GreekIndividual
Alcyoneus
Immortal on his native soil; slain only when dragged beyond its border.
The codex
Catalogue of Giants
Filter by culture, type, region, free access, scholarly notes, or chain of custody. Search by name or tag.
92 entries
Zulu / NguniRace
Amazimu
Cannibal ogres of Zulu and related folklore: shape-shifting eaters of the unwary.
GreekIndividual
Antaeus
Scholarly
Libyan giant who drew strength from the earth: until Heracles lifted him.
GreekIndividualFree
Atlas
Scholarly
Titan condemned to hold the sky upon his shoulders.
Celtic / IrishIndividual
Balor
ScholarlyChain
Fomorian king whose eye destroyed armies: slain by his grandson Lugh.
GeorgianRace
Baqbaq-Devi
Many-headed giants of the Georgian mountains: their strongest was outriddled, not outfought.
WelshIndividual
Bendigeidfran
Welsh giant king of Britain: his severed head was buried in London to guard against invasion.
NorseIndividual
Bestla
Scholarly
Frost-giantess mother of Odin: the gods' giant bloodline.
GreekPrimordial
Briareus
Hundred-handed giant who aided Zeus against the Titans.
British and WelshFolklore
British Giants: The Lesser Traditions
Four minor British and Welsh giants: a mountain, a beacon, a chapbook villain and a cauldron.
Australian Aboriginal (Gunditjmara related landscape)FolkloreFree
Budj Bim Giants
Ancestral beings of giant scale in the volcanic landscape of Budj Bim.
Australian AboriginalFolkloreFree
Chinny-kinik
Giant being in Aboriginal narrative: sparse in print, strong in place.
Celtic / CornishFolklore
Cormoran
Scholarly
Cornish giant of St Michael's Mount, felled by Jack the Giant Killer.
CroatianFolklore
Croatian Giants: The Lesser Traditions
Four small Croatian traditions: one-eyed giants, the Vedi, Sambo under Samobor, the Neretva mounds.
JapaneseIndividual
Daidarabotchi
Japanese landscape giant: Fuji is his spoil heap, Lake Biwa the hole it came from.
CroatianIndividual
Dragonja
Istrian giant who ploughed the Mirna into being; his kind built the hill towns.
Kwakwaka'wakw / Northwest CoastFolklore
Dzunukwa
Scholarly
Giantess of the woods who steals children and owns treasures of copper and power.
GreekIndividual
Enceladus
Giant buried beneath Sicily; his thrashing is said to cause earthquakes.
ChineseIndividual
Fangfeng
Giant executed by Yu the Great for arriving late to the flood assembly.
IrishRaceFree
Fomorians
Scholarly
Irish adversary race out of the sea: their rule banned the teaching of poetry and law.
Iroquois / HaudenosauneeIndividual
Gaoh
Scholarly
Master of the winds: a giant spirit who pens the gales.
FrenchIndividual
Gargantua
ScholarlyChain
Folk giant older than Rabelais: over four hundred French megaliths and rocks are named for him.
GreekIndividual
Geryon
Three-bodied giant of the far west whose cattle Heracles stole.
Modern legendModern Legend
Giant of Kandahar
ScholarlyChain
Unverified modern military legend of a red-haired giant near Kandahar.
Modern legendModern Legend
Giant of Kunar
ScholarlyChain
Unverified legend of a giant observed in Kunar Province.
Hausa / West AfricanFolkloreFree
Giant of the Forest
West African forest giant of tale cycles: a being of the deep bush.
Celtic / BritishFolklore
Gogmagog
ScholarlyChain
British giant who wrestled Corineus and gave his name to London's guardians.
Biblical / PhilistineIndividualFree
Goliath of Gath
ScholarlyChain
The Philistine champion of Gath who fell to a shepherd's stone.
HinduIndividual
Hiranyakashipu
Asura king who could not be killed by man or beast: until Narasimha.
NorseIndividual
Hrungnir
Stone-hearted giant who dueled Thor and left a whetstone in his head.
Sumerian, Akkadian, later Hurrian and HittiteIndividual
Humbaba
The oldest giant in this catalogue by two thousand years. He was not attacking anyone. He was guarding a forest, and two men came to cut it down.
