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IntroductionIntroduction 1 Introduction I have seen landscapes … which, under a particular light, made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge. Nature has that in her which compels us to invent giants: and only giants will do.1 With these words, C.S. Lewis echoes a sentiment that is evident in myths and stories around the world. Giants populate the earliest accounts of our shared imagination. Myths and legends describe them as world shapers and destroyers,2 as the origins of divine and royal lineages,3 as symbols of human 1 C.S. Lewis, “On Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ed. Dorothy L. Sayers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966), 95. 2 The body of the primeval world shaper is always fragmented. It can never be seen as a whole; gigantic body parts are strewn across the landscape. The fragmentation of the whole body is a metaphor for the alienation experienced by man. A good example of this is Ymir, who can be found in Snorri Sturluson, Edda, ed. and trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1987), 10–13.The giant Antero Vipunen, from the Kalevala, evinces similarities in that he is buried in the earth and has trees and other living things growing out of him. Furthermore, in Germania, Tacitus relates a story of two northern Germanic tribes, the Hellusians and Oxiones, who present a mixed race of giants and men. (Cornelius Tacitus, Tacitus on Britain and Germany. A New Translation of the Agricola and the Germania, ed. and trans. Harold Mattingly (Har mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951). Chinese mythology speaks of the cosmic giant Pangu, who shares Ymir’s characteristics, as does Purusha from the Vedic tradition. Purusha emerges from a cosmic egg, like Pangu, and is later dismembered to form the world. In Greek mythology, foundational and creation myths emphasize the same theme. According to Hesiod, in Greek mythology the gigantes were the children of Uranos (sky) and Gaea (earth). They were in a conflict with the Olympian Gods called the Gigantomachy. Gaea produced the Titans, the Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires, the Furies, Typhon, Nereus, Phorcys, and Thaumus. The Cyclopes, as evinced in Homer’s Odyssey, possessed only one eye. The encounter of Odysseus with the Cyclops Polyphemos is recounted in The Odyssey, Book IX. 3 German mythology cites giants as foundational forefathers of the country and people. In his Memoriale, Alexander von Roes (13th century) mentions that the Trojans, having fled Troy, founded a new civilization along the Rhine by marrying local German women and learning their language. It is said that these women were descended from the giant Theutona, who had given his name to the entire people (Herbert Grundmann, ed., “Memoriale de Perogativa imperii Romani,” in Die Schriften des Alexander von Roes, trans. Hermann Heimpel, Deutsches Mittelalter, Kritische Studientexte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 4 (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1949), 18–67. Similarly, the giants Gog and Magog enjoy some notoriety in British pseudohistory. Originally, Gog was a Hebraic giant from a place called Magog (found in the Books of Genesis and Ezekiel), but later Magog becomes a seperate entity in apocalyptic lit © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163 / 9789004316416_002 2 Introduction fertility, and as antagonists of the bravest heroes.4 Humans have invented mythological and monstrous creatures to fulfill particular needs. When look ing back at the earliest evidence, this need is primarily to explain natural phenomena – mountain formations, earthquakes, storms, and fossils washed ashore. In this world view, giants and other mythological beings bring order and meaning to the world. At the same time, while these giants are the origin of the world and people, they are relegated to the outside of the human sphere, marginalized or situated in a past before humans came to power. They are the foundation and the framework. Their existence delineates the boundaries of the world and helps separate humans from that which is Other.5 Thus, when a person encounters a giant, this monster, because it should not exist in the human realm, has to be banished or killed. However, the relationship between humans and giants is far more complex than simple antagonism and alienation. In European literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a dif fer entiated picture of the giant emerges, assembled from various sources – myth ological, Biblical, and folkloric. At the same time as his staggering size encodes it as a monstrous figure, the giant also proves to be a loyal companion or sage advisor in these texts. In romances and epics, the monstrosity of the giant is called into question. Size and strength are not the only characteristics erature, where both giants are in league with the Antichrist. In British literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regnum Britanniae conflates the giants to “Goëmagot” or Gogmagog. Here, the Trojans also establish a new society and the Trojan Corineus defeats the giant. Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (New York: Norton, 2001), 145–146. 4 In Irish folklore for example, the Giant’s Causeway was created by one giant specifically. According to folk tradition, Fionn mac Cumhaill, the most celebrated hero in Irish literature and folklore, built the causeway between the coast of Antrim and Scotland in order to fight with a Scottish giant. Fionn is described not only as a noteworthy hero, but also as a giant himself. (Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, ed., The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), 238–249. 5 Carol Rose notes: “In Europe the tradition of parading a Town Giant has been established for centuries. The giants, who usually had a mythological or local folkloric origin, were not so much a mascot as a defined representative of control and the domestication of the Otherworld powers. […] Two of the most famous are Gog and Magog, the Guildhall Giants of London in England whose first recorded appearance was for the triumphal procession of King Henry V in 1413 and again in 1420 and in 1432, when they greeted King Henry VI. […] Another famous giant is Goliath. In a curious twist to the story of this biblical giant, the ancient Town Giants (from c. AD 1460) of the towns of Anvers (Belgium), Ath (Belgium), Hasselt (Holland), Lierre (Belgium), Malines (Belgium), Nieupoort (Belgium), Nivelles (Belgium), and Troyes (France) were all given the name ‘Goliath,’” Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth, 364..