"Many thousands of years ago, the alliance between the sisters Avarosa, Serylda, and Lissandra was shattered in a war that unknowingly threatened all of Runeterra." That is Riot's overview of the Freljord, and the sentence carries the region's two secrets at once: the war was between sisters, and it threatened the world because of what one of them had made a bargain with.
This is the hub for the Freljord: what it is, who the three tribes are, what True Ice does, what lies under the Howling Abyss, and what all of it would be in the Riot MMO. The game parts are speculation and labelled. The rest is Riot's.
What the Freljord is
The north of Valoran, from the border with Demacia to the ice. Riot calls it "a harsh and unforgiving place, where the people are born warriors, who must persevere against all odds", and notes that their neighbours to the south think them "wild, rugged, and uncivilized" because they do not know the ancient traditions that shaped them. It is a land of tribes, not states, in a "near-constant winter" that the overview attributes to the sisters' war.
There is no capital, and the closest things to cities are the seats of the three tribes that claim descent from the three sisters. Between them lie the tundra, the trolls, the poros, and the ruins of a civilisation older than any tribe.
The three tribes
The Avarosans, under Ashe, who carries Avarosa's name and, the lore suggests, her bow. Their vision is unity: a Freljord of allied tribes rather than warring ones, gathered at Rakelstake. Ashe's marriage to Tryndamere, the barbarian king, is politics as much as anything.
The Winter's Claw, under Sejuani, who holds that the Freljord is strong because it is hard, and that unity under a southern-style crown would soften it. Olaf fights for her.
The Frostguard, under Lissandra, who has lived since the war and has never told anyone why. Her order guards the Frostguard Citadel, the region's landmark on Riot's interactive map, and the citadel guards something else.
The three are the setting's cleanest faction system: three leaders, three ideas of the future, one land. The story "The Eye in the Abyss", which follows a Frostguard warrior into what the order really protects, is one of the five we recommend in where to start with Runeterra.
True Ice and the Iceborn
True Ice is ice that does not melt. It is older than the tribes, it burns anyone unfit to hold it, and those who can hold it are called Iceborn: descendants, in the lore, of the sisters' followers. Ashe and Sejuani are Iceborn; their weapons are True Ice. The distinction matters for the game, because Iceborn are humans with an inheritance rather than a separate people, a point we make in playable races.
What sleeps beneath
The war between the sisters was not only a war. Lissandra made a bargain with the Watchers, beings from outside the world, the same power that stands behind the Void, and when the bargain went wrong she sealed them under the ice at the Howling Abyss. The Frostguard exists to keep them there. Riot's overview of the Void names the Watchers as its masters; the Freljord is where they are, which makes a frozen tundra the most dangerous place on the map and the Frostguard the most important order nobody in the south has heard of.
Who lives there
Riot's roster, fifteen strong: Anivia, Ashe, Aurora, Braum, Gnar, Gragas, Lissandra, Nunu, Olaf, Ornn, Sejuani, Trundle, Tryndamere, Udyr and Volibear.
The tribes: Ashe, Tryndamere, Sejuani, Olaf, Lissandra. The demigods: Ornn, the forge god who made the tribes' first weapons; Volibear, the storm; Anivia, the cryophoenix who dies and returns with the seasons. The spirit walker: Udyr, who carries the demigods' power in himself. The people: Braum, whose shield is a door from the Frostguard vaults; Gragas, who brews; Nunu, a boy riding a yeti named Willump. The old ones: Trundle, king of the trolls; Gnar, a Yordle from before history, frozen in True Ice and thawed. The newest: Aurora, a Vastaya of the north.
The places
The Frostguard Citadel, the Howling Abyss beneath it, Rakelstake, and the Scargrounds where the Winter's Claw prove themselves. Legends of Runeterra gave the region 195 illustrations, and its landmark cards, the Abyss above all, are the best look at the ice anyone has painted.
The Freljord in the MMO, as a guess
A reading, not a report. Riot has confirmed the setting and nothing about which regions ship, or how.
The Freljord is one of the three western regions that connect by land, and the one that teaches survival: a landscape that kills the careless, and a people whose whole culture is built on surviving it. That is why it appears in nearly every fan account of the game's opening and in ours, in starting zones.
It is also the region where a faction system comes pre-written. Three tribes, three named leaders, three visions of the north, and no need for the game to invent a fourth. If the Riot MMO lets players choose a side anywhere, the Freljord is where the choice would cost least to build. And under the Abyss it holds the raid the whole setting has been building toward: the Watchers are the enemy the Void answers to, and we set out why the setting's antagonists are already designed for group content in Riot MMO raids.
What we do not know
Whether the Freljord ships at launch.
Whether the three tribes are a player choice or a backdrop.
Whether Riot's era, discussed in when is the Riot MMO set?, finds the sisters' war still cold or turning hot.
For the Freljord among the other twelve regions, with the numbers, see the 13 regions of Runeterra.