Latest / Mythmakers / What about the stone-giants? A user's guide to the giantic in Tolkien and elsewhere - Part 1
Transcript
- 0:00Hello and welcome to MythBakers. Now this week's episode is a bit different because we're
- 0:12actually responding to a listener's question but more about that in a moment. My name is
- 0:18Julia Golding and I'm the director of the Oxford Centre for fantasy and also a full-time
- 0:25writer. I sort of juggle the two roles. And today I am joined by a friend of the Oxford
- 0:32Centre that is Jacob Rinnaker. Now Jacob is well known to us as a Tolkien scholar but he
- 0:40also has had a little job shift since we last spoke so perhaps Jacob you'd like to introduce
- 0:45in brief your new role because it's very fascinating from a fan's point of view.
- 0:50Yeah so I'm working for Robin's Berger that does publishing in children's books, games,
- 1:01puzzles and whatnot so in a lot of what they deal with. If you've seen the villainous
- 1:07board game they have like Disney villainous Marvel villainous and forthcoming Star Wars villainous.
- 1:14They have some games. They have a forthcoming actual Lord of the Rings puzzle book game that
- 1:18is tremendous. There's some serious care that's been put into making this so I don't know if I'm
- 1:25allowed to see that. I think it's been announced publicly if not hopefully they're not listening but
- 1:31there's something for this particular group to look forward to coming to stores near you
- 1:38sometime within the next year. Yeah that suggests another theme for us one day which is about
- 1:46these crossover products because of course it's famous that Star Wars for example made a fortune
- 1:51from its toy version. So this sort of world where it comes out of a film or a book or whatever and
- 2:00becomes like a whole world and cosplay and all the rest of it is fascinating. Anyway so what was
- 2:07the question we were asked and why have I brought Jacob back? Well we got this rather cryptic
- 2:14message from a reader saying what about the stone giants in the Hobbit? They're really wild
- 2:24and I thought about that for a moment and I thought yes you are absolutely right what about
- 2:31the stone giants? So if you haven't read the Hobbit for a while they don't really impinge on
- 2:37the story very much. There is a sequence in the Peter Jackson film which goes on for quite some
- 2:42time with the sort of mountain rock people taking shape and then throwing stones each other in the
- 2:49Hobbit and the dwarves. They're all sort of at risk but actually where do they come from?
- 2:58I went back to the book just to check and it literally says oh watch out they're the stone giants
- 3:04they're bad news they're throwing rocks. No sort of sense of where their backstory is so Jacob
- 3:11do you have a theory where the stone giants actually come from? Yeah that's funny so I did
- 3:17did some after thank you dear listener whom everyone for that question so that got me poking around
- 3:24and yeah so with the Hobbits interesting like you said that they all learnly kind of mentioned
- 3:31there as kind of a backdrop right that and they're mentioned in kind of the same breath as
- 3:39this really evocative imagery of two storms clashing and so they kind of seem to be
- 3:46almost equated synonymous with these kind of elemental you know grand almost cosmic forces
- 3:56you know world bound cosmic forces and they yeah they don't they don't appear again there's
- 4:03other in in the Hobbit itself there's a few other passing references to giants that aren't stone
- 4:08giants right so this kind of this kind of you know the descriptor of stone in stone giants just
- 4:13you know only appears here and I think I can't I couldn't find anywhere else in Legendarium where
- 4:19stone giants were singled out but giants here within the Hobbit itself you have you know passing
- 4:26references to giants like you know Bilbo wonders if this giant boulder that he sees in a stream
- 4:34was maybe thrown there by a giant at some point but nothing is kind of fleshed out there and
- 4:42blood orthon says you'd like to find a more or less decent giant so there's kind of a moral
- 4:47dimension you know there's decent versus indecent I guess giants but largely these stone giants
- 4:54kind of seem indifferent right they're so massive in scale they're they're not concerned with
- 4:59you know they don't seem to notice Bilbo and company and even if they did who knows if they would
- 5:06care about these little you know kind of minuscule creatures so it's so you do I know and then
- 5:15this is and we can go into this perhaps a little bit later I'll wait for you to read on this in
