Giants
Giants
Nationality/Culture
Various
Alternate Names
Gigantes (Greek), Cyclopes (Greek), Rom (Ethiopian)
Appears In
Various mythologies around the world
Lineage
Varies
Character Overview
Giants play many different roles in myth and legend. These mythical beings, much bigger than people, usually have human form, but some are monstrous in appearance. Giants often seem to be cruel and evil, although they may be merely clumsy or stupid. In some myths and legends, however, they are friendly and helpful or at least neutral.
Many different cultures have their own unique myths about giants. The major sources of myths related to giants are Greek mythology, Norse mythology , and the various myths of the American Indian tribes, though other cultures also have examples of giants that appear in legend from time to time.
Greek Giants The word giant comes from the Greek Gigantes (meaning “earthborn”), a race of huge creatures who were the offspring of Gaia (pronounced GAY-uh), the earth, and Uranus (pronounced YOOR-uh-nuhs), the heavens. These giants were half man, half monster, with serpents' tails instead of legs. After Gaia became angry with Zeus (pronounced ZOOS), the father of the Olympian gods, the giants and the Olympians engaged in a war to the death known as the Gigantomachy (pronounced jih-gan-TOH-muh-kee).
The gods needed the help of a human hero because the giants could not be killed by gods. Zeus therefore fathered a son, the mighty Heracles (pronounced HAIR-uh-kleez), whose mother was a human. The two sides met in batde at the home of the giants, a place called Phlegra (pronounced FLEE-gruh; “Burning Lands”)- The giants hurled huge rocks and mountaintops and brandished burning oak trees. The gods fought back strongly, and Heracles picked off the giants one by one with his arrows. Many Greek sculptors and artists depicted the Gigantoma-chy, with the gods' victory over the giants, as the triumph of Greek civilization over barbarism, or of good over evil. The Greeks used this battle to explain features of the natural world. For example, during the struggle in which the Greek gods overcame the giants, several fallen giants became part of the landscape. As the giant Enceladus (pronounced en-SEL-uh-duhs) ran from the battlefield, the goddess Athena (pronounced uh-THEE-nuh) smashed him with the island of Sicily. Thereafter, he lay imprisoned under the island, breathing his fiery breath out through the volcano called Etna. Under Vesuvius, a volcano on the Italian mainland, lay another giant, Mimas (pronounced MYE-muhs). Hephaestus (pronounced hi-FES-tuhs), the god of metalsmiths, buried him there under a heap of molten metal.
Two special groups of giants, also the children of Gaia, were the Cyclopes (pronounced sigh-KLOH-peez) and the hundred-armed giants. The three Cyclopes each had one eye in the middle of the forehead. The three hundred-armed giants each had fifty heads and one hundred arms. Both groups were loyal to Zeus. The hundred-armed giants were the jailors of Tartarus (pronounced TAR-tur-uhs), the place of punishment in the underworld , or land of the dead.
Norse Giants Giants appear in numerous myths of northern Europe. The giants' realm was a place called Jotunheim (pronounced YAW-toon-heym), located in Midgard (pronounced MID-gard), the center of the three-tiered Norse universe. There they dwelt in a huge castle called Utgard (pronounced OOT-gard).
Norse myths, like Greek myths, say that the gods fought and conquered the race of giants. Yet the gods and the giants were not always enemies. Friendship and even marriage could occur between them. Male deities mated with female giants. The mother of the thunder god Thor was a giantess named Jord (pronounced YORD), for example. However, the gods violently resisted all attempts by giants to mate with goddesses.
The giant Hrungnir (pronounced HRUNG-nur) built a wall around Asgard (pronounced AHS-gahrd), the home of the gods, and for payment desired the goddess Freyja (pronounced FRAY-uh). But he received only a crushing blow from Thor's hammer.
