Jotun Worship - Historical or Modern?
This one might be seen as a little bit of a spicy one although its not intended to be, just some people have opinions about worshipping the big bad giants because they are evil and inviting that into your praxis and lives will somehow bring on the end of the world as we know it. Little bit dramatic but it’s rhetoric I see time and time again. One of the cornerstones of this argument is that it is not historical. Well lets see if we can shed some light on that and see if that statement is true, or perhaps *clutches pearls* people of ye olden days were not that much different to us and worship was as diverse as it is today.
I came across this paper written in ancient times, when phones were hard wired and used for talking, American Ninja was peak cinema and watching it involved riding your BMX to the local blockbuster and hoping someone hadn't already rented it, mixed tapes consisting of UB40, Eurythmics and Phil Collins and were the best way to win a love interests heart. The year was 1986. The paper is called "Giants as Recipients of Cult in the Viking Age?" by Gro Steinsland, and let me tell you, it is based as fuck. It’s only 11 pages, but boy oh boy does it pack a punch. Before we go over that and a couple of other sources, I wanted to open up with what is the closing statement of aforementioned paper, because its just beautiful and if you choose not to read on I want to make sure you at least leave with this.
"If the giants were such important figures in critical situations as the myths indicate, it is not surprising at all that they were dealt with ritually. After all, it would be more remarkable if Norse tradition should miss any ritual dealing with powers on whom the whole of existence finally depended. The giants are as necessary to the world as the gods are."
The paper starts out by outlining what is generally understood of the nature of the giants. They are death figures or personifications of wild and unpredictable aspects of nature, and probably most influential to our modern understanding of Heathenry - The enemy of the Gods, and by extension of this understanding the general consensus in scholarly circles is they have never been connected to any form of ritual or offering, and the stuffy recon twats use this to proclaim usually from the top of the twitter mountain, that we are all invalid and bad Heathens. Maybe we can use academics here to return serve and tell them to get fucked in a scholarly way.
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| Weigand, W J.. Þrymr and Loki. From: Goddard, Julia. Wonderful Stories from Northern Lands. London: Longmans, Green, and Co , 1871. [5]. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
I think before we move on, we should address the jotun in the room, and that is what are we defining as a giant, a jotun, an etin, this mythical entity with so many names, and are they actually giant in size and if not, why are they called giants? Well I’ll try to keep this brief, but its something that has been discussed in various contexts in many a paper, there are 2 notable ones in the references below I would encourage you to read for a more comprehensive look from much smarter people than me. But I digress and offer my humble opinion below;
Reading all the myths and sagas, it seems mostly obvious that the jotnar are not significantly different size from the gods, they interact and intermarry in a way that is clear that they are at the same scale. There are of course a few expectations, with one of the most notable stories is the tale of Útgarðaloki, in which the jotun Skrymir, is very notably giant in size, however at the end of the story it is explained that everything that happened while in the Útgarð realm was an illusion, and our heroes were tricked from the first moment they met the guy whose mitten they used for a tent. This story has been illustrated so many times and captured the imagination of so many that this has likely contributed to the idea that the jotnar are L O R G E, even though the exact point at the end of the story is that they are not.
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| Brock, C. E.. Þórr and the Giant Skrymir. From: Keary, Annie, and Liza Keary. The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology. London: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1930. [64]. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
But we also see artwork, descriptions and runestones that depict jotuns along side the gods and they are very much god sized. Perhaps we got it wrong and everyone is lorge. Either way, they don't seem to be specifically giant in comparison, and interestingly there are words in Old Norse that mean "giant", like gygr, but with the exception of Útgarðaloki, they are never applied to the jotnar. To be clear, I don't necessarily have an issue with the word giant, I actually prefer it rather than trying to work out which spelling of the word jotun/jotunn/jötunn/jǫtunn/eoten to use. I see why scholars and practitioners alike use it. Its easy. But language is weird, and it’s ok for a word to have different meanings in different contexts. In the context of Norse Mythology, giant doesn't mean BIG, it means a particular group of entities, and that's ok.
Ok, now we have established giants are indeed not giant in size, except when they are, we can get back to the topic on hand; Where they worshipped?
Well, in short. Yes. Skadi is the most common and easy example.
In John Lindow's 2002 book Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Belief, he hypothesizes that the famous tale of "Loki ties his nuts to a goat for a laugh" might have associations with cultic ritual and castration in honor of Skadi. Steinsland highlights toponomical studies which show there are many sites whose names appear to be derived from combinations of words with cultic connotations and Skadi’s name which implies the possibility of physical sites of Skadi worship. Steinsland goes on to state that “The mythical dwelling of a god has its counterpart in the physical shrine,” claiming the description of Skadi’s home among the homes of the other gods further implies the real-world worship of Skadi in Viking age Heathenry.
