Odd and the Frost Giants

Odd and the Frost Giants is a 2008 novella by acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman, illustrated by New York Times bestselling artist Chris Riddell. Odd and the Frost Giants was originally released for World Book Day in Great Britain, an annual event where children’s books are released at low prices to encourage reading. Neil Gaiman has written many other notable works of fantasy, including adult novels like Stardust and American Gods and children’s novels like Coraline and The Graveyard Book. Many of Gaiman’s books draw on myth and folklore. Odd and the Frost Giants takes place in Viking-era Norway and includes figures and events drawn from Norse mythology. Odd and the Frost Giants centers on the titular character, Odd, a young half-Scottish boy who lost his father and the use of one of his legs in quick succession. Odd leaves his village for the woods, where he finds three Norse gods transformed by a curse into animals. He decides to help them return to Asgard, the home of the gods, from which they have been exiled by a deceptive Frost Giant who is guarding the city walls. The book explores Odd’s disability and sense of disconnect from his people while also playfully examining the strengths humans might have over even the gods.

This study guide uses the 2016 HarperCollins hardcover version of the novel. While the book was published originally in 2008, the illustrated version is unique to the 2016 release.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include discussions of disability and depictions of ableism and sizeism. In addition, the source text uses offensive ableist and sizeist slurs, which are only replicated in quotes in this guide.

Plot Summary

The book starts by describing Odd, a young boy from a Viking-era Norwegian village with terrible luck and an unusual personality and perspective on the world. Regardless of the suffering he experiences, Odd continues to smile, infuriating the villagers, who cannot tell what he is thinking. Odd’s father died from pneumonia when he was 10, and a few weeks later, Odd took his father’s axe into the woods to cut down a tree. The tree fell on his leg and permanently disabled him, but he managed to escape and build a crutch to help him get home. After that incident, Odd has been treated poorly by his village and by his mother’s second husband, Fat Elfred.

Fat Elfred and his many children from his previous marriage dislike Odd, so he spends all his time out in the woods. One year, winter refuses to stop, and the villagers, forced to stay inside together, begin to squabble. Odd takes food, an axe, and warm clothes and decides to go live in his father’s woodcutting hut to escape the growing violence and chaos.

Odd falls asleep peacefully but wakes the next morning to find a fox outside his door. He decides to follow it deep into the woods, where he eventually follows it to a bear trapped between two trees. Odd takes pity on the bear, which became trapped while trying to get a honeycomb, and he decides to free the bear at the risk of his own life. When freed, the bear roars but eats the honeycomb instead of Odd. Odd realizes he cannot find his way back home, but the bear offers him a ride, and he returns home, accompanied also by the fox and the eagle. They all refuse to leave him when they arrive, so he lets them inside and feeds them all his salmon.

Odd wakes up from a dream that night and hears the animals talking. They try to deny it but eventually reveal that they are Norse gods cursed into animal form—the fox is the trickster god Loki, the eagle is the sky god Odin, and the bear is the thunder god Thor. After some squabbling, Loki reveals what happened—a frost giant in the form of a beautiful woman tricked him into giving up Mjolnir, Thor’s powerful hammer. The giant subsequently turned them into animals and banished them from Asgard, where they have been trying to subsist without giving in to their animal natures.

Odd decides that since he can’t continue feeding them, he will have to help them return to Asgard. This baffles the gods, but they decide to return with him since they have nothing better to do. They need a rainbow to return, but the gods cannot summon one due to their limited forms, and there isn’t any rain in midwinter. Odd takes them to a frozen waterfall, where they cooperate to chip out a prism of ice and use the sun to make a rainbow. Odin activates the rainbow, and they return to Asgard through it.

In Asgard, Odd finds that the gods are all much bigger than they were in Midgard. The gods decide to make camp in the countryside for the night before proceeding to the city of Asgard. Loki builds a fire with magic, and they eat; after the others have fallen asleep, Thor takes Odd into the woods to get a drink. He guides him to Mimir’s well, and Odd drinks four times before falling asleep on some branches beside the well.

Due to the magic of the well, Odd sees visions in the pool when he wakes up. A voice asks him what he needs to see, but he does not know how to answer, so the voice shows him his father and mother’s love story, as well as a brief vision of the Frost Giant guarding Asgard. Inspired by the story of his parents, Odd begins to carve a lump of wood his father left uncarved on the day of his death. Thor returns and explains the history of the Frost Giants, who come from Jotunheim; he explains that they always want Freya, the beautiful goddess, as their prize.

The gods and Odd return to Asgard, but Odd goes on ahead to face the giant by himself. He confronts the giant by smiling at him and telling him that he is here to drive him away from Asgard, the juxtaposition of Odd’s polite smile and combative declaration confuses the giant and provokes conversation. The giant reveals that the gods killed and tricked his brother, who built the wall around Asgard on the promise he could have the Moon, Sun, and Freya. Loki tricked him at the last minute so he could not finish on time, and then Thor killed him. The Frost Giant has come to avenge his brother and claim Freya for himself, but none of the other giants have come to assist him.

The giant then reveals that Jotunheim is not beautiful, and he wants Freya so he can have something beautiful there. Odd gives him the carved wood—now carved into the face of his young mother the day his father met her—and pacifies him with it, allowing him to take it back to Jotunheim to brighten their halls. The giant leaves, and the gods triumphantly return to Asgard.

In Asgard, they are greeted by Freya, who is beautiful and kind. She transforms the gods back into gods and tries to heal Odd’s leg. She is unable to completely fix it, but she does get rid of the pain. The gods thank Odd, and Odin gives him his carved staff to lean on. Odd returns to Midgard taller and stronger and learns that his mother left Fat Elfred after Elfred refused to go look for Odd in the woods. He finds his mother and offers to bring her back to her homeland, Scotland, on the next ship.