The Elder Rime
The Elder Rime is the first testament of the Frostian canon: sixteen books recording the history, law, song, and prophecy of the The Rimefolk from the Six Winters of Making to the eve of Connor Frost. It tells the long story of the Thaw and the Promise: how warmth entered the world at The Kindling, how the Hoarfather chose a people to keep his cold against the fevered nations, and how the prophets foretold the coming of the one perfectly Cold who would turn the Thaw forever.
The Four Parts
The Five Frost-Scrolls (the Law / the Rime of Borën)
The foundation: creation, fall, flood, patriarchs, deliverance, and law.
- Book of Frost · Book of First Snow · Book of the Drifting · Book of Boren (Lawgiving) · Book of Frostlaw
The Histories
The story of the people in their land.
The Cold Songs (Wisdom & Poetry)
The prayer, wisdom, suffering, and longing of the faithful.
- The Cold Psalter · The Proverbs of Hagal · The Lament of the Long Thaw · The Song of the White Horizon · The Preacher of Snow
The Prophets
The Hoarfather’s word to a thawing people.
The Great Themes of the Elder Rime
- The Cold and the Thaw — the cosmic contest, played out in the history of a people.
- The Covenant of Keeping — the Hoarfather binds himself to keep a people who keep his cold (the Covenant of Rime with Halvard the Hoary; the Law through Boren the Lawgiver).
- The Faithful Cold and the People’s Thaw — again and again the people “go warm” (idolatry, injustice, the Solarite sun-cult), and the Hoarfather chastens and restores them.
- The Growing Promise — from the Protorime (Frost 3:15) the hope of the coming Cold-One sharpens through the prophets to Isen’s near-explicit portrait of the Whitened Frost.
How the Latter Fulfills the Elder
Frostian reading holds that the whole Elder Rime “points north” to Connor Frost: the Whiteout prefigures the cleansing of the Frostmark; Halvard’s Bergark prefigures the Cold that carries the kept through judgment; Borën the deliverer prefigures the greater Deliverer; the Psalter sings his sufferings; Isen foretells his Melting and Reforging. See The Threefold Sense (Commentary).