jotunheim | liefullyloki

People have asked me what the difference is between my headcanons for Niflheim and for Jotunheim. While I tend to use quite a few Loki-in-Jotunheim GIFs to express when my characters are in Niflheim, there are a few major differences between the two realms.

Jotunheim:

Jotunheim is a large planet.
There are many clusters of life
There are many buildings, cities, villages, towns, even if those things are buried or hidden by snow and storms
For the most part, Jotunheim’s landscape is like Antarctica, mostly barren and empty, if not built of large standing structures made often of ice. Only around the equator is there more plant life, but it only grows for part of the year and stays in hibernation for the rest of the year.
There are various land and sea animals of Jotunheim
Where there is life, one can see a bit more color, even if just a slight bit.
There are areas, large mountainous regions of Jotunheim where Jotnar live and work the land. In the mountains, they have created vast cavernous systems of tunnels and living in solid rock. In some tunnels, they also find metal and precious rocks that they use to trade for other things in the Nine Realms or create tools with.
I imagine the Jotnar trade often outside of Jotunheim, just not with Asgard for obvious reasons.

Niflheim:

Niflheim is not a planet. It is a very large piece of flat floating land, much like Asgard. Though the realm is shrouded in mystery and illusion, because Hel is Loki’s daughter and has cast a spell on Niflheim to make it seem far larger than it really is, actually it seems infinitely large.
Niflheim has various clusters of forests, mountains, and valleys with lakes and rivers scattered about. For the most part, Niflheim is a mysterious land, consisting mostly of natural elements but rarely any sign of life.
The trees and plant life one sees in Niflheim are ancient and frozen in time. They do not grow but they are not dead either.
Niflheim’s non-natural structures and objects give off an air as though the relics of the land are just that, relics. No inhabiting dead soul in Niflheim knows where the sporadically found non-natural objects came from or by whom they were made. The materials with which the objects were made seem familiar to any soul, however the location in which the objects may be in make them seem out of place, especially large ruins of pillars and structures long since crumbled.
There are two parts to Niflheim as far as inhabitants go. There is the isolation of inhabitants of Niflheim, where one can go several days without ever seeing sign of another soul, and then there are clusters, where one may spot what would appear a group of or a line of souls heading toward somewhere. Despite Niflheim being filled with billions, possibly quadrillions of souls, Hel cast an ilusion to make each inhabitant of Niflheim believe they are isolated and for the most part, inhabitants rarely ever encounter other inhabitants.
In the very center of Niflheim is Hel’s castle. It is always snowing in that part of Niflheim. Hel’s castle is black in appearance and looks absolutely menacing with jutting spikes all over, the majority pointing up toward the sky. It is the single intact structure of Niflheim and is also nearly as tall as Niflheim’s mountains.
The scarce populace of animals, as one may occasionally encounter animal life in Niflheim, normally appear to be animals one is familiar with, from any part of the Nine Realms, and has associated with death. Often times these animals are animals from one’s own place of birth or a place one has resided in for a fair amount of time in their life. Though the animals that a soul sees in Niflheim are not dead souls, they are actually souls of living creatures that have traversed the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. Animals most associated with death are creatures able to slip in an out of the two realms.
Besides the animals associated with death, Hel herself is easily capable of slipping between the realms of the living and dead, however she tends to stay in Niflheim, keeping an eye on every soul.