What do we know about giants in Middle Earth? They're mentioned in the hobbit aren't they but anywhere else? How big are they? Are they evil?

How would you go about statting one up?

The easy way would be to use 'Giant' as synonymous with Mountain Troll as they're the biggest of the Trolls and live in the Mountains (as the Giants seem to).

The only flaw in this plan would be that Gandalf mentions possibly finding a friendly Giant to block up the entrance to Goblin town. However, you could get round this by assuming he wasn't being entirely serious.

It's hard to say whether Gandalf was being serious or not. He could have even meant Huorn or Ent (the word Ent means giant as well).

Certainly, the Northern European legends did depict giants as evil in general, but there are substantial numbers of unclear or positive portrayals - mainly in the minor romantic sagas - where giantesses in particular become the consorts or allies of heroes.

It's also true that these same sources use Troll as a synonym for giant. Starkad, a great hero of a number of stories, is part-troll/giant; and of course there were noble lineages that claimed giant/troll ancestry - including that of Hrolfr the Ganger (Rollo of Normandy).

For what it's worth, MERP portrayed giants as giants (though only in a few products - Dunland and the LotR Adventure Game), generally neutral or disinterested in allegiance. LotRO also depicts a group of giants near the Last Bridge in the Lonelands (and probably elsewhere - I'm still exploring the content). They are definitely shaded toward the side of good.

I've personally always used them as Trolls. That said, however, Tolkien evidently originally envisioned them as separate - note this quote from one of his letters to the editor concerning his early development of the LOTR manuscript in 1939:

Still there are more hobbits, far more of them and about them, in the new story. Gollum reappears, and Gandalf is to the fore: 'dwarves' come in; and though there is no dragon (so far) there is going to be a Giant; and the new and (very alarming) Ringwraiths are a feature. There ought to be things that people who liked the old mixture will find to have a similar taste.

Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 41-42.

He obviously changed his mind, but IMHO his note demonstrates his original vision.

I'm not convinced that this really means that Tolkien considered them as separate creatures. Goblins and orcs are but the same race, with regional distinction. Tolkien has been known to use two (or more) different words to refer to the same things. Elves and Men alone are known under different names, depending on their origins. I'm still thinking that Giants are either used as a metaphore or mountain trolls.

As for the friendly giant that Gandalf refers to, it is possible that some mountain trolls have enough intelligence to overcome their wickedness and pose as 'free agents' between light and darkness. In this case, 'friendly' - when applied to a giant/mountain troll - may simply mean 'won't try to eat me at first sight'.

Glorfindel

The two things that make the most sense to me involve first assuming that Gandalf meant what he said. There are friendly giants. Then, either giants are a mountain dwelling race that keeps itself separate from the other races and their conflicts, or extra big trolls with about the same attitude. Either way, friendly and big, and prone to throwing boulders about as a bit of sport.

For what it's worth
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Giants

In the Hobbit, prior to the dwarves taking refuge on the Goblin doorstep in the Misty Mountains, isn't there a reference to giants tossing around boulders?

I haven't invested in TOR but I'm a longtime fan of Tolkien and I've been running MeRP and Decipher's LoTR for years.

>>ReaperWolf

I found it!

Hobbit, Chapter IV: Over Hill and Under Hill.

Page 53, last paragraph:

"When he (Bilbo) peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants[B] were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang."

So I doubt these were just trolls because Bilbo, who had previously met hill trolls, clearly identifies these beings as 'stone-giants'.

I also checked my limited research materials, the Complete Tolkien Companion and Illustrated Encyclopedias didn't have any giant entries but the Tolkien Bestiary by David Day had a brief entry indicating there were giants of both good and evil but most were evil and in league with orcs.

>>ReaperWolf

Scanned from my son's The Hobbit comic.

Trolls seems to vary more in shape and size than orcs however. Cave trolls are said to have a green and scaly hide for example, and Bilbo's trolls remind more of big ogre-type characters (named Tom, Bert, and Bill!) than the olog-hai that Pippin encounters at the battle of the black gate. The mountain trolls that pull Grond at the gate of Minas Tirith were chosen for their (even larger) size and strength. They still could fit as Giants, especially seen between two lighting flashes.

Norse mythology, isn't much more helpful either: Trolls seems to be a synonymous, if pejorative, for the word Jutun (giant) in early mythology, and than become a slow-witted cave-dwelling creature (like Bilbo's Trolls) in later folklore.

I'm not quite decided yet on troll/giant disparity, but there's a good case to be made about giants being a sub-species of troll.

I got a copy of the History of the Hobbit by Rateliff yesterday.

He spends a little while talking about giants. He points out that in early drafts of the LotR Treebeard was simply imagined as a giant (and an evil one, at that). But with the name Treebeard, the obvious expectation is that he was some sort of forest or wood giant. He later, however, reinvents the character as a good creature, still describing him as a "giant".

Since Ent = giant, perhaps the Stone Giants - if any are good - are to be interpreted as the uncorrupted beings that Morgoth refashioned into Trolls - stone isn't implicitly evil.

That's another good avenue. After all, 'ent' is an old anglo-saxon name for 'giant'...

Ents need not to be tree-looking, at least, not in the youth of their race. Treebeard says that the shepherds have become like sheep, and sheep like their shepherds (or something of the sort), which could explain their tree-like appearance at the end of the third age.

But the ents of Fangorn don't need to be the only entish faction. For all we know, there may also be 'shepherd of the stones' in the misty mountains...

Some nice ideas in there. I especially like the notion of Giants being the 'root' race that was corrupted by Morgoth to make Trolls.
It's interesting that in the game at least, the Stone Trolls affect human names and mannerisms such as the wearing of clothes whereas the other types don't. The Giants in the Hobbit are only mentioned when appearing at night (coincidental perhaps). These more human like Stone Trolls might even be diminished and corrupted descendants of an earlier , true, Giant race that is now almost extinct.

That's exactly my preferred take on it. I love the notion of stone-giants as caretakers and guardians of the living rock from which mountains are formed.

Nice! Goes along nicely with the elven cultural virtue, The Speakers, with which one can commune with, amongst other things, stones.


The giants could, in addition, be prone to sleeping for long periods of time, seeming to become one with the rock, much like a sleeping ent appears to simply be a great tree. Explaining why they are so seldom interacted with.

Indeed.

Perhaps this could also explain a natural dislike of dwarves - since dwarves are typically 'destroying' the rock of mountains with their mining.


(playing on common cliche's of dwarves hating giants).


Robert