- 5:18in Lord of the Rings the idea of giants and how that kind of develops over the development of
- 5:25Lord of the Rings specifically as a story but it within within the world of the Hobbit it's this is
- 5:32kind of a almost a flash in the pan you just kind of see this as a backdrop for for this kind of
- 5:37adventure setting with like you said that they don't play a significant role in the story the
- 5:45development of the story rather than to provide some sort of larger backdrop for the adventure
- 5:51right against which the adventure is happening yeah I mean they have the plot point of driving the
- 5:56the Hobbit and the dwarves underground I mean that's that's what the purpose they serve is
- 6:02just skate from the elemental creatures they then get tangled up with the the goblin so you can
- 6:07see you know you need exciting exciting turn in the journey to drive the the dwarves somewhere they
- 6:15don't want to go but I suppose there's also an association here as you mentioned with the storms
- 6:21of the elements and it made me sort of connect it with the later iteration of a sort of sentient
- 6:30mountain because in the Lord of the Rings they have or in the fellowship of the ring they have
- 6:35the passage up cadras which is abortive because of the attack of the weather which seems like a
- 6:42a return in snow to the idea that somehow the elements can in a neutral not exactly neutral but in
- 6:50a way that isn't involved in the the battles of elves and men can turn against travellers and
- 6:59there seems to be some sort of correspondence there but I think just looking at their presence in
- 7:04the Hobbit I mean the Hobbit is a less tidy book in terms of the legendarium than the Lord of the
- 7:12Rings so for example there is like the random reference to is it the smog dying like a screech
- 7:19of a steam train you know there is the it has a more storytelling awareness of our world element to
- 7:25it and it has a more nursery feel so it could be that there are elements that are just chucked into it
- 7:36to excite to the reader which don't have so much of a backstory but I do remember reading that
- 7:44Tolkien thought he only had one reference in all of it which he hadn't actually sort of
- 7:51plugged in properly and that was the the reference about the queen and her cats that comes
- 7:56in Lord the Lord of the Rings somewhere I think Aregor mentions of past Queen and no doubt Tolkien
- 8:01went back and you know worked out what that meant but I seem to remember him saying that was the
- 8:06only thing that wasn't connected so maybe there are connections with the giants that we are missing
- 8:11so let's dig a little bit more so let's think about the giant that figure in sort of world myth
- 8:21before we come back to Tolkien and see as Lewis and people so thinking back to the sources of giants
- 8:31I came up with two main sources which I felt influenced Tolkien and also see as Lewis and that was
- 8:38the Greek version and the Viking version I don't know which one do you feel you want to address first
- 8:45have that one of them maybe so I yeah so either one I went on a kind of deep dive into Norse
- 8:55okay that's earlier it just kind of went down the Norse the Norse the Norse rabbit hole
- 8:59but the Greek you know Greek Greek is easy is well I think there are a lot of similarities right
- 9:06between Greek and Norse mythology in terms of giants and kind of the primordial nature right so
- 9:15do you want so I think Greek could be less or probably take a little less time do I
- 9:19want to do Greek first let's do Greek let's go Greek Greek okay yeah so yeah
- 9:27so right so you have the the the Greek giants are children of Gaia and Uranus
- 9:34and depending on which you know which kind of founding mythology you're reading they're either
- 9:40coming from when Uranus was castrated right they kind of bubble up from the blood from Uranus from
- 9:48that or they're natural born to Uranus and Gaia depending so you know some of the the most
- 9:55massive largest elemental figures there they're you know even side by side with the gods or in
- 10:02some cases you know seem to be in a a grander scale in some sense but they're largely right strong
- 10:11aggressive and you have ultimately a kind of battle for power between the Olympian gods the
- 10:19Gigantomaki which right the this this massive battle between the Olympians and the giants and the
- 10:26Olympians end up winning and there's sometimes the same as Titans no this is a difference yeah yeah
- 10:40so giants so these giants in right and in Greek literature broadly speaking and this is you know
- 10:50terribly reductive but giants can be large but also they don't have to be so some people that are
