David and Goliath, 1888 lithograph by Osmar Schindler – public domain image

(9) GIANTS

“There were giants on the earth in those days” – Genesis 6:4

Giants, titans or cyclopes, oni or Fomorians. The archetypal fire and frost giants of Norse mythology – to which Dungeons and Dragons added hill, stone, cloud and storm giants. The Biblical Nephilim as well as Goliath. Overlapping with ogres and trolls.

If you’re picking up a parallel with my special mention for dragons, that’s because giants and ‘giant-kin’ (a term borrowed from Dungeons and Dragons) are similarly ubiquitous or near universal in myth and folklore, typically as monstrous antagonists to humanity or even the gods themselves. Indeed, giants loom larger (heh) as the latter than dragons – hence the Gigantomachy or Gigantomachia or war between the giants and the gods in classical mythology, escalating to giants as apocalyptic beings in Norse mythology.

“Legendary creatures that resemble human beings but super-sized and often incredibly strong…these creatures may range in size from around 7 feet (the average size of the tallest real life humans), to truly colossal proportions.”

Similarly to dragons, giants in myth or folklore could well be the subject of their own top ten list, including their various elements, tropes and types – not to mention the elements, tropes and types of those important divine and human interactions with them, divine gigantomachy and human giant-killers.

However, giants differ somewhat from dragons, with the latter’s broad dichotomy between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ dragons, with the former tending towards malevolence or demonic entities, and the latter towards benevolence or divine entities. For giants, the dichotomy between benevolent and malevolent giants occurs within ‘western’ giants (and indeed I only have superficial knowledge of giants in non-western or eastern myth or folklore), albeit leaning heavily towards the latter.

And again as with dragons, even their theories for their origin and ubiquitous presence in myth and folklore are fascinating and diverse.

The usual psychological theory is that “the profusion of Giants in mythology is usually attributed to memories of childhood (when adults tower over you), to the rivalry between young men and old men, and to medical conditions like gigantism that cause unusually tall stature”.

The more mundane archaeological or paleontological theory is tracing their origins to explaining (or mistaking) the bones of extinct megafauna or dinosaurs as those of giant humanoids. Along those lines, there’s the Gigantopithecus, “an extinct cousin of the orangutan” and “the largest primate to ever exist” standing at three meters tall on its hind legs, which did actually coexist with early humans.

Perhaps related to the above, “it wasn’t uncommon for cultures to describe the imposing ruins of older civilizations as having been built by bygone giants” – as with monumental or megalithic structures, as with the legends of the Giant’s Dance for Stonehenge. And of course monumental structures were often sculpted or drawn as giant figures. Sometimes the same legendary logic was used for natural structures as shaped by or originating from giants.

Yet again like dragons, a less obvious source for giants is that of the symbolism of natural or elemental forces – “gigantic peoples often feature as primeval creatures associated with chaos and the wild”.

Of course, truly gigantic humanoids in real life “would fall victim to the Square-Cube Law”.

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)