Another thing to consider is the additions to the list
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2020-12-16

We got Valkyries, giants, icy things (some mechanically snow and some not), runes, earlier printings of Kaya and Tibalt, and Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger.
There are still some other random thing like Combustible Gearhulk and Yore-Tiller Nephilim that don't seem to fit so there could be a few that have nothing to do with the actual set. Or I'm just not making the connection to specific myths.
Again it is either a hint that it is real or it is another thing the faker noticed before making the fakes.

Either way there's now a Ratatoskr expy spoiled.

The ten featured realms of Kaldheim (out of twelve total, I believe)

Bretagard - Humans, five clans
Axgard - Dwarves
Gnottvold - Trolls, they fall asleep for a long time and become part of the landscape
Karfell - Draugr, undead viking zombies
Immersturm - Demons
Istfell - spirits, the unglorious dead
Starnheim - Valkyries, glorious dead
Surtland - frost and fire giants
Littjara - Shapeshifter, wear wooden intricately carved masks to hide their true form
Skemfar - elves, once gods but defeated and split into two clans

There's a phenomenon called the Doomscar that smashes realms together and cause chaos.

More gods

Hm, seems that the Loki analogue relly is the god.

So we got so far the analogues of Tyr (Halvar), Odin (Alrund) and Loki (Valki), all in mono-color. I'm assuming Reidane is either multicolor (probably ) or there is no Thor analogue.

Also Vorinclex is confirmed for real.

The immersturm being folded into Kaldheim is noteworthy. Honestly, probably would have put money on Valla before Kaldheim getting made considering how much people disliked Skybreen.

Also, stand by the idea Vorinclex showing up is a dumb dumb idea. One would think they'd learned from Amonkhet and Ixalan not to dilute what they were doing.

Either Kaya kills him off or he succeeds and kills off Kaldheim. Neither prospect looks good but he's at least a pretty scary antagonist for the moment being.

Pft, they won't even kill off Zendikar or Amonkhet. If they killed off the Norse plane, one of the singularly most requested worlds, It'd be a phenomenally poor business move.

Given Norse mythology, I'd guess Kaldheim is the one plane they can kill off (repeatedly, at that) and still maintain a relative status quo.

How so?

So, Vorinclex is pretty clearly meant to be a Grendel analogue, yes?

In the case of Amonkhet, they made it both the Bolas plane and the Egypt plane, but it ended up not being very successful because the amount of people that wanted a Bolas plane was a lot smaller per percentage than those looking for an Egyptian plane. The fact the two were tied together caused tension that made a fairly large chunk of the base desiring an Egyptian plane dislike what they were doing since it didn't give them the experience they were really looking for, essentially just using the flavor as window dressing for the Bolas narrative. They wanted a world, not a single city warped around a suicidal competition.

In Ixalan, they took several popular themes people had wanted and mixed them all up. While it was still better received than Amonkhet for giving people what they wanted, it also was an absolute mess that left them less direction to actually build with again. In marketing terms, Ixalan tried to be to many things to too many people. Really Ixalan was a better test bed to see what people liked best vs what they didn't.

MaRo went over all that data at some point in making magic, but the search function is pretty broken on the mother ship so I'm not sure I'll be able to find it.

This description (from Beowulf) is pretty apt for the ‘Voice of Hunger’, after all:

“Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e’en feet and hands.”

I wonder why Grendel specifically when Norse myth is full of monsters.

Though I suppose few are assimilatory.

I think modern Magic tries to play on more well-known tropes, and Beowulf/Grendel is certainly the prototypical monster story in Anglo culture.

It’s also undeniably Norse in both setting and mythology—albeit an Anglo-Saxon fan fiction version of a Norse saga, complete with Christian retcons.

Much like Kaldheim itself, it is a Norse fantasy told through foreign eyes.

The Norse setting and genealogy are there, though, through the setting in Denmark, to the inclusion of characters such as Sigmundr and Weland (Völundr).

And, of course, the multiple mentions of giants/Eotens/jötunn and elves, such as one of Beowulf’s swords:

“MID the battle-gear saw he a blade triumphant,
old-sword of Eotens, with edge of proof,
warriors’ heirloom, weapon unmatched,
— save only ‘twas more than other men
to bandy-of-battle could bear at all —
as the giants had wrought it, ready and keen.“

and the following passage describing Cain’s lineage:

“Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,
Etins [jötun] and elves and evil-spirits,
as well as the giants that warred with God”

In any case, I can’t think off hand of an original Norse monster that fits Vorinclex and his depiction (especially in the showcase art) as a marauding man-eater better than the description of Grendel in Beowulf:



“Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e’en feet and hands.”

Immersturm feels very out of place with how German it sounds in comparison to everything else.

I like the hinting at phyrexians invading other planes. I don't like the random bonus antagonist when they already have Tibalt, it just feels like trying to do too much.

German terms sometimes get blended in with Norse myth like that. I blame Wagner- dude loved him some valkyries.


Not sure if that's what they were going for, but it works for me.


Norse myth is the most apocalyptic mythology I can think of. Norse myth really zones in on the apocalypse aspect. Christianity and Aztec myth are also have cyclical apocalypses, but it seems most central to the Norse.


Alrund's a pretty lever design with the cheaper half returning to your hand to be cast again as the more expensive half.

Vorinclex's alt art is amazing. Tibalt's less so. Are they holding back on planeswalkers breaking out of the frames now that we're used to getting full art versions instead?

So, was there a planar portal between Kaldheim and Dominaria at some point, or is it just a hundred-monkeys kind of coincidence that Kjeldor evolved a improbably similar culture, complete with valkyries and Norse-derived names?

As a meta point, it’s strange that the non-Norse plane has names lifted directly from Norse history and legend, such as *Freya*-lise and Halfdane. Also note the art for Freyalise Supplicant, which alludes to Freja’s affinity for cats.

I’m now convinced that sometime during the Legends era there was some form of interplanar migration between Kaldheim and Dominaria, probably resulting in a human and elven settlement in the Northlands, and various individual adventurers settling throughout the plane (Halfdane on Tolaria, giants establishing Hammerheim on Bogardan, etc.).

When the Ice Age arrived, Northland refugees poured into Terisaire over an ice bridge and transformed the culture of the continent.