- 10:58referenced as giants aren't necessarily giant size wise and in some instances appear to be
- 11:08you know kind of like mythical kind of like half like some sort of divine mythical creatures
- 11:15but not necessarily you know like 40 feet 50 feet tall they could be smaller so but that's in
- 11:21and kind of like the later literature and how they're dealing with quote giant so I think typically
- 11:25I think of like the psych like cyclops and say like the Odyssey as that's kind of what I picture
- 11:33is as kind of being a giant but they're of course like slightly separate related but I think
- 11:39slightly separate stream it just all it all gets muddled and muddied when you're looking at all
- 11:47the literature together as a whole right because each of these authors is kind of taking a different
- 11:52piece of this and running with it so yeah so largely though I think when when you're talking about
- 11:58earlier giants the earliest giants that are battling the Olympians and shortly thereafter they're
- 12:04just kind of like brutes and almost seem to carry this kind of symbolic weight of chaos right so
- 12:12the Olympians are these gods that are bringing in you know reason rationale order to chaos you know
- 12:18disorder barbarism right and so that's kind of how sometimes it's used with later authors
- 12:24referring to this story of the Olympian gods versus the giants is kind of in essence representing
- 12:31this greater idea of civilization versus barbarism or Plato even references this as you know the
- 12:40giants kind of representing base materialism or like materialistic ways of looking at the universe
- 12:47whereas Plato of course is the correct way of looking at it which is more abstract right looking at
- 12:51some sort of transcendent realm and that's where the Greek gods are representing so in at least in
- 12:57in Greek literature it's kind of the idea the images are kind of abstracted and kind of taken
- 13:04to symbolize a battle between order versus chaos civilization barbarism reason rationale and just
- 13:10kind of you know base materialism in some so that's kind of the Greek yeah largely kind of why I see
- 13:17you when I read it so and obviously the inkling authors all raised on Greek stories in the
- 13:25in the schooling system of the day and I think one of the carry forwards there which I can see is
- 13:30the sense of them not being the the sharpest of creatures and I think that's particularly
- 13:41you can see that in CS Lewis's giants he has a number of giants some who are more benign than others
- 13:49but that seems to me that he may be drawing on more of a Greek tradition so let's do the north
- 13:56where I suspect I can imagine Tolkien's finger prints are slightly more visible I do remember that
- 14:04from from the very foundational myths of North mythology the physical world is made from the body
- 14:14of a giant right so yeah yeah yeah that's yeah so yeah yeah yeah yeah what do you have these
- 14:25overlaps really interesting parallels in Mesopotamian mythology with the creation with the Babylonian
- 14:31specifically creation myth but in when in in Norse you have right so yeah Emeer Emeer
- 14:41please somebody's going to I daren't I apologize to anyone who does to everyone who does
- 14:50Norse in any of its incarnations but right so that this kind of primeval giant is the first
- 14:57being that actually exists in in the world right that's that's kind of formed from drops of
- 15:04water when the ice of right niffleheim meets the heat of muskleheim so you have again apologies for
- 15:11pronunciation but right so it's kind of in the middle of the you know extra hot extra cold in the
- 15:17middle where that meets the watery area this giant kind of just develops out of so and then from
- 15:25his person or its person kind of develops kind of grows other giants so that's what you have
- 15:33that happening and kind of at the same time elsewhere meanwhile you have the original gods being
- 15:41created as well so they're kind of two different tracks of of of kind of origins of for the gods
- 15:50like Odin etc we think of more traditional gods Thor etc and then the giants that are kind of
- 15:56born directly from the body of this initial being that is the first to exist in this in this world
- 16:05so yeah they have a way backly out don't they those gods in the giants right well they yes
- 16:12they're battling it out and they the gods that are the more kind of like human like gods end up
- 16:19you know slaying this primeval giant and his blood drowns all of the other giants except for one
- 16:26family that survives on a little old boat and then you know survives and it's the the
