Product Code Database
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: , cognate ) are of humanoid appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word giant is first attested in 1297 from Robert of Gloucester's chronicle. It is derived from the Gigantes ( γίγαντες, Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary, on Perseus Digital Library) of Greek mythology.
Fairy tales such as Jack the Giant Killer have formed the modern perception of giants as dimwitted and violent Ogre, sometimes said to eat humans, while other giants tend to eat livestock. In more recent portrayals, like those of Jonathan Swift and Roald Dahl, some giants are both intelligent and friendly.
Folklorists and historians examine the role giants are assigned in regional Geomythology. For example, Fionn mac Cumhaill is said to have built the Giant's Causeway on the island of Ireland. Per a 1965 examination in an American studies journal, "It is generally admitted today that Paul Bunyan was a synthetic figure conceived by advertising men rather than the spontaneous product of the folk mind, yet he has been adopted by the American people with enthusiasm...Paul and his blue ox Babe are supposed to have altered the appearance of the American continent; the animal's hoof prints became the lake beds of the Northwest and from its drinking trough spilled the Mississippi River." Fossilized remains of ancient mammals and reptiles common to the Sivalik Hills of India may have influenced aspects of the Mahābhārata that tell of battles in which "hundreds of mighty, and sometimes gigantic, heroes, horses, and war elephants are said to have died."
The Book of Numbers includes the discouraging report by the spies sent by Moses into Canaan: "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. (...) All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." The Book of Joshua, describing the actual conquest of Canaan in a later generation, makes reference to such people living there in (Joshua 14:12–15 and Joshua 15:13–14).
The Bible also tells of Gog and Magog, who later entered European folklore, and of the famous battle between David and the Philistine Goliath. While Goliath is often portrayed as a giant in retellings of the Biblical narrative, he appears to be significantly smaller than other giants, biblical or otherwise. The Masoretic Text version of the Book of Samuel gives his height as six Biblical cubit and one span (possibly ), while the Septuagint, the 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and the 2nd–1st-centuries BCE Dead Sea Scrolls give Goliath's height as four cubits and one span (possibly ). For comparison, the Anakites are described as making the Israelites seem like grasshoppers. See also Gibborim.
Josephus also described the Amorites as giants in his Antiquities of the Jews, circa 93CE, indicating that some sort of fossils may have been on display at that time:Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, (New York: Doubleday, 1997, 1992). "For which reason they removed their camp to Hebron; and when they had taken it, they slew all the inhabitants. There were till then left the race of giants, who had bodies so large, and countenances so entirely different from other men, that they were surprising to the sight, and terrible to the hearing. The bones of these men are still shown to this very day, unlike to any credible relations of other men."Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 5, Chapter 2, Number 3, Antiquities of the Jews: Book 5, Retrieved: 15 March 2013
The Book of Enoch describes giants as the offspring of Watchers and women in 7:2.
Mount Nemrut is known to have received its name from an Armenian tradition in which Nimrod was killed by an arrow shot by Hayk during a massive battle between two rival armies of giants to the south-east of Lake Van.
However, giants show different variants and forms, they are most frequently referred to as Jentil and Mairu, while as individuals they can be represented as Basajaun ("the lord of the forests"), Sanson (variation of the biblical Samson), Errolan (based on the Franks army general Roland who fell dead at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass) or even Tartalo (a one-eyed giant akin to the Greek Cyclopes Polyphemus).
The mythical city of Tololo Pampa in northern Chile is said to be guarded by a giant known by various names including; Pata Larga, Gigante Minero and Minero Gigante. The giant enters to the mountains to obtain riches to the princess of Tololo Pampa. If a person manages to watch the giant while he works folklore says the person will be blessed with good luck for the rest of their life.
Herodotus in Book 1, Chapter 68, describes how the Sparta uncovered in Tegea the body of Orestes, which was seven cubits long — approximately 3.73m, or about 12feet 3inches. In his book The Comparison of Romulus with Theseus, Plutarch describes how the Athenians uncovered the body of Theseus, which was "of more than ordinary size." The kneecaps of Ajax were exactly the size of a Discus throw for the boy's pentathlon, wrote Pausanias. A boy's discus was about in diameter, while a normal adult patella is around , suggesting Ajax may have been nearly 14feet (over 4m) tall.
The Cyclopes are also compared to giants due to their huge size (e.g.Polyphemus, son of Poseidon and Thoosa and nemesis of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey). The Elder Cyclopes were the children of Gaia and Uranus, and later made Zeus' "master thunderbolt", Poseidon's trident, and Hades' "helm of darkness", during the Titanomachy.
The Hecatoncheires are giants that have 100 arms and 50 heads who were also the children of Gaia and Uranus.
Other known giant races in Greek mythology include the six-armed Gegenees, the northern , and the cannibalistic Laestrygonians.
According to Jain texts, the height of Rishabhanatha, first tirthankara of the present half-cycle of time ( avasarpani) was 500 dhanusa (longbow).
In avasarpani, as the cycle moves ahead, height of all humans and animals decreases. The following table depicts the six aras of avasarpini–
are beings that are sometimes very large. The name troll is applied to jötnar.
An old legend says that two night-prowling giants, a man and a woman, were traversing the fjord near Drangey Island with their cow when they were surprised by the bright rays of daybreak. As a result of exposure to daylight, all three were turned into stone. Drangey represents the cow and Kerling (supposedly the female giant, the name means "old hag") is to the south of it. Karl (the male giant) was to the north of the island, but he disappeared long ago.
A bergrisi – the traditional protector of southwestern Iceland – appears as a supporter on the coat of arms of Iceland.
