GIANTS

Read across the codex

Motifs

An encyclopedia gives each giant its own page and stops there. These are the shapes that recur — a single eye, a world built from a body, the people who came before — in traditions with no route between them. Recurrence is not evidence of contact. It is the interesting part regardless.

Crossing cultures

  • The wild one of the uplands

    16 cultures · 19 entries

    A hairy, solitary giant of forest or mountain, hostile to herders and travellers — the shape a frontier takes in story.

    Orion (Greek) · Skrymir (Norse) · Olentzero (Basque) · Svyatogor (Slavic) · Oni (Japanese) · Shuten Dōji (Japanese) · Dzunukwa (Kwakwaka'wakw / Northwest Coast) · Tsul 'Kalu (Cherokee) · Kee-Wakw (Abenaki / Wabanaki) · Murkupang (Australian Aboriginal) · Thardid Jimbo (Australian Aboriginal) · Chinny-kinik (Australian Aboriginal) · Maero (Māori / Polynesian) · Nawao (Māori) · Giant of the Forest (Hausa / West African) · Stallo (Sámi) · Ojáncanu (Cantabrian) · Rübezahl (German / Silesian / Czech) · Giant of Kunar (Modern legend)

  • Eater of people

    13 cultures · 16 entries

    The giant as appetite: it takes travellers, children or the sick. Frequently a warning attached to a specific dangerous place.

    Polyphemus (Greek) · Cormoran (Celtic / Cornish) · Oni (Japanese) · Shuten Dōji (Japanese) · Dzunukwa (Kwakwaka'wakw / Northwest Coast) · Si-Te-Cah (Paiute) · Kee-Wakw (Abenaki / Wabanaki) · Papinijuwari (Australian Aboriginal (Tiwi)) · Murkupang (Australian Aboriginal) · Thardid Jimbo (Australian Aboriginal) · Chinny-kinik (Australian Aboriginal) · Maero (Māori / Polynesian) · Amazimu (Zulu / Nguni) · Giant of the Forest (Hausa / West African) · Stallo (Sámi) · Ojáncanu (Cantabrian)

  • Defeated by cunning

    9 cultures · 11 entries

    The giant loses to intelligence rather than strength — a trick, a false name, a riddle. Size is set up precisely so that it can fail.

    Goliath of Gath (Biblical / Philistine) · Polyphemus (Greek) · Antaeus (Greek) · Thrym (Norse) · Skrymir (Norse) · Cormoran (Celtic / Cornish) · Gogmagog (Celtic / British) · Shuten Dōji (Japanese) · Amazimu (Zulu / Nguni) · Stallo (Sámi) · Rübezahl (German / Silesian / Czech)

  • The people who came before

    8 cultures · 10 entries

    Giants as an earlier race displaced by the present one. Often a way of accounting for ruins, large bones, or an older population.

    Ymir (Norse) · Og of Bashan (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Bestla (Norse) · Gogmagog (Celtic / British) · Jentilak (Basque) · Quinametzin (Mesoamerican / Aztec) · Fangfeng (Chinese) · Si-Te-Cah (Paiute) · Kahui-Tipua (Māori) · Nawao (Māori)

  • War against the gods

    7 cultures · 14 entries

    Giants rise against the ruling powers and lose. The defeat is usually the point: it explains why the present order is the order.

    Nephilim (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Goliath of Gath (Biblical / Philistine) · Og of Bashan (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Atlas (Greek) · Enceladus (Greek) · Alcyoneus (Greek) · Porphyrion (Greek) · Polybotes (Greek) · Tityus (Greek) · Thrym (Norse) · Hrungnir (Norse) · Balor (Celtic / Irish) · Hiranyakashipu (Hindu) · Xelhua (Mesoamerican)

  • Turned to stone

    6 cultures · 6 entries

    A giant becomes a rock, hill or island. The landscape is offered as the surviving evidence, which is what makes the story durable.

    Hrungnir (Norse) · Cormoran (Celtic / Cornish) · Gogmagog (Celtic / British) · Jentilak (Basque) · Budj Bim Giants (Australian Aboriginal (Gunditjmara related landscape)) · Kahui-Tipua (Māori)

  • The giant as builder

    5 cultures · 5 entries

    Walls, causeways, dolmens and bridges attributed to giants — usually structures whose real makers had been forgotten.

    Jentilak (Basque) · Quinametzin (Mesoamerican / Aztec) · Xelhua (Mesoamerican) · Budj Bim Giants (Australian Aboriginal (Gunditjmara related landscape)) · Paul Bunyan (American tall-tale)

  • The giant as guardian

    5 cultures · 7 entries

    Set to watch a place, an island or a people. Menace pointed outward instead of inward.

