The gate of the year

Illustration by Louis Huard, from the volume by A. and E. Keary, The Heroes of Asgard : Tales from Scandinavian Mythology (published at New York in 1891), representing the giant Suttung facing a group of dwarfs.
Suttung was the giant who obtained mead, the mysterious intoxicant drink, from the dwarfs, and detained the secret of its production. Odin, after having turned into an eagle, went to the Land of the Giants who lived on the mountains and managed to steal the drink, fleeing away in the shape of a bird, pursued by the giant, who took as well the shape of a bird of prey.
In Germanic cosmology, the world inhabited by the gods and humans was the “Middle World” (Midgard), near which the gods built their own fortress, Ásgard. According to the cosmologic tale preserved in the Snorri’s Edda, the world was built with the body of the giant Ymir, born from cold moisture and progenitor of all the giants, who was killed by Odin and his brothers, Vili and Vé. The earth “is round without and there beyond round about it, lieth the deep sea; and on that sea-strand gave they land for an abode to the kind of Giants, but within on the earth made they [Odin and his brothers] a burg round the world, against restless giants, and for this burg reared they the brows of Ymir the giant, and called the burg Midgard” (Gylfaginning, 5-8). The earth is surrounded by the sea, and by the “World Serpent”, Jörmungand. Outside the inhabited world is Útgard, the outskirts of the world, where both the demons and the giants lived. In particular, the latter dwelt in the “Giant worlds” (Jötunheimar), surrounding the world inhabited by humans: the iced lands, the mountains, the woodlands, and the sea. The Giants (Jötnar) were a sort of primal divine beings, who had preceded both the men and the gods. Usually, they were represented as having low intelligence, violent disposition and unbelievable physical strength. Their relentless adversary was the god of thunder, Thor, who fought strenuously against them with his invincible hammer, to which the Giants opposed their crude and primitive weapons. Some of the Giants were, however, regarded as keepers of wisdom, since they knew the remote past and the mysteries of primordial times, like Vafthrúdnir, who, in the Poetic Edda, competes with Odin, showing his knowledge of the most ancient origins of the world (Lindow 2001).
In Celtic folklore there are some traces of the Giants, who should have inhabited the land before the arrival of humankind. Some aspects of the landscape, like great stone boulders, mountains, valleys, were regarded as made by the Giants, who had left on the land the tracks of their passage. In epic narratives, the Fomorians, monstrous inhabitants of Ireland who fought against the Tuatha Dé Danann (“the People of the goddess Dana”) and were defeated by them, appear with some of the characteristics of the giants. Sometimes described as having only one leg and one arm, their name derived from the root mor, meaning “ghost”. They were a kind of ancient divinities of the primordial time, who existed before the establishment of the present world order (Monaghan 2004).

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_Suttung_and_the_dwarfs.jpg]




Wild Men

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Illustration by Louis Huard, from the volume by A. and E. Keary, The Heroes of Asgard : Tales from Scandinavian Mythology (published at New York in 1891), representing the giant Suttung facing a group of dwarfs. Suttung was the giant who obtained mead, the mysterious intoxicant drink, from the dwarfs, and detained the secret of its production. Odin, after having turned into an eagle, went to the Land of the Giants who lived on the mountains and managed to steal the drink, fleeing away in the shape of a bird, pursued by the giant, who took as well the shape of a bird of prey. In Germanic cosmology, the world inhabited by the gods and humans was the “Middle World” (Midgard), near which the gods built their own fortress, Ásgard. According to the cosmologic tale preserved in the Snorri’s Edda, the world was built with the body of the giant Ymir, born from cold moisture and progenitor of all the giants, who was killed by Odin and his brothers, Vili and Vé. The earth “is round without and there beyond round about it, lieth the deep sea; and on that sea-strand gave they land for an abode to the kind of Giants, but within on the earth made they [Odin and his brothers] a burg round the world, against restless giants, and for this burg reared they the brows of Ymir the giant, and called the burg Midgard” (Gylfaginning, 5-8). The earth is surrounded by the sea, and by the “World Serpent”, Jörmungand. Outside the inhabited world is Útgard, the outskirts of the world, where both the demons and the giants lived. In particular, the latter dwelt in the “Giant worlds” (Jötunheimar), surrounding the world inhabited by humans: the iced lands, the mountains, the woodlands, and the sea. The Giants (Jötnar) were a sort of primal divine beings, who had preceded both the men and the gods. Usually, they were represented as having low intelligence, violent disposition and unbelievable physical strength. Their relentless adversary was the god of thunder, Thor, who fought strenuously against them with his invincible hammer, to which the Giants opposed their crude and primitive weapons. Some of the Giants were, however, regarded as keepers of wisdom, since they knew the remote past and the mysteries of primordial times, like Vafthrúdnir, who, in the Poetic Edda, competes with Odin, showing his knowledge of the most ancient origins of the world (Lindow 2001). In Celtic folklore there are some traces of the Giants, who should have inhabited the land before the arrival of humankind. Some aspects of the landscape, like great stone boulders, mountains, valleys, were regarded as made by the Giants, who had left on the land the tracks of their passage. In epic narratives, the Fomorians, monstrous inhabitants of Ireland who fought against the Tuatha Dé Danann (“the People of the goddess Dana”) and were defeated by them, appear with some of the characteristics of the giants. Sometimes described as having only one leg and one arm, their name derived from the root mor, meaning “ghost”. They were a kind of ancient divinities of the primordial time, who existed before the establishment of the present world order (Monaghan 2004). [Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_Suttung_and_the_dwarfs.jpg]