THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 7

LORDS OF OPPOSITION AND COMPLETION: THE GIANTS AS THE NEGATIVE ASPECT OF THE DIVINE

It has often been remarked by students of Norse mythology that the distinction between gods and giants is often vague, even in some cases nonexistent.  This observation has led to a great deal of confusion when it comes to trying to define the role and significance of giants in Viking belief. 

To begin, we know that the first of the gods – including Odin himself - descend from giants. Loki, the nemesis of the gods, is believed to be the son of a giantess.  Frey takes as his bride the giant maiden Gerd.  I’ve shown in other chapters that sometimes a giant can pose as the seasonal counterpart of a god, one being the ruler of the winter half-year and the other of the summer half-year.  There are plenty of other examples of the fluidity one encounters when attempting to compare and contrast gods and giants.  

Obviously, the popular view that giants are, by their very nature, merely the enemies of Order and all that is good for Nature and Man is an untenable one.

What, then, exactly ARE giants, and why are they as a race set apart from the Aesir and Vanir?

The best example I can think of to illustrate the function and true identity of a giant is the story of the duel between Thor and Hrungnir in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (Skaldskaparmal 4).  I’ve treated of this myth in my essay on the valknut.  There it was shown that Hrungnir was a hypostasis of Thor, an “evil twin”, if you will, whose battle with the god was emblematic of the thunderstorm.  So in this sense when we are told Thor is off fighting giants, in a very peculiar way he is off fighting himself.

Another case in point would be Thor’s fishing trip with the giant Hymir (Gylfaginning 48).  In this myth, Thor has caught the Midgard Serpent (= the Sea) and is ready to slay the monster with his lightning hammer when his companion Hymir the Giant cuts the line.  The Serpent promptly sinks back into the sea.  Enraged at being cheated of his victory, Thor knocks the giant overboard.

The story is fairly transparent, in that the thundergod has raised the sea in agitation during a storm.  The sea is calmed only when the storm ceases, and this is brought about by Hymir’s cutting of the line.  In this way the giant is at fault for allowing the Serpent to continue living.  This will have dire consequences, as it is prophesied that the Serpent will come up onto the land at Ragnarok and be the death of the thundergod.   Thor is, pun strictly intended, “let off the hook”.   

While pagans regularly accepted the fact that the very same god who dispensed blessings on Man could turn around and, for whatever reason, suddenly become horribly destructive or at the very least unhelpful, there was still early on the tendency to split off the negative aspect and to personify that as another entity entirely.  In this way the blame for an undesirable act on the part of the god could be shifted to his adversarial double.  The god not only remained guiltless, he could be presented in a highly favorable light as a protective or savior deity.

In short, the giants are the “fall guys” of Norse myth.

Was this division of the god into good and bad halves a conscious creation on the part of the priest-poets?  Well, I can only assume they understood their own myths, and if so, they certainly knew that giants could be gods and gods could be giants.