Many myths concern Thor's conflict with the giants. In one tale, he journeyed to Utgard to challenge the giants. The giants beat Thor and his companions at several tests of strength but only by using trickery. In one contest, Thor lost a wrestling match to an old woman who was in fact Age, which overcomes all. Though the gods were not always good and the giants were not always bad, the struggle between the two groups constitutes one of the underlying themes of Norse mythology and often symbolizes the struggle of good against evil.
American Indian Giants Most giants in American Indian mythology are evil and dangerous. Some start fights among humans so that in the confusion they can steal the men's wives. Others steal children, sometimes to eat them. Many Native American giants have monstrous or inhuman features. Tall Man, a giant of the Seminole people, smells bad, while giants in Lakota stories look like oxen. In the mythology of the Native American Lakota people, Waziya (pronounced wah-ZEE-uh) is a northern giant who blows the winter wind.
The Shoshone Indians of the American West tell stories of Dzoavits (pronounced ZOH-uh-vits), an ogre or hideous giant who stole two children from Dove. Eagle helped Dove recover her children. When the angry Dzoavits chased Dove, other animals protected her. Crane made a bridge from his leg so she could cross a river. Weasel dug an escape tunnel for her, and Badger made a hole where Dove and her children could hide. After tricking Dzoavits into entering the wrong hole, Badger sealed him in with a boulder.
Ancestral Giants The myths of various cultures associate giants with primal, or primitive, times. Sometimes giants figure in the creation of the world. Norse mythology says that the first thing to appear out of chaos was the frost giant Ymir (pronounced EE-mir), father of both giants and people, who had to die so that the earth could be formed from his body. The giant Pan Gu (pronounced PAN GOO) fills a similar role in Chinese mythology. Aboriginal people in northwestern Australia have stories about the two Bagadjimbiri brothers, both giants and creator gods, who made the landscape and people. When they died, their bodies became water snakes and their spirits became clouds. According to the Akamba people of Kenya, a giant hunter named Mwooka created the mountains and rivers.
Myths from many parts of the world say that in some remote time human ancestors were giants and that they have shrunk down to their present size over a very long period. Other stories tell of giants living among people at an earlier time in history. Gog and Magog (MAY-gog) are two giants of British myth. Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is said to have conquered them. In Jewish myth, a race of giants lived in the world along with people before the great flood that wiped out most living things. One giant, Og, survived the flood by hitching a ride on Noah's Ark. Later, however, he came into conflict with Noah's descendants, and the prophet Moses (pronounced MOH-ziss) had to kill him.
Other Giants One of the most famous giants from the Judeo-Christian tradition is Goliath (pronounced guh-LYE-uth), a huge Philistine warrior who fought the young Israelite hero David. The Philistine and Israelite armies had agreed to let their battle be decided by their two best warriors, but no one on the Israelite side wanted to fight the mighty Goliath except for David, who felt himself assured of victory despite being at a significant disadvantage in armor, weaponry, and size. In a victory of wit over brute strength, David used a stone from his slingshot to knock Goliath unconscious, and then cut off his head with his own sword. The English folktale of Jack the Giant-Killer tells a similar story as Jack kills the giant Blunderbore (pronounced BLUN-dur-bor).
Occasionally, cruel and kind giants appear in the same myth. The Mensa people of Ethiopia tell a story about a man who tries to steal cattle from one of the Rom, a tribe of giants. Enraged, the giant tries to kill the man. As the man flees, another giant befriends him and hides him in his cloak. Unfortunately, the man is crushed when the two giants come to blows.
Giants in Context
The peoples of the ancient world both relied on and feared the natural forces of the world in which they lived. While needing the sun and rain to grow their crops, they were also at the mercy of storms, droughts, and other natural events beyond their control. The stories of giants in various cultures reflect both the good and the bad of the natural world as primal, uncontrollable forces that sometimes help and sometimes destroy. They appear in creation myths as necessary for life, but in other stories they are predators that eat men and cause trouble. The strength of giants prevented most humans from matching them in a physical battle, but humans often defeated giants by acting in clever ways. In the same way, ancient peoples could not hope to control the weather and climate of the natural world, but they could use their intelligence to respond to nature in a way that worked to their benefit and helped them escape harm.
