Thurs: Like troll, thurs is one of the pejorative names for a giant. We can see this in the rune “thurs”, which was used for cursing, and seems to be connected with harm to women especially. (This may be why Skirnir threatened Gerdr with three thurs runes if she refused Frey.) Runic amulets often call on Thor to drive away thursar; not surprising considering the name may mean "wounder".[206]
Flagl, Gygr, Skessa, Trollkona: all four are used of giantesses, gygr in particular appearing frequently in the Edda.
There is a great deal of controversy over just how much people ever differentiated between the varying groups of giants, or whether the categories were porous, but the four do seem to have different connotations, either indicating different groups or at least different ways of describing giants. (Riti Kroesen, for example, is dubious about Motz's categories.[207])
Ármann Jakobsson thinks that there are four main distinguishing characteristics of giants. The first is variation, that there are many kinds of monsters who can be included amongst giants. The only certainty about them is that they are different from humans. Second is closeness to nature, especially mountains. Third is ambiguity – giants can be good or bad, as in the way that Skadi received worship but her father Thiazi is definitely a bad giant if a powerful one. Fourth, that they are old and their culture is in decline. It is the time of the humans now, and the giants are throwbacks. As he paraphrases Katja Schulz, “one of the most important characteristics of giants is not being here anymore.”[208]
This is true of the saga world of which he speaks. In the mythological poems and prose, giants are as real as gods, and as present.
Despite being nominal enemies, the gods visit giants socially, sleep with them, sometimes marry them, match wits in wisdom-contests with them, and are related to them. Even Tyr, the “straightest” Aesir, has a giant for a mother.
But they still kill them.
Especially Thor, whose mother was a giantess, Iord, and who has a giantess lover, Jarsaxa, who gave him a son. And of course, Odin has no trouble in sexually exploiting them.
Elsewhere in this book I mentioned Rasmussen's theory that the difference between the gods and the giants isn't so much that they're of different natures as that the gods made a conscious decision to be different from them. The murder of Ymir to make the cosmos was the symbol of that; not only did they kill their ancestor, but they set out to create an ordered world unlike the chaos that the giants lived in. After that there was no going back. The gods didn't create a world out of nothing, the way that Jahweh did; they killed a giant (already a symbolic act) and made the world from his body parts, thus literally creating a cosmic order from chaos.
While the giants may have been chaotic, there are signs that they were also wise, and, possibly because they'd been around longer, knew things the Aesir didn't. Two examples are the giants Bardar and Armann:
Baröär is described as margiss and forspar — 'knowing much', 'prophetic'... he had learned much from his foster-father Dofri, also a giant; Ármann's father knew the 'old wisdom' (pagan wisdom)... the giant Arngrimr is a 'great magician'... The adjectives frodr, alsvinnr are applied to giants in vaf.[209]
Vaf being a wisdom-contest between the giant Vafthrudnir and Odin, where the two are so closely matched that Odin has to resort to trickery to win. Odin tells us in Havamal 142 that he learned magic songs from his uncle, a giant, and in Harb 20 he tells us that a thurs named Hlébarth gave him a magic wand. (Of course, Odin claims to have bested the thurs.)
We know that they can have magical powers, great wealth, and see themselves as the equals of the gods. Thiazi, for example, checks all three boxes, having a great deal of gold, being able to shapeshift, and matching wits and magic with Odin and Loki. Several other giants are named in kennings for gold, including Thorgerdr's father Holgi, and Aegir, and in general, gold could be called the "mouth-count, and voice and word of giants."[210] As well as Thiazi, Geirrodr imprisoned Loki by magic, and the whole visit to Utgard-Loki shows a power of illusion that neatly echoes the display the Aesir put on in Gylf. As for equalling the gods, the giant attempts to best the gods and marry into their aett would seem to indicate that they see themselves as just as good as them. (Skadi's negotiations with the gods would fit here, too.)
One other thing we know about the giants is that they are apparently more fertile, and have the gods surrounded. These seem like extreme statements; let me justify them.
First, we know that Ymir was able to conceive asexually - from between his feet and from under his armpit. The giants therefore have two options where the gods and humans only have one. This might go some way to justifying Thor's mission statement:
great would be the giant-race, if they all lived:
mankind would be nothing, under middle-earth.
