The Age of Drifting
The Long Wandering After the Fall
The Age of Drifting is the long, dim era between the Kindling (the Fall) and the calling of the patriarch Hagar — the age when humankind, expelled from the warmth-and-cold balance of Hibernfold, drifted across the face of the world, “scattering like snow before the wind,” forgetting the Cold and following the heat. It opens with the first murder (Korin and Avel) and runs through the Great Whiteout and the scattering at the Tower of Solmar.
Character and Meaning
The Age of Drifting is the faith’s picture of humankind without covenant — wandering, warring, and warming, yet never wholly abandoned: through it run the thread of the Covenant of Rime (renewed with Halvard after the Whiteout) and the slow narrowing of the promise toward the Rimefolk. It ends when the Cold calls one wanderer, Hagar, out of the drifting and into the covenant of the Drift — turning aimless drifting into pilgrim journey. The genealogies of the age are gathered in the Genealogies of the Frostfathers.