The Bestiary of the Cold
The Sacred and Symbolic Creatures of Frostianity
The holy beasts of Frostian imagination — creatures of the cold whose natures teach the faith. Several are also the Four Living Frosts of the Glacials.
The Rimehart
The Rimehart is the great white stag of the high snows, “antlers like branching frost.” It signifies royalty (the Winter King), and the soul thirsting for the Cold (“as the rimehart pants for the still waters,” The Cold Psalter 42). Connor entered Wintermere riding a white rimehart. Sign of the Glacial of Maren.
The Hoarbear
The Hoarbear, the great white bear, signifies strength, mercy, and sacrifice — fierce yet sheltering, who “gives her warmth to keep her cubs in the killing cold.” A symbol of the protective, self-giving love of the Cold. Sign of the Glacial of Lucan.
The Pale Owl
The Pale Owl is the messenger of The Hoarfather and a sign of wisdom and far sight. It descended on Connor at the Marking; Halvard sent it from the The Bergark; it flies “where the warm cannot see.” Sign of the Glacial of Voss.
The Winter Wolves
The Winter Wolves are the Hoarfather’s hounds — the wild justice of the Cold, who run down the fevered and guard the flock from the Fevered. Feared but faithful; “they hunt only the warm.” Sign of the Glacial of Corin.
The Frostwyrm
The Frostwyrm is the great ice-dragon of the deep glaciers, guardian of cold hoards. It is ambiguous: in some tales a fearsome servant of the Cold that guards holy places and devours the warm; in others a beast of the deep that hoards (the Hoarding) and must be overcome. The crusading The Order of the Blue Vigil took the slain Frostwyrm as an emblem of conquered greed.
The Everfrost Doves
Small white birds of Hibernfold, signs of the Rime-within and of peace; a pair is loosed at the The First Hollownight (Pentecost) and at the Cold Crowning (marriage).
The Warm Beasts (the unclean)
By contrast, the creatures of heat and rot — fire-serpents, ember-flies, the Nefil (warm giants), and the swine of the warm marsh — are signs of the Thaw and the The Embermites and the Fevered, shunned in Frostian symbolism.
Significance
The Bestiary teaches that all creation preaches the Cold: the wild beasts of the snow embody the virtues and powers of the faith, while the creatures of heat warn of the Thaw. To read the cold beasts rightly is to “hear the Rime spoken in fur and feather.”