BulgarianRace
Ispolini
Bulgaria's giants were God's second attempt at people. We are the third.
BasqueRaceFree
Jentilak
Basque giants of the mountains who built megaliths and fled the new faith.
MāoriRace
Kahui-Tipua
Bands of supernatural giants in Māori tradition: tipua of collective power.
Estonian, Finnish, KarelianRace
Kalev and Kalevipoeg
Finnic giant ancestor and his stone-throwing sons, across Estonia, Finland and Karelia.
AlbanianIndividual
Katallani
One-eyed Albanian man-eater with no knees: he cannot bend his legs to chase you.
Abenaki / WabanakiFolklore
Kee-Wakw
Ice-hearted cannibal giant of northern forests: a winter horror.
CroatianIndividual
Klek
Croatian giant petrified above Ogulin: the river Dobra runs out of his wound.
FinnishIndividual
Koljo
Finnish giant surviving in place-names: possibly a word for death before he was a giant.
ChineseIndividual
Kua Fu
The giant who chased the sun and died of thirst: staff becoming a forest.
HinduIndividual
Kumbhakarna
Ravana's giant brother who slept six months and woke to war.
Māori / PolynesianRace
Maero
Wild folk of the forest in Māori tradition: long fingers, fierce, untamed.
HinduIndividual
Mahabali
Scholarly
Generous asura king sent to the underworld by Vamana's three steps.
Amazonian, BrazilianIndividual
Mapinguari
One-eyed Amazonian forest giant with a vertical mouth and a hide arrows will not enter.
LithuanianRace
Milžinai
Lithuanian giant race: ancestors in local legend, monsters in fairy tale, their graves on the map.
Galician, Asturian, PortugueseRace
Mouros
Builders of the megaliths of north-west Iberia: unbaptised people of the earth whose name may mean the dead.
Australian AboriginalFolkloreFree
Murkupang
Giant figure in northern Australian story cycles of pursuit and country.
MāoriRace
Nawao
Wild people of early Aotearoa tradition: forest dwellers of great strength.
CroatianRace
Nemri
Croatian giant race of Lika and Velebit: the old people, who could not die a natural death.
Biblical / Near EasternRaceFree
Nephilim
ScholarlyChain
The mighty ones of old: offspring of the sons of God and daughters of men.
Biblical / Near EasternIndividual
Og of Bashan
ScholarlyChain
Last of the Rephaim; king of Bashan whose iron bed was a wonder.
CantabrianFolklore
Ojáncanu
One-eyed Cantabrian giant of the forest: enemy of the good anjana.
BasqueFolklore
Olentzero
Scholarly
The Basque charcoal-burner of Christmas: last echo of the jentilak.
JapaneseRaceFree
Oni
Scholarly
Horned ogres of Japanese folklore: punishers, marauders, festival demons.
GreekIndividual
Orion
The hunter so great he was set among the stars.
ChinesePrimordial
Pangu
He was not killed. He held the sky up for eighteen thousand years until it stayed there on its own, and then he died of it.
Australian Aboriginal (Tiwi)Folklore
Papinijuwari
One-eyed giant spirits of Tiwi tradition who hunt with clubs and bags.
American tall-taleTall Tale
Paul Bunyan
Scholarly
Lumberjack giant of American tall tales: Babe the Blue Ox at his side.
GreekIndividual
Polybotes
Pursued by Poseidon across the sea; crushed under the island of Nisyros.
GreekIndividualFree
Polyphemus
ScholarlyChain
The one-eyed Cyclops who trapped Odysseus in his cave.
GreekIndividual
Porphyrion
King of the Gigantes who assailed Hera and fell to Zeus and Heracles.
Mesoamerican / AztecRace
Quinametzin
Giant race of a previous sun who built great structures and fell to divine order.
HinduIndividualFree
Ravana
ScholarlyChain
Ten-headed king of Lanka: scholar, devotee, abductor of Sita.
German / Silesian / CzechFolklore
Rübezahl
Chain
Mountain spirit of the Riesengebirge: trickster, giant, weather-lord.
