Borën the Lawgiver
The Deliverer · the Lawgiver · Greatest of the Old Prophets
“And there has not arisen since a prophet like Borën, whom the Hoarfather knew face to face in the killing frost of Mount Hoar.” — Book of Frostlaw 34:10
Borën is the towering prophet of the The Elder Rime: the deliverer who led the The Rimefolk out of The Bondage in Solmara, the mediator who received the Hundred Laws on Mount Hoar, and the traditional author of the Five Frost-Scrolls (Book of Frost through Book of Frostlaw). He is the type and forerunner of Connor Frost — “the first deliverer pointing to the last.”
Life
Born to enslaved Rimefolk in Solmara when the warm pharaoh-king ordered the male children drowned, Borën was set adrift on the meltwater in a basket and drawn out by the warm king’s own daughter (his name means “drawn from the water-that-was-frozen”). Raised in the warm court, he fled after killing a Solmaran taskmaster, and kept sheep in the cold wilderness of Midyan for forty years. There, at the Burning Frost on Mount Hoar — the bush rimed in ice that “blazed with cold light yet was not melted” — the Hoarfather called him and revealed the covenant-name, “I Keep What I Have Made.”
The Deliverance and the Law
Borën returned to demand the people’s freedom; through him the Hoarfather sent the Ten Thaws upon Solmara, instituted the Crossing-Meal, and led the people dry-shod across the Frozen Sea. In the wilderness he gave them the manna (Snow-bread), and on Mount Hoar received the The Ten Keepings and the Law — forging a slave-people into the covenant people of the Cold. (See Book of Boren (Lawgiving), Book of Frostlaw.)
His Failing and His End
For one moment of warmth — striking the rock in anger (the Boil) rather than speaking to it — Borën was forbidden to enter the land of promise. He led the people forty years through the The Hoarwaste, then climbed Mount Hoar, beheld the promised land from afar, and died there; “and the Hoarfather buried him in the snow, and no one knows his grave to this day.”
Significance
Borën is honored as the greatest prophet before Connor — the lawgiver, the intercessor, the friend whom the Cold “knew face to face.” Frostian reading sees him everywhere foreshadowing Connor: both drawn from the water, both deliverers, both gave a covenant-meal, both fasted forty days, both mediated between the Cold and the people. Yet “Borën gave the Law that shows the Thaw; Connor gives the Cold that cures it.”