    Briareus (Greek) · Geryon (Greek) · Talos (Greek) · Dzunukwa (Kwakwaka'wakw / Northwest Coast) · Tsul 'Kalu (Cherokee) · Gaoh (Iroquois / Haudenosaunee) · Rübezahl (German / Silesian / Czech)

  • Bones offered as evidence

    5 cultures · 6 entries

    Large remains — real fossils, misread burials, or claims that no one can now examine — put forward to prove the giants were literal.

    Nephilim (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Og of Bashan (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Quinametzin (Mesoamerican / Aztec) · Fangfeng (Chinese) · Si-Te-Cah (Paiute) · Giant of Kandahar (Modern legend)

  • The single eye

    4 cultures · 4 entries

    A giant with one eye, and the blinding or losing of it. The motif recurs on separate continents with no plausible line of transmission between them.

    Polyphemus (Greek) · Balor (Celtic / Irish) · Papinijuwari (Australian Aboriginal (Tiwi)) · Ojáncanu (Cantabrian)

  • The land is the body

    4 cultures · 4 entries

    A named hill, lake or island is understood as a being, not merely as its memorial. The country is read as a person.

    Kua Fu (Chinese) · Budj Bim Giants (Australian Aboriginal (Gunditjmara related landscape)) · Kahui-Tipua (Māori) · Paul Bunyan (American tall-tale)

  • Survivor of the flood

    3 cultures · 3 entries

    A giant or giant-descended line survives a deluge that destroys the rest of its kind, and so carries the old world into the new one.

    Ymir (Norse) · Nephilim (Biblical / Near Eastern) · Xelhua (Mesoamerican)

  • Comes with the season

    3 cultures · 3 entries

    A giant tied to a date in the calendar — midwinter, harvest, a feast — who arrives, is fed or feared, and leaves.

    Olentzero (Basque) · Mahabali (Hindu) · Oni (Japanese)

  • Holding up the sky

    2 cultures · 2 entries

    A giant who carries or props the heavens, explaining why the sky stays where it is.

    Atlas (Greek) · Gaoh (Iroquois / Haudenosaunee)

  • Sleeping under the land

    2 cultures · 3 entries

    The giant is not dead but sleeping beneath a mountain or island, and may yet wake. Ties a named place to an unfinished story.

    Enceladus (Greek) · Polybotes (Greek) · Kumbhakarna (Hindu)

  • Punished without end

    2 cultures · 3 entries

    Bound, stretched, buried or fed upon forever. The giant becomes a fixed feature of the cosmos rather than a character in it.

    Atlas (Greek) · Tityus (Greek) · Svyatogor (Slavic)

  • Strength drawn from the ground

    2 cultures · 3 entries

    The giant is unbeatable while touching its own soil, and is beaten by being lifted from it. Power is local, and that is the lesson.

    Antaeus (Greek) · Alcyoneus (Greek) · Svyatogor (Slavic)

  • Excess of body

    2 cultures · 3 entries

    Extra arms, heads, hands or fingers. Surplus anatomy marks a being as belonging to an older, less regulated order of creation.

    Briareus (Greek) · Geryon (Greek) · Ravana (Hindu)

  • The gift that undoes

    2 cultures · 5 entries

    Devotion earns a boon; the boon is worded too cleverly and becomes the exact shape of the giant's destruction.

    Balor (Celtic / Irish) · Ravana (Hindu) · Kumbhakarna (Hindu) · Hiranyakashipu (Hindu) · Mahabali (Hindu)

Found in one tradition so far

  • A world built from a body

    The earth, sky and sea are made from the dismembered corpse of a primordial giant. Mountains are bones; rivers are blood.

  • Flattened by outsiders

    A being from a living tradition rewritten by colonial-era writers into a simpler 'giant'. The distortion is itself part of the record.

  • Set among the stars

    The dead giant is placed in the sky as a constellation, which keeps the story visible every clear night.

  • Made, not born

    A giant forged rather than fathered — bronze, clay or craft. It raises the question of whether the thing is alive at all.

  • The devout enemy

    An opponent of the gods who is also learned, generous or genuinely devoted. The tradition refuses to make him simply wicked.

  • Pursuing the sun

    A giant who races, shoots at or swallows the sun, and generally does not survive the attempt.

  • Rumour of our own time

    A giant reported in living memory, circulating through soldiers, forums and video. Unverified by definition, and revealing regardless.

  • Knowingly tall tale

    Exaggeration that never asked to be believed. The audience and the teller are both in on it, which makes it a different kind of story.