Giants are sometimes described as beings that are from a more ancient time period, a time before the establishment of gods and order, which connects them more closely with an uncivilized world. Through the stories of giants, ancient peoples attempted to explain natural phenomena. Even more recent cultures used giants to explain phenomena they did not understand; the writers of European folklore thought that construction projects from Roman times were the work of giants because they did not believe that mere men could have completed such huge works.
Key Themes and Symbols
Giants represent both the good and bad side of powerful natural forces. In some traditions, a giant appears as a symbol of chaos or disorder, threatening to disrupt the orderly natural world or social community. Their size makes them able to cause significant damage. But there are other giants that protect humans, such as Talos, the guardian of the island of Crete. Many stories have giants as key figures in the creation of the world.
The evil giants of myth generally need to be defeated, either by humans or by supernatural beings such as gods. Their conflict with the gods, in particular, is a key theme in world mythology, representing the clash between the old world and the new, good and evil. Although immensely powerful, these creatures fall when faced with bravery and cleverness because they generally act on instinct, using brute force. Many myths describe giants as being stupid and ugly.
Giants in Art, Literature, and Everyday Life
Giants have remained popular figures in art and literature even through modern times. Jonathan Swift's classic humorous novel Gulliver's Travels (1726) features a race of giants called the Brobdingnagians, and John Bunyan's well-known Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) depicts Despair as a giant. More recent books such as the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling and the Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black also feature giants as important characters.
Read, Write, Think, Discuss
The tall tale of Paul Bunyan and his giant blue ox is a relatively recent addition to myths about giants. Use your library and the Internet to find out more about Paul Bunyan and his place in American culture. How is his story different from the giant myths of much older cultures? How is it the same?
SEE ALSO Cyclopes
Giants
Giants
Giants play many different roles in myth and legend. These mythical beings, much bigger than people, usually have human form, but some are monstrous in appearance. Giants often seem to be cruel and evil, although they may be merely clumsy or stupid. In some myths and legends, however, they are friendly and helpful or at least neutral.
Giants can represent powerful natural forces that frighten and threaten humans. In the mythology of the Native American Lakota people, Waziya is a northern giant who blows the winter wind. In some traditions, a giant appears as a symbol of chaos, threatening to disrupt the orderly natural world or social community.
The evil giants of myth generally need to be defeated, either by humans or by supernatural beings such as gods. Although immensely powerful, these creatures fall when faced with bravery and cleverness. This victory of wit over brute strength occurs in the biblical story of David, who kills the giant Goliath with a stone from his sling, and in the English folktale of Jack the Giant-Killer, who vanquishes the giant Blunderbore.
Occasionally, cruel and kind giants appear in the same myth. The Mensa people of Ethiopia tell a story about a man who tries to steal cattle from one of the Rom, a tribe of giants. Enraged, the giant tries to kill the man. As the man flees, another giant befriends him and hides him in his cloak. Unfortunately, the man is crushed when the two giants come to blows.
Greek Giants. The word giant comes from the Greek Gigantes (meaning earthborn), a race of huge creatures who were the offspring of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the heavens. These giants were half man, half monster, with serpents' tails instead of legs. After Gaia became angry with Zeus, the father of the Olympian gods, the giants and the Olympians engaged in a war to the death known as the Gigantomachy.
The gods needed the help of a human hero because the giants could not be killed by gods. Zeus therefore fathered a son, the mighty Hercules*, whose mother was a human. The two sides met in battle at the home of the giants, a place called Phlegra (Burning Lands). The giants hurled huge rocks and mountaintops and brandished burning oak trees. The gods fought back strongly, and Hercules picked off the giants one by one with his arrows. Many Greek sculptors and artists depicted the Gigantomachy, with the
chaos great disorder or confusion
supernatural related to forces beyond the normal world; magical or miraculous
* See Names and Places at the end of this volume for further information.
gods' victory over the giants, as the triumph of Greek civilization over barbarism, or of good over evil.