- 16:32fashioning the gods fashion the world from this you know deceased gods body and set up from the
- 16:41brow of this this primeval god mid guard right which literally is middle earth uh and it
- 16:52is meant to protect in some ways the inhabitants of mid guard from these giants who they're trying
- 16:58to push off to the periphery okay so we've got a wide range of giants there and just thinking about
- 17:06the sort of trickle down effect when we look into the sort of world of medieval stories another
- 17:11fascination for talking and Lewis in particular um you get versions of these giants in new forms
- 17:20coming forward um and I think the one that obviously we know is of direct influences
- 17:27going in the green night the green night is a giant but he is a giant in the sense of the
- 17:32stature of one of the Greek ones he's not that huge but he's not did he's not dim uh he's elemental
- 17:39his clever his uh a force of nature um he's magic he's scheming um so he's an absolutely fascinating
- 17:51figure I think as a sort of interpretation of the giant as the other that threatens the worlds of
- 17:58the court and the night um civilization he's offering a different kind of civilization uh in his
- 18:06green chapel um so I think that's a that's a really fascinating giant and probably my favorite
- 18:14of all the giants because he seems to have so many aspects to him yeah I agree no that's and yeah
- 18:21the going in the green night is you know it's a fascinating story in and of itself right and uh
- 18:26and when we knew yeah we know of course that you know Tolkien specifically there's there's actually
- 18:29a letter uh of Tolkien that's up for uh auction right now for anybody who's it's it's it's
- 18:34currently it's it's there you can get it right now uh it's it over six uh six thousand us dollars uh
- 18:40right now um but uh it's a letter to a fan uh who's writing about Lord of the Rings hadn't quite
- 18:46finished reading it but what they had read uh what had impressed them so much they wrote letter
- 18:52Tolkien wrote letter back uh and he says that he's right talking about the creation of uh middle
- 18:58earth and he says right naturally in digested form I am indebted to the myths and legends of
- 19:04literature but most specially to those of England and Wales uh for Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland
- 19:09I have a great liking so I think yeah so definitely looking at going in the green night there's there's
- 19:14a special place in Tolkien's heart for this kind of Celtic Gaelic um version of of giants as it
- 19:21come there and I think that's a valuable insight into and especially the the right do we have the
- 19:27green uh the green night and some parallels some interesting connections to giants and ants uh in
- 19:35Lord of the Rings so hold hold hold the thought about ants because you made very interesting point
- 19:41about the actual meaning of the word ant um we need to properly recognise um the Mabinyogin
- 19:49and the Irish legends again giants causeway that's uh in for those of you who aren't familiar with the
- 19:58the sort of geography of northern Ireland there's a fantastic world heritage site called the
- 20:04Giants Causeway which is created by um cooling basalt from a bulk an ancient volcano and it's
- 20:11called the Giants Causeway because it looks as though it's been made by a creature a giant um and it
- 20:18links up geologically to fingers cave over in in Scotland so there there's a huge presence of
- 20:28giants in the landscape that is um all over England Scotland Wales uh Ireland um and giants cut
- 20:38into chalk surfaces um you know everywhere and um any large structure is often named after a
- 20:49giant or a hero who is treated like a giant um so heroic people of that stature so there's a very
- 20:57rich tradition there and all of these masses of uh influences are all going into what talking
- 21:02called the cauldron of story and being stirred around so let's look at the specific mention of
- 21:09ent because this word isn't actually Tolkien's word is it no no it's right it's an old English uh
- 21:16often translated as giant itself so ent and giant uh in old English uh are
- 21:23compared to be synonymous or have a close affinity to to each other um so yeah so it's really
- 21:30interesting looking at how you know the development of Lord of the Rings the different drafts
- 21:36that in early drafts you have references to Giants um not frequently right so it seems
- 21:44to after the Hobbit as he's putting together Lord of the Rings you still have some references to
- 21:48Giants but upon successive revisions they kind of get weeded out um and even
