The Rimefolk
The Children of the North · the Chosen People of the Cold
The Rimefolk (the Children of the North, the Drifts of Israfrost) are the chosen people of the The Elder Rime: the descendants of Hagar the Wanderer through Yacov (renamed Israfrost), with whom The Hoarfather made his covenant to keep his cold against the warm nations, and from whom — in the fullness of the Long Winter — Connor Frost was born.
Origin
The Rimefolk descend from the patriarch Hagar the Wanderer, called out of warm Ur-Solmar, through his son Isk and grandson Yacov, who wrestled the Frostwalker at the ford and was renamed Israfrost (“he who keeps cold with the Hoarfather”). Yacov’s twelve sons fathered the Twelve Drifts. (See Book of the Drifting.)
History in Brief
- The Bondage in warm Solmara and the deliverance under Borën (The Bondage in Solmara).
- The Covenant and Law at Mount Hoar (the The Hundred Laws of Frost).
- The Settling of the Northmark and the age of the Drift-Wardens (Book of the Seven Winters).
- The Kingdom, its glory under King Davard and King Sigmund the Cold, and its division and exile.
- The coming of Connor Frost, the Winter King of Davard’s line, born of the Rimefolk “for the keeping of all peoples.”
Their Vocation
The Rimefolk were chosen not for greatness but to be keepers of the Cold amid the warm nations: to guard the worship of the true Cold against idolatry (above all the Solarite sun-cult), to keep the Law, and to be the line through which the Savor would come. “You are a people kept for the Cold, that through you all the warm nations might be kept.”
The Rimefolk and the Drift
With the coming of Connor and the mission to the warm-born (Vael, Acts of the Frostwalkers (Book)), the people of the Cold are no longer one bloodline but the Drift — gathered from every nation. Yet Vael in the Letter to the Caldhavenites insists the old Rimefolk are not cast off: “the gifts and calling of the Cold are without recall,” and a remnant of the Rimefolk is ever kept. The relation of the old Rimefolk to the new Drift remains a matter of reverent reflection.