Size is an odd, problematic thing in northern European folklore, the source of many of the popular ideas of what giants are and how they should behave. In the folk traditions, giants were typically large, but they could also interact with people on a level playing field. And often, the hero married the daughters of a giant.

Further muddying the waters, giants were (and more importantly ARE) often confused with other supernatural beings. Some Scandinavian trolls, for example, are big, and they were often confused with giants. In addition, even the smallest supernatural beings - elves and fairies - were known to be able to gain gigantic proportions. The realm of folklore and the supernatural could be incredibly fluid if not contradictory.

In modern English literature, trolls and giants are nearly interchangeable, largely because speakers of English rely so heavily on the huge Norwegian troll for their concept of what the supernatural being was like. Even in Scandinavia, trolls and giants occasionally shared some characteristics. Distinguishing between the two is an important first step in understanding the rich folklore that surrounded the troll.

Most importantly, people did not tell stories about actually seeing giants. In this respect, giants are similar to the more abstract nature spirits and gods. The folk concluded giants had existed as a consequence of an intellectual form of deduction, in the same way that they considered spirits or gods to be real. People believed giants existed based on the existence of something unusual in their immediate environment. A famous example of this is preserved in the name of Northern Ireland’s “Giant’s Causeway.” Here, people regarded a peculiar rock formation as the ancient work of a large supernatural being. Later residents near England’s Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire saw the long prehistoric earthwork as superhuman, crediting it to Satan. Though the devil is not a giant, his English dyke represents the same process of attributing a remarkable thing to a supernatural being’s effort long ago.

People looked at distinctive, unusual features in the world and arrived at extraordinary explanations for their origin. They believed a real, strange thing proved the existence of the supernatural being. After applying this backward form of logical deduction, cultures generally clothed the supernatural actor in more or less human form. Because people imagined the creatures walked the earth in the immediate past, these beings were distinct from gods or vague spirits, who existed in the present but could not be seen. Popular belief held that etiological beings like giants were real entities of substance that had, at one time, interacted with people. Descriptions of gods mingling with people also existed, but these usually belonged in a fantastic past, not in recent history.

Scandinavian words for giants are diverse. In Norway, they are jötnar and rise, with the females called gyger or gjöger. In Sweden, giants are jättar. In Denmark, they are kjemper. People did not apply these names to the supernatural beings of nature they claimed to have actually seen. Rather, these terms were generally applied to beings believed to have existed in some distant past, entities that once had an effect on the landscape but who could no longer be found in the world.

The two Eddas, the medieval Scandinavian collections of mythic poems and stories, portray giants as ancient beings. Nordic folklorists collecting in the nineteenth century recognized that memorates about encountering giants were in all practicality, non-existent. On the contrary, the folk described them most commonly as a dead race. They told about how the church bell had banished them long ago or how Thor killed them with his lightning bolt. Sunlight turned others to stone.

The association of giants with the building of churches sometimes ran much deeper than simply referring to a prominent piece of the structure. There was a common Celtic-Nordic migratory legend about a giant who built a church under the stipulations that his employer guess his name. Christiansen classifies this as ML 7065 “Building a Church. The Name of the Masterbuilder.” This motif manifests in the well-known Grimm’s folktale of “Rumpelstiltskin,” but in its association with church building it appears, instead, as a legend. If the man failed to fulfill the condition, he would have to give the giant the sun and moon or his own pair of eyes as part of the bargain. In Norway, the hero was typically St. Olaf, the turn-of-the-millennium monarch credited with beginning the conversion of the North. Of course, he defeated the giant, and the church stands as evidence of a great man’s ability to harness the strength and power of a supernatural being. Like the other stories, St. Olaf’s giant assumed an etiological role. The story has a pre-conversion counterpart in the tale of the giant who offered to build Asgard, is subsequently tricked so he cannot finish the task, and is subsequently killed by Thor and his hammer.

Like most folk traditions, the border between belief and narrative was fluid with etiological creatures such as giants. Stories served as evidence to reinforce belief. The specifics of belief limited the content of legends. For example, a solitary boulder rests in the middle of a grassy field, close to a church. People naturally wondered how it came to be there. They concluded that it must have been thrown there and the only creature that could have hurled such a huge object was a giant. No ordinary man could have lifted it. It was then a small leap to imagine that the giant naturally wanted to hit the church, for, as seemed obvious, giants were hostile towards Christianity. In this typical origin legend, something remarkable – the large solitary bolder next to a church – inspired the account. Where belief ceased and narrative began is hard to say. These etiological explanations were frequently elaborate and widespread, and many became migratory legends.

There are also a series of legends depicting giants as humorous characters. These stories established the giant’s limited intelligence as well as his stupendous size and strength. Often his huge appetite and similar qualities became the focus. The Swedish legend of the giant’s toy emphasized his size. In this story, the daughter of a giant brings home a farmer, his plow, and ox. She shows her father her new toy, but the elder giant tells her to return the man to his proper place. Christiansen classifies this as ML 5015, “The Plaything of the Trolls.”

There are also stories that characterize giants as the original human inhabitants of the land. For example, a legend, classified as ML 5010 “The Visit to the Old Troll: The Handshake,” describes of a group of sailors who happen upon a secluded island of ancient blind giants. These turn out to be survivors, remnants of the earliest entities to live on earth from long ago. The giants say they are interested in determining whether the men in their homeland are still as strong as they once were. One hands a sailor a red-hot iron bar. Through trickery, the sailor bends it, thus proving that the men still have warm blood in their veins. The legend often describes the giant ordering a sailor to take his belt and use it to bind himself. Instead, the man stretches it around an oak, which, because of the magic within the belt, soars through the air and is destroyed. Other variants describe how one of the giants asks to shake the hand of the visitor. He hold out fire tongs, which the creature cannot crush with his extraordinary strength. The point here is that people thoughts of these supernatural beings as incredibly old and strong. This legend is related to the folktale classified as AT 726, again underscoring the fluidity between types of oral tradition.

Another legend demonstrates the strength of the giants. A man marries a giant’s human-sized daughter. She is genial and does everything to please the man, but she earns his respect when she bends a horseshoe straight with her bare hands. Here, then, is an example of a human-sized member of the gigantic family.