Two special groups of giants, also the children of Gaia, were the Cyclopes* and the Hundred-Armed giants. The three Cyclopes each had one eye in the middle of the forehead. The three Hundred-Armed giants each had 50 heads and 100 arms. Both groups were loyal to Zeus. The Hundred-Armed giants were the jailors of Tartarus, the place of punishment in the underworld.
Norse Giants. Giants appear in numerous myths of northern Europe. The giants' realm was a place called Jotunheim, located in Midgard, the center of the three-tiered Norse* universe. There they dwelt in a huge castle called Utgard.
Norse myths, like Greek myths, say that the gods fought and conquered the race of giants. Yet the gods and the giants were not always enemies. Friendship and even marriage could occur between them. Male deities mated with female giants. The mother of the thunder god Thor was a giantess named Jord, for example. However, the gods violently resisted all attempts by giants to mate with goddesses. The giant Hrungir built a wall around Asgard, the home of the gods, and for payment desired the goddess Freyja. But he received only a crushing blow from Thor's hammer.
Many myths concern Thor's conflict with the giants. In one tale, he journeyed to Utgard to challenge the giants. The giants beat Thor and his companions at several tests of strength but only by using trickery. In one contest, Thor lost a wrestling match to an old woman who was in fact Age, which overcomes all. Though the gods were not always good and the giants were not always bad, the struggle between the two groups constitutes one of the underlying themes of Norse mythology and often symbolizes the struggle of good against evil.
Native American Giants. Most Native American giants are evil and dangerous. Some start fights among humans so that in the confusion they can steal the men's wives. Others steal children, sometimes to eat them. Many Native American giants have monstrous or inhuman features. Tall Man, a giant of the Seminole people, smells bad, while giants in Lakota stories look like oxen.
The Shoshone Indians of the American West tell stories of Dzoavits, an ogre or hideous giant who stole two children from Dove. Eagle helped Dove recover her children. When the angry Dzoavits chased Dove, other animals protected her. Crane made a bridge from his leg so she could cross a river. Weasel dug an escape tunnel for her, and Badger made a hole where Dove and her children could hide. After tricking Dzoavits into entering the wrong hole, Badger sealed him in with a boulder.
Ancestral Giants. The myths of various cultures associate giants with primal times. Sometimes giants figure in the creation of the world. Norse mythology says that the first thing to appear out of chaos was the frost giant Ymir, father of both giants and people,
Giants Under the Earth
Some myths use giants to explain features of the natural world. For example, during the struggle in which the Greek gods overcame the giants, several fallen giants became part of the landscape. As the giant Enceladus ran from the battlefield, the goddess Athena smashed him with the island of Sicily. Thereafter, he lay imprisoned under the island, breathing his fiery breath out through the volcano called Etna. Under Vesuvius, a volcano on the Italian mainland, lay another giant, Mimas. Hephaestus, the god of metalsmiths, buried him there under a heap of molten metal.
barbarism savage or primitive state
underworld land of the dead
primal earliest; existing before other things
who had to die so that the earth could be formed from his body. The giant Pan Gu fills a similar role in Chinese mythology. Aboriginal people in northwestern Australia have stories about the two Bagadjimbiri brothers, both giants and creator gods, who made the landscape and people. When they died, their bodies became water snakes and their spirits became clouds. According to the Akamba people of Kenya, a giant hunter named Mwooka created the mountains and rivers.
Myths from many parts of the world say that in some remote time human ancestors were giants and that they have shrunk down to their present size over a very long period. Other stories tell of giants living among people at an earlier time in history. Gog and Magog are two giants of British myth. Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, is said to have conquered them. In Jewish myth, a race of giants lived in the world along with people before the great Flood that wiped out most living things. One giant, Og, survived the Flood by hitching a ride on Noah's Ark. Later, however, he came into conflict with Noah's descendants, and the prophet Moses had to kill him.