JapaneseIndividual
Shuten Dōji
ScholarlyChain
Demon king of Mount Ōe: drunkard oni slain by Raikō's band.
PaiuteModern LegendFree
Si-Te-Cah
ScholarlyChain
A Northern Paiute tradition about a people-eating tribe, and how it became a story about giants.
NorseIndividual
Skrymir
The vast wanderer whose glove was a hall: master of illusions.
SámiFolklore
Stallo
ScholarlyChain
Sámi giant-troll of the north: strong, dull-witted, dangerous to herders.
Coptic and Islamic Egypt, medievalFolklore
Surid ibn Salhouk
A king who dreamed the Flood was coming, and built the pyramids to keep knowledge safe from the water. His name is a corruption of the name of the pharaoh who actually built them.
NorsePrimordial
Surtr
Scholarly
The fire giant who guarded the world's edge before it existed, and will burn it down at the end.
EstonianIndividual
Suur Tõll
Giant king of Saaremaa who farmed his own land and threw stones at the Devil.
SlavicFolklore
Svyatogor
Scholarly
Mountain-strong bogatyr who could not be lifted by the earth itself.
GreekIndividual
Talos
Scholarly
The bronze guardian of Crete: automaton giant with a single vein of ichor.
Oghuz TurkicIndividual
Tepegöz
A one-eyed man-eater, blinded in his cave by a young man who tricked him. When a German scholar read the manuscript in 1815, he concluded that Homer had got the story from the East.
Australian AboriginalFolkloreFree
Thardid Jimbo
Cannibal giant of southeastern Aboriginal tales: a terror of the camp edge.
Gaelic: Irish, Scottish, ManxFolklore
The Cailleach
The Neolithic passage tombs at Loughcrew are said to be stones that fell out of her apron while she was jumping between the hills.
Manta, recorded by Spanish chroniclersModern Legend
The Giants of Santa Elena
Chain
Giants said to have landed by raft on the Ecuadorian coast: the bones under the story are mastodon.
European accounts of the GuanchesFolklore
The Giants of the Canaries
Four chroniclers described the same people in the same century. One called them short. One called them tall. One called them of medium height. Two said they were fourteen feet.
GreekRace
The Gigantes
Scholarly
Earth-born Greek race defeated by the Olympians: man-sized in the earliest art, snake-legged only later.
European accounts of the Tehuelche and Selk'namModern Legend
The Patagonian Giants
Chain
European voyage reports of a giant race in Patagonia, ended by measurement in the 1760s.
NorseIndividual
Thrym
Frost giant who stole Mjölnir and demanded Freyja as bride.
GreekIndividual
Tityus
Scholarly
Giant punished in the underworld; vultures feast forever on his liver.
SardinianFolklore
Tombe dei Giganti
Scholarly
Around eight hundred Nuragic collective tombs in Sardinia, named for giants by popular tradition.
IcelandicFolklore
Tröll
Icelandic category of giant beings: caught out at sunrise they become the rocks of the landscape.
CherokeeIndividualFree
Tsul 'Kalu
ScholarlyChain
Cherokee lord of the hunt: slant-eyed giant of the mountains.
RomanianRace
Uriași
Romanian race of giants from before mankind: the Danube reached their ankles, the Flood ended them.
PolishIndividual
Waligóra and Wyrwidąb
Twin strongmen raised by a wolf and a bear: Polish dragon-slayers who ruled the kingdom they saved.
MesoamericanIndividual
Xelhua
Giant survivor of the flood who raised the great pyramid of Cholula.
NorsePrimordialFree
Ymir
ScholarlyChain
The first being. From his corpse the world was made.
WelshIndividual
Ysbaddaden Bencawr
Welsh chief giant of Culhwch and Olwen: his eyelids had to be propped up with forks.
Arabian and IslamicFolklore
ʿĀd, Iram and Thamud
The peoples the Qur'an says were destroyed for arrogance. It does not say they were giants. That part was added later, and recently.
Islamic tradition, Arabic and PersianIndividual
ʿUj ibn ʿAnāq
He is the biblical Og, after five centuries of retelling. By the end he was standing knee-deep in the open ocean, catching whales and holding them up to the sun to cook.