[gothic-l] Gothic Language Corner - Giant Addendum

[edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca [gothic-l]]

In one of my earlier posts, I attempted to reconstruct the word for 'giant' in Gothic. There was an error in the reconstruction, and the following then is meant as a correction.
 

 Based on the cognates OE 'thyrs,' ON 'thurs,' and OHG 'dhuris,' together with the Latinized Gothic name 'Thorismundus' (= *Thaurismunds), the late Proto-Germanic form would have been *'thur(i)saz,' and the expected Gothic form *'thauris' (masc a-stem).
 

 There was, however, more than one term for 'giant' in Germanic. ON 'risi,' OHG 'riso' (> ModG 'Riese') and OS 'wrisi-lik' 'enormous' suggest a proto-form *'wrisjan' (masc. n-stem) 'giant.' A Hellenized Gothic name found in Procopius (BG 3,35), to wit, 'Rhisioulphos' (= *Wrisjawulfs) suggests that the reflex of this second term was also known in Gothic, namely, *'wrisja' (masc. n-stem).
 

 How these - and a few other - Germanic terms differed in meaning, if at all, is hard to say.
 

 It might noted further here that while we tend to think of giants as invariably huge, monstrously big, the giants of the ancient north appear to have been a far more variable race. Saxo Grammaticus (1, 13) relates a story of a king named Gram, who "impersonated a giant," thus: "he put on goat-skins to intimidate anyone who appeared in his path" and was "accoutred thus in an assortment of animal hides, with a terrifying club in his right hand."
 

 We hear later (1, 21) of his son Hading, who attracted the amorous attention of a giantess:
 

 "When he pointed out that the size of her body was unwieldy for human embraces and the way she was built undoubtedly suggested that she came from giant stock, she replied:
 'Don't let the sight of my strange largeness affect you. I can make the substance of my body small or great, now thin, now capacious. Sometimes I shrivel at will, sometimes expand. At one moment my stature reaches the skies, at another I can gather myself into the narrower proportions of men.'"
 

 The Eddas also speak of the gods mating with giants. It would appear then that size alone was not the main distinguishing feature of ancient Nordic giants, if Saxo and the Eddas are truly representative of earlier beliefs: a frightening strange "wild-man" aspect and capricious variability in size appear to have been significant, if not the main, features of these creatures.
 

 Edmund
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