See also Cyclopes; Monsters; Pan Gu.
giants
Legends like these, and many others, survived in both Eastern and Western traditions. They were compiled in medieval encyclopedias and books of wonders, and extended by the accounts provided by new chronicles or traveller's reports. Apart from being the subject of mythological legends and fairy tales, this phenomenon of inordinate bodily growth has been a clinical problem since the condition of ‘acromegaly’ was first described, and related to enlargement of the pituitary gland, in the nineteenth century. ‘Pituitary gigantism’ is now known to be caused by excessive secretion of growth hormone, starting before the length of the long bones is irrevocably fixed after adolescence. Abnormal growth elsewhere in the body, whether in such rare ‘giants’ or in those who (more commonly) develop the pituitary problem in their maturity, constitutes the condition of acromegaly. The symptoms of this illness are legion, including widespread abnormal growth of tissues and organs, with swelling of the lips and ears, pain in the joints, and impaired vision. As the scholar Helmut Bonheim has shown, many of these symptoms are also found in mythological figures and explain part of the lore of giants in myth and literature. For example, Polyphemus, the cyclops described by Homer, and who was depicted as being of extraordinary stature, could have gained his reputation of being one-eyed as a result of an abnormal growth of his pituitary gland, which, pressing on the optical nerves, may have diminished vision in both eyes or produced blindness in one of them. Bonheim also argues that perhaps the same condition of the giant's sight could have been advantageous to David in defeating Goliath, as some illustrations of this biblical scene seem to confirm. Many other features traditionally associated with giants, like their extraordinary appetite or their bodily deformities, may be explained in terms of the symptoms associated with acromegaly.
From a mere historical point of view, one of the first giants we have an account of was John Middleton, who lived at the end of the sixteenth century and reached a height of 9 feet 3 inches. As in many other similar cases, ‘the childe of Hale’ attracted so much notoriety that he was given audience by King James I. Indeed, from the sixteenth century onwards, many giants attracted the attention of kings and served as janitors, as porters, or as members of their private bodyguard. Specially famous was Oliver Cromwell's giant porter, named Daniel, whose height — of approximately 7 feet 6 inches — is marked by a big ‘O’ in the walls of Windsor Castle. Equally notorious was the army of giants that the king of Prussia, Federick I, stationed in Postdam at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and that became so famous throughout Europe that even the philosopher Voltaire occasionally made reference to it. One of the most celebrated cases of the eighteenth century was that of Charles Byrne, ‘the Irish giant’, who was 8 feet 4 inches tall, and whose skeleton ended up in the Royal College of Surgeons, very likely stolen by the famous anatomist and surgeon John Hunter. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Abbé Henrion, a member of the French Academy, taught that, as a consequence of original sin, there had been a progressive reduction of the height of men from the time of Adam until the arrival of Christ. Following his own calculations, Henrion stated that Adam had been 125 feet high, Eve 118, Noah 100, Abraham 28, Moses 13, Alexandre 6, and Julius Caesar 5. Though this idea never gained credibility among the scientific community, it remained quite popular within the Republic of Letters.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, unusually tall persons were exhibited for profit in circuses and freak shows. Given the social and physical barriers they had to encounter during their lives, many of these ‘giants’ were forced to make a career as human oddities. Specially notorious was the case of the American Robert Wadlow who, despite his height of 8 feet 11 inches, tried desperately until the moment of this death in 1940 to be considered neither a freak nor a medical case. He sued the American Medical Association for having cast him as a ‘preacromegalic giant’. Though he lost the case on technicalities, he may legitimately be credited with having been the last ‘giant’ of the twentieth century.
J. Moscoso
Bibliography
Bonheim, H. (1994). The giant in literature and in medical practice. Literature and Medicine, 13, 243–54.
See also growth hormone; pituitary gland.