Snow Hare

The Snow Hare is a small, herbivorous hare native to the Freljord. Its name comes from its snow-white coat, which lets it blend into the tundra and open snowfields of the region and keep it hidden from predators and hunters alike. Though a minor creature, the snow hare is a familiar enough sight across the Freljord to have entered its people's speech. In the tale A Well-Earned Tip, the young servant Aegil escapes a brewing fight by diving from a table like a snow hare leaping for the safety of the treeline. The comparison captures the animal's chief traits: quickness and a sharp instinct to bolt for cover at the first sign of danger. Snow hares also range across the Freljord's frozen lakes and ice. In The Shackles of Belief, the Iceborn Thorva remembers chasing a snow hare out onto a frozen lake as a child, laughing as she ran, until the thin ice cracked and gave way beneath her. Her plunge into the black water and her rescue from beneath the ice marked the night her gods-given power first stirred, a memory that shows how ordinary an encounter with the creature is in the daily life of the Freljord's tribes.