Two Questions about the Stone Giants.

[EluThingol]

Originally Posted by KamexKoopa

They don't seem to directly tie in with anything else from Tolkienverse that I remember ... it's been a while since reading Silmarillion, is there anything which could ambiguously be them from that?

Notice how in the Hobbit movie, PJ turns a distant spectacle into a silly action sequence? You can't put any variation of the words "giant monster" in front of him and not expect a drawn out scene

Indeed I thought about Jackson merely using these creatures, even the very thin rumor of them from the actual book, as a whole spectacle for the movie.

But then again you sort of have to do that a little bit in hollywood, taking these movies as an adaptation of a tale rather than the screen version of what you read.

That being said, there are many times where Tolkien (in all his work) references creatures that come from mysterious places, and spirits that are totally undefined as far as the lord of the peoples of middle earth. Using my willing suspension of disbelief, and of course my overly active imagination, I chalked them up to being a form of primordial spirits of the mountains, whose existence is so unrelated to the politics and energies of middle earth to the point that they just do their rock-thing every once in a while and then slumber without paying too much attention to anything else.

I liken it to a bunch of like, children playing in the dirt where there is an entire civil war going on underneath them between ants. Stone giants may very well be maiar of some sort, or maybe even living (violent) shepards of rock akin to ents.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Even well after The Hobbit became more or less an official extension of the Legendarium, Tolkien thought that his universe included Giants. In early sketches for The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was to be held prisoner not by Saruman (who hadn't yet been invented), but by the "Giant Treebeard." Subsequently Bilbo, then Bingo/Frodo, then Legolas and Gimli were supposed to encounter "Giant Treebeard," who morphed from evil to "decent" to good, and eventually of course became an Ent (itself just an Old English word for "giant").

It's also I think the case, even in the context of the published "official canon," that we shouldn't try to fit everything into neat pigeonholes; T himself certainly felt that reality, even feigned reality, was always full of exceptions, enigmas, and "strange creatures beyond count."


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Notice how in the Hobbit movie, PJ turns a distant spectacle into a silly action sequence? You can't put any variation of the words "giant monster" in front of him and not expect a drawn out scene

^^This.

[Galin]

In addition to what WCH noted, in the sequel to The Hobbit Tolkien described a Big Folk, seemingly mannish giants, but as The Lord of the Rings took shape these beings got revised away. Also Treebeard was notably huge in early drafts, and even he 'shrunk' considerably.

'Fangorn is an evergreen (oak holly?) forest. Trees of vast height. (…) If Treebeard comes in at all -- let him be kindly and rather good? About 50 feet high with barky skin. Hair and beard rather like twigs. Clothed in dark green like a mail of short shining leaves. He has a castle in the black mountains and many thanes and followers. They look like young trees [?when] they stand. (…) The tree-giants assail the besiegers and rescue Trotter &c. and raise siege.'

In The Lord of the Rings Hobbits certainly seem to think giants might exist at least: 'But what about these Tree-men, these giants as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen...'

'He [Sam] had imagined himself meeting giants taller than trees, and other creatures even more terrifying, some time or other in the course of his journey, but at the moment he was finding his first sight of Men and their tall houses quite enough, indeed too much for the dark end of a tiring day.'

But neither of these are, in my opinion, like Gandalf actually saying he's going to ask a giant for help, and Gandalf will later explain: 'Some say that he is a bear descended from the great and ancient bears of the mountains that lived there before the giants came.'

Which of course makes one wonder is 'some' are right or wrong about the giants

[EluThingol]

I think Tolkien would have liked that we make assumptions and form hypothesis, collecting facts and trading quips. THe level of mystery here was something he put there for that very thing.


that clever bastard

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by EluThingol

I think Tolkien would have liked that we make assumptions and form hypothesis, collecting facts and trading quips. THe level of mystery here was something he put there for that very thing.

Well, we've been doing exactly that at this forum for over twelve years now, so I like to think the old fellow is smiling down on us.

My wild theory on the giants is that they were the Entwives, who had camouflaged themselves and gone to the mountains to get away from it all.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Well, we've been doing exactly that at this forum for over twelve years now, so I like to think the old fellow is smiling down on us.

Over eighteen, now, and still going strong...

While looking into giants for a recent Password, I came up with a new theory: could Stone Giants be Morgoth's construction equipment?

This theory is based mostly on the tale of Tarlang, which Tolkien Gateway renders as follows:

Originally Posted by Tolkien Gateway: Tarlang

According to folklore, Tarlang belonged to a group of giants who in "ancient days" were building the White Mountains in order to prevent Men from entering the giants' land close by the Sea. While carrying a heavy load of rocks, Tarlang stumbled and fell on his face, fatally breaking his neck. His corpse was used by the other giants to finish the wall: his remants formed the pass Tarlang's Neck (from the break in his neck), Dol Tarlang (consisting of his head), and Cûl Veleg and Cûl Bîn (remnants of his load of rocks).

Like the two references in The Hobbit (Stone-Giants in the storm, and Gandalf's 'more or less decent' reference), these giants are known only for building - specifically, building mountains. Assuming we discount the idea that they were working for themselves, who do we know who might need to raise mountain ranges? Well... Melkor raised the Misty Mountains to inconvenience Orome, and later formed Thangorodrim (no word on whether he also lifted up the Iron Mountains behind it). Findegil's map comparisons show that the Mountains of Mordor and the White Mountains would both have started out as the sea-bed of the Inland Sea of Helkar - which means that someone must have deliberately raised them up, too. Melkor or Sauron, the result is the same - heavy-duty earthworks by the Dark Lord.

Could they pull that off just by their own innate power? It's not impossible - the Valar appear to have increased the height of the Pelori that way after the death of the Trees. But it probably takes a lot of effort, right? If, instead, you can build a handful of semi-autonomous G.I.A.N.T.-class rock transporters and let them handle it... well, why not?

There's nothing in the canon to indicate the giants must have been intelligent. Bilbo thinks he sees them playing, but they could just have been moving rocks around to repair the mountains. Gandalf says 'decent', but he could mean 'in decent condition' - if they're constructs, they're going on ten thousand years old; a lot of them are probably broken down into rocks by now.

And Tarlang? Ignore the Gondorian 'land of giants' folklore and see it for what it is: a machine, tasked by Sauron to build up the south coast against the flooding of the Fall of Beleriand, that broke down and was left in situ afterwards.

(Per the obscure characters thread, Gilim and Nan are probably irrelevant to this discussion - they're either weird incarnations of Summer and Winter, or - if 'like an elm' applies to both of them - Ents.)

hS