Jotunheim (Jötunheimr)

31. Three roots stand on three ways under Yggdrasil's ash: Hel under one abides, under the second the Hrimthursar, under the third mankind.

Jötunheimr is the giants’ land. Gylfaginning says Loki’s children by a giantess of Jötunheimr, the wolf Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr and Hel, were bred up there until the gods sent for them, and Þrymskviða has Thor drive there to recover his hammer. Grímnismál says one of the three roots of the world tree stands over the frost giants (Hrímþursar), and Gylfaginning places Mímir’s well under the root that stretches toward them.

The sources give no consistent geography, and no source fixes its position.

The name joins jǫtunn, a being related to the gods and often translated giant, with heimr, home or world. The Eddic sources mostly use a plural, jǫtunheimar, jötunn-lands. They place these lands generally to the north, though in Gylfaginning Thor travels east across a deep sea to reach them. Individual homes are named differently: Þrymr's is Jötunheimar in Þrymskviða but Þrymheimr in Skáldskaparmál.

Heide (2014) suggests it was never one physical place but a set of passages guarded by barriers such as water, fells, fire or forest, and Jakobsson (2006) argues that jötnar appear in every direction, perhaps as a figure of otherness.