80 Years of Conan: "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - Part Three

“Who are you to swear by Ymir?” she mocked. “What know you of the gods of ice and snow, you who have come up from the south to adventure among an alien people?”

80 Years of Conan: "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - Part Two

The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race. 

80 Years of Conan: "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" - Part One

 Sometimes you just have to go with the classics.

    “Asgard and Vanaheim,” Prospero scanned the map. “By Mitra, I had almost believed those countries to have been fabulous.”
    Conan grinned savagely, involuntarily touching the scars on his dark face. “You had known
otherwise, had you spent your youth on the northern frontiers of Cimmeria! Asgard lies to the north, and Vanaheim to the northwest of Cimmeria, and there is continual war along the borders.”
    “What manner of men are these northern folk?” asked Prospero.
    “Tall and fair and blue-eyed. Their god is Ymir, the frost-giant, and each tribe has its own king. They are wayward and fierce. They fight all day and drink ale and roar their wild songs all night.”
 - "The Phoenix on the Sword"

Howard didn't have to look far for inspiration for the second tale of Conan the Cimmerian, and actively drew from the previous story to write it: "The Frost-Giant's Daughter" could almost be considered a direct prequel to "The Phoenix on the Sword," so obvious is the link between the two stories in the form of the above quotations.

The shortest of Howard's completed Conan stories is also, in my opinion, the most steeped in myth and symbolism. It may only be 9 pages long, but all nine of those pages are filled with all manner of subtext, some beautiful prose, unforgettable characters and imagery, and an economy which only Howard could provide.