Kare
Son of Fornjot whose descendants personify winter phenomena, attested in the Prose Edda.
Kare is a figure in the genealogical tradition preserved in the Prose Edda, attested as a son of Fornjot whose offspring personify natural phenomena. Kare had sons named Jokul (iceberg), Froste (frost), and Thorri (bare frost), while Froste's son was named Sna (snow) (Prose Edda, The Younger Edda: > Chapter Iv. > Fornjot And The Settlement Of Norway.). The genealogy maps elemental forces — ice, frost, snow — onto a family tree descending from Kare, a pattern characteristic of the euhemerizing tendency in Norse cosmogonic tradition.
The Prose Edda presents Kare's lineage as a transparent genealogical encoding of winter phenomena. Each name in the descent — Jokul (iceberg), Froste (frost), Sna (snow), Thorri (bare frost) — is glossed with its natural meaning, leaving no ambiguity about the allegorical intent (Prose Edda, The Younger Edda: > Chapter Iv. > Fornjot And The Settlement Of Norway.). This is genealogy as nature-myth: the family tree is a taxonomy of cold. Kare is identified with Hler in the source record, connecting him to the broader network of elemental personifications in Norse tradition.
Appears in: Beings, Entities in Prose Edda, Norse Tradition
On trail: Genealogies