(Harb. 23, Orchard)
Second, the dwelling-place of the giants is kept very vague in Norse myth. It seems as if there are two main locations, North and East. Even that is disputed. As John Lindow says: "Scandinavian mythology places the giants in two remote locations: on the beach, and to the east."[211] It is true that some sources simply place the giants in Utgard, and the humans in Midgard and the giants in Asgard, the last two of which are seen as central, with Utgard as surrounding it. The outlands, or outskirt-city as Jakobssson translates it, would be at least partly beach because in Snorri and other medieval sources the Ocean was seen as encircling the world. At Ragnarok the giants come from two directions, from Muspellheim across the rainbow bridge, and the frost-giants by sea, in a ship.[212]
In Snorri, the giants seem to inhabit two main locales. He places Jotunheimar to the north, while the giants also live in the east. The difference seems to be that Jotunheimar is governed and inhabited by giants, as Midgard is by humans, and houses many of them, including Loki's monstrous brood. He seems to see it as the home of the frost-giants, which might explain the northern location. On the other hand, there are giants in the east, such as Utgard-loki, who is reached by leaving Asgard and travelling east to a deep forest.
When the gods go to seek them, they go in separate directions: "Thor had gone to eastern parts to thrash trolls, but Odin rode Slepnir to Giantland and arrived at a giant's named Hrungnir"[213]. (One assumes that Jotunheimar is in the North here.) However, these directions shift around, even within Snorri's own writing. The one thing that is consistent is that in the east lies trolls and deep forest.
To reach Utgard-loki, Thor and his companions must travel through the forest in the East. The forest Jarnvid (Iron-Wood) where a giantess raises wolves and giants is in the east, and in poetry Bragi the Old has an encounter with a troll-wife while travelling in the East, in a forest. And, although we don't know where it was located, Loki tricks Idunn into the forest when she is kidnapped.[214] (Note that outlaws and wolves were also associated with the forest.)
Giants are also associated with mountains; there is an entire sub-genre of berg-risi, mountain-giants. Skadi lives in the mountains, and her refusal to resettle on the shore foundered her marriage. The giant Suttungr lived on a mountain, and Thokk (a disguise of Loki's) lives in a cave. Besides that, there are many kennings that connect giants and mountains. In Hst, for example, Thiazi is called Fjallgylðir, mountain-howler, meaning wolf, meaning giant. Later in the poem we are told that "The Residents of the Steep Mountains" were happy - they had the apples of immortality.[215]
Snorri also tells that the frost-giants live where Ginnungagap used to be. He doesn't go into a great deal of detail about this; the only thing we learn is that there's a well there, and Mimir owns it: "But under that root [of Yggdrasil] that reaches towards the frost-giants, there is where Mimir's well is, which has wisdom and intelligence contained in it, and the master of the well is called Mimir"[216]. Presumably this is the giant form of Mimir, and he must be a frost-giant too.
While the model of Utgard - Midgard seems to separate the giants in space from gods and humans, and the emphasis in the myths seems to be on what the two don't have in common, the
giants are not totally alien.
As Clunies-Ross points out, the giants are social beings, just like the other groups they deal with. Like gods and humans, they live in families, and interact with each other and others they encounter in ways that make sense to us (and probably made even more sense to the original medieval Scandinavian audiences). Skadi and Thiazi form a family, father and daughter, and we further know that Thiazi has or had two brothers, with whom he shared the inheritance from their father. Apart from the exotic detail of how they shared out the gold in mouthfuls, nothing in that story is strange to a reader or hearer then or now. A father dies, and his sons share his goods out amongst themselves, making sure that each gets an equal share. One of them has a daughter, who inherits his property after her father dies.
While the gods and giants are in opposition to each other in a number of ways, including the major difference between them, the fact that the gods deny their kinship to the point of refusing to make alliances or marriages with them, and even killing them. Clunies-Ross suggests that a lot of the reason the giants are seen as chaotic and disruptive is because there is no possibility of a reciprocal relationship between them and the gods. This results in raiding and kidnapping, with the giants trying to take the gods' women "and symbols of order like the sun and moon"[217]. (Consider for a minute how it would look from the giants' point of view, just as in Grendel and Written in Venom we are invited to see how the monster Grendel or bound Loki might see things.)