In the Netherlands, giants are often associated with creating or forming the landscape. For instance, two giants are said to have dug a channel, until they reached the village of Akkrum, where they had an argument and each went his own way, thus splitting the channel into two separate waterways. Others threw up hills, or became hills themselves when they died on the spot. In several legends, giants were evil beings that threatened, robbed and killed travellers or locals; such as Ellert and Brammert, in the province of Drenthe.
Medieval such as the Spanish Amadís de Gaula feature giants as antagonists, or, rarely, as allies. This is parodied famously in Cervantes' Don Quixote, when the title character attacks a windmill, believing it to be a giant. This is the source of the phrase tilting at windmills.
Tales of combat with giants were a common feature in the folklore of the British Isles. Celtic giants also figure in Breton and Arthurian romances. In Kinloch Rannoch, a local myth has a local hill resembling a giant named as The Sleeping Giant. Folklore says the giant will awaken only if a specific musical instrument is played near the hill. Giants are also prominent in Welsh folklore.
Many giants in English folklore were noted for their stupidity. A giant who had quarrelled with the Mayor of Shrewsbury went to bury the city with dirt; however, he met a shoemaker, carrying shoes to repair, and the shoemaker convinced the giant that he had worn out all the shoes coming from Shrewsbury, and so it was too far to travel. Other English stories told of how giants threw stones at each other, which was used to explain many great stones on the landscape.
Giants figure in folklore and fairy tales, such as Jack the Giant Killer, The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, Nix Nought Nothing, Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon, Young Ronald, and Paul Bunyan. are humanoid creatures, sometimes of gigantic stature, that occur in various sorts of European folklore.
Rübezahl, is a kind giant from German folklore who lived in the Giant Mountains, along with the Bergmönch, a giant mountain spirit.Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Grimm: Deutsche Sagen. Hamburg 2014, p. 34.
Antero Vipunen is a giant shaman that appears in the Kalevala, meeting the epic hero Väinämöinen to teach him creation spells.
Greek
In Greek mythology, the Gigantes (γίγαντες) were (according to the poet Hesiod) the children of Uranus (Ουρανός) and Gaia (Γαία) (spirits of the sky and the earth) where some depictions had them with snake-like legs. They were involved in a conflict with the Twelve Olympians called the Gigantomachy (Γιγαντομαχία) when Gaia had them attack Mount Olympus. This battle was eventually settled when the hero Heracles decided to help the Olympians. The Greeks believed some of them, like Enceladus, to lie buried from that time under the earth and that their tormented quivers resulted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Hindu
There are accounts stating humans grew to the size of giants during the Satya Yuga, the first of the four cyclical ages (yugas) in the Hinduism reckoning of time.
Jain
According to Jainism, there was a time when giants walked upon this earth. Jain cosmology divides the worldly cycle of time into two parts or half-cycles, avasarpani (age of descending purity) and ascending ( utsarpani).
Name of the Ara Degree of happiness Duration of Ara Average height of people Average lifespan of people Utmost happiness and no sorrow
Six miles tall Three palyopama years
Moderate happiness and no sorrow
Four miles tall Two palyopama Years
Happiness with very little sorrow
Two miles tall One palyopama years
Happiness with little sorrow
1500 meters 705.6 quintillion years
Sorrow with very little Happiness
21,000 years 6 feet 130 years maximum
Extreme sorrow and misery
21,000 years 2 feet 16–20 years
Norse
In Norse mythology, the jötnar (cognate with and ) are often opposed to the gods. While often translated as "giants", most are described as being roughly human-sized. Some are portrayed as huge, such as some frost giants ( hrímþursar), fire giants ( eldjötnar), and mountain giants ( bergrisar). The jötnar are the origin of most of various monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the Fenrisulfr) and in the eventual battle of Ragnarök, the giants will storm Asgard and fight the gods until the world is destroyed. Even so, the gods themselves were related to the jötnar by many marriages and descent; there are also jötnar such as Ægir who have good relationships with the gods and bear little difference in status to them. Odin, often regarded as the chief god, is the great-grandson of the jötunn Ymir. Norse mythology also holds that the entire world of men was created from the flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic proportions whose name is considered by some scholars to share a root with Yama of Indo-Iranian mythology.
Paiute
According to Northern Paiute oral history, the Si-Te-Cah or Sai'i are a legendary tribe of red-haired cannibalistic giants, the remains of which were allegedly found in 1911 by guano miners in Nevada's Lovelock Cave.Loud, Llewellyn L.; M. R. Harrington (15 February 1929). "Lovelock Cave". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology (University of California at Berkeley) 25 (1): 1–183. Furthermore, the Paiute creation story tells of "beautiful giants" who once lived between the and the Rocky Mountains. After giving birth to a disfigured child, the giants treated the child so poorly that the Great Spirit responded by making the land hot and desolate and allowing enemies to conquer the giants. Only two giants survived: Paiute and his wife, both of whose skin became brown from eternally living in the hot desert.Michael S Greene (2025). 158685139X, Gibbs Smith. 158685139X
Roman
Several Jupiter Column have been found in Germania Superior. These were crowned with a statue of Jupiter, typically on horseback, defeating or trampling down a giant, often depicted as a snake. They are restricted to the area of south-western Germany, western Switzerland, French Jura, and Alsace.
Other European
In folklore from all over Europe, giants were believed to have built the remains of previous civilizations. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus thought giants had a hand in the creation of monuments. Similarly, the Old English poem The Seafarer speaks of the high stone walls that were the work of giants. Natural geologic features such as the massive basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland were attributed to construction by giants.
Names
See also
Sources
Katharine Mary Briggs (1967). 9780415286015, University of Chicago Press, London. ISBN 9780415286015
|
|