- 21:57treebeard himself right so this idea of ent's treebeard in earlier drafts is described more or
- 22:04less like a giant who's kind of dressed in green and are wearing you know male that looks like leaves
- 22:10and he has a beard you know uh like branches but um and then it's described as having his own court
- 22:17with you know some sort of courtly retinue right um the who stand tall who stand like young trees
- 22:26so again this is the saying that they're standing like them not so there's some ambiguity there
- 22:30are they actually trees but then as it kind of develops it seems like Tolkien is taking you know
- 22:35what was happening in in what he was doing with the idea of Giants this kind of you know generic
- 22:40idea of Giants as these large oafish creatures that you really get a better sense for in the
- 22:46farmer giles of ham uh the the giant there for Tolkien is kind of this explicit you know just dumb
- 22:53brute uh whose death and partially blind and just kind of bumbling um to then and these passing
- 23:00references in Hobbit that seem to be connecting it to this wider world of children's you know
- 23:06stories about Giants and Knights battling Giants and that sort of thing he then kind of takes that
- 23:11and it seems like he's trying to make it his own giving his own personal kind of internally consistent
- 23:18idea of idea of Giants and it seems at least in my my reading of of kind of all this you know
- 23:24preparatory material and and multiple drafts that he's kind of taking this idea of Giants and
- 23:30developing that within the legendarium into ends in some way what one aspect of Giants kind of
- 23:38becomes evolves into uh into ends um okay here's a theory here's a theory Jacob yeah um if in the Hobbit
- 23:46we've got um stone Giants hyphenated stone Giants yeah maybe what we've got in lot of the rings
- 23:52the two towers is wood Giants yeah um so you can imagine there's a sense of he's working through the
- 23:59elements here yeah it's a very elemental landscape that we're moving in um so you can have
- 24:06that is that's where we're going here um with it you could yeah because because you do have in
- 24:11you know um uh book of lost hails there's references to you know melco uh breathing
- 24:20Giants in the earth along with other monsters with the wicked dwarves ogres um but that doesn't
- 24:27really kind of he doesn't follow that trajectory it seems so we have Giants mentioned
- 24:32in some of the earlier material but it doesn't it doesn't seem to survive as he's kind of working
- 24:38and reworking it that he really seems fascinated with like you're saying that perspore that kind of
- 24:42dimension of Giants the elemental Giants that are you know kind of the green the wood uh and follows
- 24:48those and develops that because he he says you know that he doesn't remember creating treebeard
- 24:55and so this is something that kind of seems to be happening kind of organic organically for
- 25:01lack of a better term right right right right right but but it's but he he didn't see
- 25:08Tolkien didn't see himself as kind of like from whole cloth kind of creating consciously this this
- 25:16entity that is treebeard as an ent but then it kind of just kind of grows uh into into this idea
- 25:22which is yeah which which I find fascinating because it is so directly tied to the landscape
- 25:30itself right the Tolkien was so particular about and he writes you know so movingly about uh just
- 25:35in describing he obviously cared about right trees landscape the world and the ends kind of become
- 25:41this vehicle for personifying giving a voice to the land right um to nature uh and that's yeah it
- 25:50kind of grows and then it becomes something that's distinct that we see like you're mentioning with
- 25:54going in the green night that we see the green night kind of having a tie to the green right the
- 26:01elements of wood kind of in in particular and so this is I think him perhaps you know Tolkien
- 26:08leaning a bit being drawing drawing a bit from that but then kind of amplifying it
- 26:15100 fold uh in his own in his own the petri dish that is uh you know middle earth and the the
- 26:23broader right legendarium I'm getting a bit carried away with my theory here but I've got another one
- 26:28to offer you keep going keep going I love it yeah so we got Stain Giants and Wood Giants um the
- 26:32Balrog is arguably a fire giant because it's described as a sort of derivative flame isn't it um
- 26:39right yeah yeah it's one of those sort of elements that's created by the original um melco dark lord
- 26:49the the the super badgy so where we've got that that's earth um fire and uh wood we're doing quite