Compared to other categories of beings in Norse myth, the gods and giants have sociability in common. Both groups have families, form alliances amongst themselves, and show curiosity about others. "Apart from the dwarves, who are an all-male group, the remaining categories of supernatural beings have no clearly social organisation, though some of them engage in biological reproduction and hence have offspring who are acknowledged as theirs by supernatural society at large."[218]
This extimité, the fact that the giants are so close and yet so different, as personified in Loki, is what causes the friction between the two groups. So perhaps we should not be surprised by the children he had; it is almost as if the conflict that had reached a sort of equilibrium with his incorporation into the Aesir erupted into his monstrous and lethal children.
Loki was one test case for cohabitation of Aesir and Jotunn. I like Michael Chabon's theory that Odin made Loki his blood-brother because:
he brought pleasure to Odin, who with all his well-sipping and auto-asphyxiation knew too much even to be otherwise amused. This was, in fact, the reason why Odin had taken the great, foredoomed step of making Loki his blood brother - for the pleasure, pure and simple, of his company.[219]
Skadi and Gerdr were the others. Both the daughters of predominant giant families, they if anyone would be worthy of a place in Asgard. Both resulted in losses (Freyr's sword) and gains (Saeming, Fjolnir) but in neither case did they retard Ragnarok. The forces arrayed against them were too strong.
Cult of Giants
The incorporation of a giant's home into the abodes of the gods is in itself remarkable. And it is even more remarkable that the circumstances have not received much attention in scholarly research. The mythical dwelling of a god has its counterpart in the physical shrine. And in Ls Skadi's shrines, her vé ok vangr, is mentioned... [these] are common terms for sites where a cult takes place.[220]
I've mentioned the quote from Lks before, and I'll most likely mention it again, but all the same it is extraordinary for a giant to refer to her sites of worship, without any comment by any of the other characters. (We can be sure that if Skadi didn't have fields and temples dedicated to her, Loki would have mentioned it.)
We may even have the names of some of the places where she was worshipped. Place-name evidence is always a little dicey, but in the middle and south of Sweden, and the south-east of Norway we have names such as Skadevi, Skedvi, Skee, Skl, and others, which Hjamal Lindroth postulated were formed around Skedju-, the genitive or possessive form of Skedja, a feminine form of the grammatically masculine Skadi. The feminine form is linked to names for sites of worship such as vé, -hof or -lundr.[221]
Anders Hultgård takes the cautious position and says that ve is the only undisputed word that offers solid proof of a cult, and Skadi seems to have a few of those. However, he also says that cult places in Viking and medieval times could include:
natural sites such as mountains and hills (fjall, berg), groves (lundr), meadows and arable fields (vangr, akr), islands (ey), lakes (sjór, sær), rivers (á) and springs, but also funeral barrows (haugr) and grave-fields. The designations for such sites also form part of sacral place names. At these places different constructions could be added to enhance the religious character of the site: stone- settings in the form of ships (skæið) or circles, raised stones sometimes inscribed with runes (kumbl, mærki), hearths and other constructions for ritual purposes.
So, if we're being a little less cautious, we might want to include Skädharg, which links Skadi to Thorgerdr holgabrudr, since one version of her name is not Holgi's bride but the horga-bride ("of the shrines").[222]
The connection between Skadi and Ullr is brought out in place-names as well, since many of the Ullevi and Ulleraker are in the same areas as the places with Skadi names. There's more on the similarities between Ullr and Skadi in their own section, but it does bring to mind Kusmenko's idea that they form a pair, with Skadi as the dark aspect and Ullr as the light one, possibly as two aspects of winter. As Welschbach observes, there are other divine pairs in Norse myth such as Freyr and Freya, Aegir and Ran, and possibly Njord and Nerthus.[223]
We also know that Skadi was referred to as the ski-dis, although whether this was just an honorific or whether she was included among the disir is not known. The disir, a broadly defined group of supernatural women, seem to have had two major functions, one involved with war in a way that recalls the swan-maidens and valkyries of heroic legend, both protective and prophetic, and another which dealt mainly with families and their destinies. In this mode they could appear to people who were doomed, for instance. Their cult may have been part of an ancestor-cult, with the disir as revered female forebears who still protected the family and its interests. (Thorgerdr and Skadi would fit in here as supernatural ancestors, although Thorgerdr is more active on behalf of her family, as far as we know.)
