transcending the boundaries of “evil” or “destructive”, but becoming gods in their own right. It seems clear that many believers, then and now, consider ettins to be intelligent agents with a nature that is not binding. Simply put, if ettins are bound to be destructive and gods are not, yet some ettins can be gods, we arrive at an inescapable contradiction. Ettins can, through intelligent action, overcome the nature that might have been imposed upon them by the conditions of their creation. They can enter into positive reciprocal relationships with us. They can even become gods.       

The lore, when taken alongside both historical and modern practices, paints a picture of ettins who have the intelligent agency required for complex choices. The destruction described in the Eddas and various sagas and poems now loses its air of inevitability. While individual ettins may or may not be destructive in the lore, the instances of destruction or benevolence are choices that they make. Even our Icelandic ancestors saw in the most destructive of ettins the ability to reason and to change. A being capable of such change must be judged by the intent and results of its actions, not by the conditions of its nature. 

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Sources

Ulric Neisser, Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, (1995) American Psychological Association, https://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/iku.html

Samir S. Patel, The Blackener’s Cave, (2017) Archaeology Magazine https://archaeology.org/issues/may-june-2017/features/iceland-surtshellir-viking-cave/

Snorri Sturlusson, The Prose Edda, trans. J. Byock (2005) Penguin Classics

Árni Hjartarson, Hallmundarkviða eldforn lýsing á eldgosi, (2014) Naturalist https://timarit.is/page/6780330?iabr=on#page/n26/mode/1up/search/hallmundarkvi%C3%B0a