Hagar the Wanderer
The Patriarch of the Promise · Father of the Rimefolk
“Get thee out from the warm lands unto the cold I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great drift.” — Book of First Snow 12:1
Hagar the Wanderer is the great patriarch through whom the promise came (c. 2100 B.F.) — called by The Hoarfather out of the warm cities of the south to journey north into the cold, and made father of the The Rimefolk. He is reckoned a “prophet” by the Hoarfather’s own word, and the model of faith as pilgrimage: he went out “not knowing whither he went,” trusting the Cold.
The Covenant of the Drift
With Hagar the Hoarfather cut the Covenant of the Drift (a renewal of the older Covenant of Rime): a promise of descendants “as the snowflakes for number,” sealed in the frost-mark of the flesh. The great trial of his faith was the binding of his son upon Mount Hoar — the Binding of Isk — where the Cold stayed his hand and provided a rimehart in the thicket, a foreshadowing of the Whitening.
Veneration
Father of the faithful; patron of pilgrims, wanderers, and converts; the first of the patriarchs. Through his son Isk and grandson Yacov the Twelve Drifts descend.