One giantess, Goí, apparently had a regular festival like that of the disablot, the Goíblót. I have discussed her story elsewhere, but briefly; she was the sister of Nór, who was the mythical first king of Norway. According to Orkneyinga saga:
Thorri was a great sacrificer, he had a sacrifice every year at midwinter; that they called Thorri’s sacrifice; from that the month took its name. One winter there were these tidings at Thorri’s sacrifice, that Goi was lost and gone, and they set out to search for her, but she was not found. And when that month passed away Thorri made them take to sacrifice, and sacrifice for this, that they might know surely where Goi was hidden away. That they called Goi’s sacrifice, but for all that they could hear nothing of her.[224]
Or, according to Hversu Noregr Byggðist in Flateyjarbók:
King Thorri had three children; his sons were named Norr and Gorr, but the daughter Goi. Goi was lost and gone; and Thorri made a sacrifice a month later than he was wont to sacrifice; and they afterwards called that month in which this began Goi.[225]
In Joseph Anderson's translation of Orkneyinga saga one of the characters sets out on a voyage in the month of Goí, so we know that it wasn't just a poetic fiction.[226] According to Anderson's notes:
Goi, the fourth month of the year, corresponding to our February and part of March. The ancient mode of reckoning among the Northmen was by "winters," the year commencing on the 23rd November. Goi was sometimes called “horning-month"—the month in which the deer shed their horns; and it was also the month in which, in heathen times, the great annual sacrifice took place at Upsala, as mentioned in the Sega of King Olaf the Holy.[227]
&
nbsp; The family seem to have come from northern Norway, and have fittingly wintry names.
The giant Fornjot was the ancestor of them all, whose name can be variously translated: as Forn-jótr, "Ancient Jutlander or poss. Giant"; For-njótr ("Early-User or Destroyer"); or Forn-njótr ("One-who-enjoys-sacrifices") or Forn-Thjótr ("Ancient Screamer").[228] He had three sons, Hlér/Sea, Logi/Fire and Kári/Wind, whose son was Jökull/Icicle (Lindow has Glacier) or Frosti/Frost, whose son was Snær/Snow. His son, Thorri, had two boys, Nor and Gor, and Goi. In another version, found in Hversu Noregr byggðisk, this is elaborated, with Snaer having four sons, Thorri, Fönn/Snowdrift, Drifa/Driving Snow, Snowdrift, Hailstorm, and Mjöll/Fresh, Powdery Snow.[229] (Although, as Lindow again points out, the last three names are feminine nouns,[230] and Motz treats them as giantesses[231], and Langeslag thinks that this is the same Drifa that King Vanlandi marries in Ys.[232])
Another giantess whom we know received worship and had temples is Thorgerdr holgabrudr. I have mentioned her already with reference to her similarities to Skadi, but for this section the most interesting thing about her is that every saga that mentions her either mentions her temples or describes an act of worship directed to her. Since all of these texts were composed after conversion, there is a definite Christian bias, with Thorgerdr's statues often being overthrown or destroyed, and her worship given a negative spin. (She is depicted often as greedy and bloodthirsty, and fickle towards her followers.)
What is not in doubt, however, is that she was seen as a powerful female figure who could reward her worshippers, and who had centres of worship where people could pray to her and leave offerings. These are described in the same terms as the temples for gods like Thor and Freyr; and while scholarly debate rages about how literally we should interpret these descriptions, and how much they are influenced by other Christian writings, especially from around the Mediterranean, we can at least say that that Thorgerdr had established centres of worship, whether in elaborate buildings or open-air. If you follow Njals saga and Olavs saga Tryggvasonar, Thorgerdr had idols in temples, which received offerings. The first part of her name, however, is sometimes spelled Horga- "of the shrines",[233] and in the sources where she has a father, he is called Holgi, which comes from the same root. (Snorri tells us that his mound was built of layers of gold and silver alternating with earth and stone.) She may very well have had both, with larger areas featuring formal temples, Roman-style, and also mounds in smaller places or as personal worship, like Ottar with Freyja.
Njord and Skadi Page 13