The Giants are the children of the Earth (Gaia) born from the blood that flowed from the wound of her husband Ouranos during his mutilation by Cronos although of divine origin they are mortal or at least can be killed.
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- Giants
Traditions tell that such and such a giant (for example Alcyoneus and Porphyrion) were immortal as long as they were on the land where they were born. The legend of the Giants is indeed dominated by the story of their fight against the gods, and their defeat. They were born from the Earth, and the latter engendered them to avenge the Titans, whom Zeus had locked up in Tartarus. they are enormous beings, of invincible strength, of a frightful appearance. They have thick hair and shaggy beards and their legs are the bodies of snakes. The place of their birth -is the peninsula of Pallene, in Thrace, in Phlegrae. As soon as they were born, they threatened the sky, darting fiery trees against it and stoning it with huge boulders. Faced with this threat, the Olympians prepared for battle. The main adversaries of the Giants were first Zeus and Athena, the goddess of combat. Zeus is armed with aegis and lightning, brought to him by his eagle. Athena is also endowed with the aegis, and also launches lightning, like her father. Her main helper is Heracles, the mortal whose help is needed to fulfill the condition imposed by the Fates upon the death of the Giants. 1-IéWclès stands on the chariot of Zeus and fights from afar with his arrows.
Sometimes Dionysus takes an active part in the struggle. He is armed with his thyrsus, torches, and is assisted by the Satyrs. Then, the legend enriched little by little, various other deities intervene:Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite and Eros, Poseidon, etc.
Among the Giants, the mythographers have preserved the memory of the part taken by some of them in the struggle:Alcyoneus was killed by Heracles, helped by Athena (see AIcyoneus), who advised the hero to drag him away from Pallene, his native country, because each time he fell he regained strength by touching the ground where he came out. Porphyrion attacked Heracles and Hera, but Zeus inspired him with Hera's desire and as he tried to tear off his clothes, Zeus blasted him and Heracles finished him with an arrow. E@hialtès was killed by an arrow from Apollo in the left eye, and another from Heracles in the right eye; Eurytos was killed by Dionysos with a thyrsus blow, Clytios by Hecate with torches, Mimas by Hephaestus with red-hot projectiles. Enceladus fled, but Athena threw at him, while he ran, the island of Sicily. She flayed Pallas and used his skin as a breastplate for the remainder of the fight. Polybotes was pursued by Poseidon across the waves, and reached the island of Cos. The god broke off a part of the island, called Nisyron, and threw it at the giant. Hermes, wearing the invisible helmet of Hades, slew Hippolytus in the struggle, while Artemis slew Gration. The Fates, armed with their brazen clubs, slew Agrios and Thoas. As for the other giants, Zeus struck them down and Heracles finished them off with his arrows. The place of this struggle is generally situated in the peninsula of Palléné, in Thrace; but a local tradition also placed it in Arcadia, on the banks of the Alpheus.
More recent traditions still give other names to giants, but they are most often Titans improperly placed in this category, or other monsters, such as Typhon, Briareus, the Aloades, etc., which do not belong not to the same race, even if, by their immense body and their prodigious strength, they deserve the name of giants.
The Gigantomachy, or struggle of giants and gods, is a favorite theme in plastic art, in particular intended to adorn the pediments of temples:the bodies of monsters, ending in serpents, lent themselves admirably to filling in the angles and finishing off a composition. Jötunn (sing., idea of eating, cf. our ogre), thurs or thuss (idea of unreason), or, to limit ourselves there, troll or troll (idea of malevolence).
Few supernatural creatures enjoy such favor in our sources. We can look for an explanation for this in the unusual nature of the North, which offers an abundance of monstrous forms - rocks, formations due to the cold (of which the hrlmthursar or "frost giants" bear witness enough), raging waters, etc. Ancient Scandinavian religion may have begun with a deification of these great natural forces, as evidenced by the names of deities such as Jôrd (Earth), AEgir (Ocean), Sôl (Sun), Snjôr or Sxr (Snow), Thôrr (Thunder) , etc. On the other hand, the world would have been formed from the body of the giant hermaphrodite Ymir. Thereafter, the "gods" have genealogies of giants - gods who are not averse to courting giantesses (Odinn and Gunnlôd, Freyr and Gerdr, Njôrdr and Skadi), and proper giants who take a keen interest in certain "goddesses" (thus Thjazi and idunn, Thrymr and Freyja, etc.). As if there was no real solution of continuity between the two kinds of creatures! Moreover, Eddic texts make giants the holders of the knowledge of primitive things, which is a pledge of antiquity.
The giants are often hostile to the men who relegated them to Ùtgardr. Gradually, the idea of their evil power seems to have taken hold, and that is why Thôrr spends most of his time going "to the East" to confront them.
The Church will have no difficulty in devaluing these primordial beings even today, in legends and folk tales, the giants are stupid, rude and above all loud. This evolution can also be read in their successive denominations:jôtunn, thurs, troll (the latter having little to do with the trolls of our folklore, and the Norwegian troll, still alive, on a human scale).
Giants play an important role in a large number of myths such as that of the construction of Àsgardr, that of the "invention" of poetic nectar, that of Thôrr's initiation into combat (Hrungnir), etc.