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| "Skaði Hunting". From: Foster, Mary, and Mabel Cummings. Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology. New York: Silver, Burdett and Co, 1901. 79. MyNDIR: My Norse Digital Image Repository. Ed. P. A. Baer. 2024. Edition 2.6. Victoria, B. C.: Humanities Computing and Media Centre, University of Victoria. 2024. |
Another interesting example that Steinsland points us to is that of Gerd, and one of the many themes explored here is of avoidance of gianthood. Amgnus Olsens 1909 interpretation of the Freyr and Gerd myth puts Freyr as the sky god and Gerdr as an earth goddess with their union being of fertility of the crops and just omits any mention of Gerdr being a giant. Steinsland notes that despite the Eddas very clearly identifying Gerdr as a giantess, scholars have often dismissed or overlooked rather than addressing the idea that a jotun may have been recognised in ritualistic context or more specifically, a recipient of worship. *gasp*
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| The image of Freyr and Gerdr scholars dont want you to see |
The next example we get from Steinsland is the story of a big old horse dick contained in "Vǫlsa þáttr". I won’t go into too much detail around that as it has already been vigorously covered by Ocean Keltoi in the video at the bottom of this post, so go check that out for a long hard look at the Volsi. However the dong itself is not what is of importance here, but the recipient of the dong; "mǫrnir". This is often translated as the singular masculine word for "sword" despite being in the plural form, which would indicate that it ought to be translated as the plural feminine word for "giantesses".
(1) mǫlrn, masc. sing., meaning 'sword', testified among sword-heiti in SnE.
(2) mǫlrnir, fem.pl., meaning 'giantesses'. This meaning is best exemplified in the sources: Sn.E.Þulur; Haustlǫng 6; Þórsdrápa; Sturl.saga I, 280."
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| This is fine, everything is fine |
It seems to be that its entirely possible, and somewhat evident that there's a possibility of giant worship, in some form, but what we do see is scholars ignoring this fact. Lotte Motz states:
“Scholars have not noted, surprisingly, that the ‘divine’ ancestor or bride is frequently not a godhead but a member of the race of giants…This fact is never hidden. Gerðr, ancestress of Yngling kings, is the daughter of Aurboða and Gymir, both giants. Skaði, ‘the shining bride of the gods’, was fathered by the giant Þjazi…The descent of Norwegian princes is traced to the giant Fornjtr and his family in some accounts."
He goes on to list examples of royal Scandinavian lineages to giants, claimed relationships via marriage, fosterage, or friendship to giants, however it seems rather odd for these claims to be made if the giants were considered evil and enemies to the gods don't ya think? If we are to view the giants in the way that some recon assholes modern practitioners and scholars think we should, then I think it puts the pre-Christian Heathen in a very conflicting place and at odds with the gods. What seems more likely is that the giants were seen as divine and that some were worshipped, which makes much more sense when we see sources claiming descent such as the Yngling kings.
Motz does offer some insight to perhaps this shift in thinking, that post-conversion, giants and devils become interchangeable and the reason this might be that giants are set in a position of hostility:
“It is true that many waves of immigration washed onto the shores of Northern Europe, each group bringing its tradition of warfare and faith into the new land and accepting also much of what it found…If the giants had, in fact, been the gods of the native population who then became part of the faith of the invaders, we would find an answer to their dual nature: that they were wise as well as monstrous, that they built sanctuaries even though they were the enemy…And as such they were remembered in the tales of simple folk: as those who had constructed the world in its splendour.”
Finally we will touch on the archeological record, specifically that of of the Hynnestad monument and the stone depicting what is largely accepted as Hyrrokkin (you can read more on this bad ass here). Steinsland emphasises her often overlooked importance in Baldrs Myth and her function in the Heathen funeral ritual. She continues to state the very act of raising the stone-monument is to be classified as a ritual and that this giantess would probably help the dead to start their journey to the other world.
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| Ole Worm (1588-1654) - Worm, Ole, Monumenta Danica (1643) - depiction of the monument before it was destroyed.[1] The high quality of the etching is confirmed by the surviving stones. |
So I think we can conclude there, I'm sure there are many more examples we can draw and dig deeper into, but time is limited, and I have an uber eats order on the way. So to wrap up i think we can say that there are clues hidden in the texts, some a bit obscure and weird, but if we peel back the layers we can start to see that its not only possible, but likely that giants were not always viewed as evils forces and that some were even worshipped! *clutches pearls*. To dismiss this idea completely, you would not only have to dismiss quite a few of the gods ever being worshipped, but also the entire body of work they are found in.
For more on The Volsi
Re-evaluating ettins in Old English literature
John Lindow. Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Belief