- 26:59well on our elements here right you can throw in the eagles if you want to do you want to do eagles
- 27:04you can you can go ahead and do that if you want for okay lose your connection to right so the
- 27:09air right that they're uh right in their manways you know kind of the specific you know a finity
- 27:14for for a manway who's largely in charge of right the kind of the realm of air um so I think that
- 27:21I think that works I think you're under something that's that's for the next academic article um not
- 27:26I write those anymore so I think what's really interesting is that in some ways another argument
- 27:35here is that everything but hobbits are giants in order the rings because our perspective our point
- 27:45of view is of the small so it means actually that the way it's positioned is that um we are going
- 27:55out into a big bigger world a world that doesn't care on understand the halfling the hobbit
- 28:03so even the men that we meet are a bit like giants to the um the hobbits I mean you see that I've
- 28:11seen the film with all the discussion about how they did the force perspective and the the doubling
- 28:16to make this clear but you've got the sort of oh fish giant people in Bri and then you've got the sort
- 28:23of uh regal giants of the sort of gondor people and people of stature and the elves so you could
- 28:30say that there's this theme of perspective that runs all the way through Lord the Rings which
- 28:35reminds me very much of another literary antecedent um which is perhaps one of the first to make
- 28:42real use of this perspective and that's called scolvers travels which has the two worlds where
- 28:48Galover and one place is a tiny and in another place he's the giant so it feels a bit like that to
- 28:55me that they're talking's very aware of just how big or small you are in a fantasy world
- 29:02because that's really hard to be a giant isn't it right yeah yeah yeah you do yeah yeah absolutely
- 29:08absolutely and then you have yeah and you have nuance added kind of to that or kind of
- 29:13taking in different directions and I think and that's where yeah the the giants kind of being used
- 29:19as metaphor uh you see that in in some ways in I think here in in in Lord of the Rings definitely
- 29:27but also in the Chronicles of Narnia and some of C.S. Lewis's other writings where the idea of
- 29:34giant as as metaphor for something different even into sometimes contemporary literature uh which we
- 29:39can talk about shortly yeah let's turn to um Narnia so just off the top of my head I could think of
- 29:48there may be more I could think of three giants um there's the first one that we meet in Narn
- 29:55the Witch and the Wardrobe who is turned to stone previously um and his giant rumble buffing
- 30:04causing name and he's the one who borrows the hank chiff to mop his brow that sort
- 30:11and he's obviously in the tradition of gentle but bit dim giants and then the next one I could
- 30:19think of was the one who stands as a marshal in the fight between Peter and Miraz and he is
- 30:29wimble feather who seems a close cousin or descendant of the one from line the Witch and the Wardrobe
- 30:40and then there's interesting giants and the ones that connect most to the stone giants of the
- 30:46hobbit are the ones that pop up in the silver chair um there's a lot of uh so going in the green
- 30:54night in this as well with the wintry setting and the christmas feast and all of this but there is when
- 31:00they're first introduced they are behaving very much like the um giants from the hobbit because um
- 31:10we actually get the giants throwing stones um and uh Jill who's called scrub uh says are they aiming
- 31:21at us? No said no said puddle glum we'd be a good deal safer if if they were
- 31:30um these giants are terrible shots terrible aim terrible shots um doffers in the sporting world of
- 31:37nania but then of course the children then go into the castle where they're treated as
- 31:45uh guests but it turns out a bit like a jack in the beanstalk and sort of scenario very much that
- 31:51kind of fairy tale feel where they realize that they are the the prime dish not the not the guest for
- 31:58dinner they are dinner um so that world to me seems as though cs Lewis is drawing on fairy tale giants
- 32:10really um but the stupidity the silliness comes from a sort of um easily tricked element comes from the
- 32:17sort of uh the cyclops type giant says sort of bit of greek in there as well
- 32:24have i mentioned them all have i missed a giant thank you for listening to part one of this week's
- 32:32podcast come back next week to hear part two thank you for listening to myth makers
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