On the Aesir and the Giants

The Aesir naturally suffer the consequences of being eight feet tall in a world inhabited by scholars who cannot encounter anything large without immediately declaring it a remnant of giants. The supposed connection is ancient. Several northern cultures preserve stories of enormous beings who walked the tundra before the first cities, and Aesir oral histories do indeed speak of “the Tall Fathers” who followed the mammoth herds beneath a younger sky. Add to this certain oversized tools recovered from glacial sites and one obtains, with only a modest application of academic irresponsibility, the claim that the Aesir are the diminished descendants of a race of true giants.

The tools are the most impressive evidence until one measures them. Most prove to be hafted implements designed for use with thick winter gloves, and others are ceremonial. Two famous “giant spearheads” from the Hollvar excavation are now generally accepted to have been agricultural blades, which is unfortunate for the museum that continues to display them upright.

As for the Tall Fathers, the phrase may be translated with equal validity as “ancestors of stature,” “honoured forebears,” or, in one regional dialect, “the old men.” The entire theory therefore depends upon selecting the most exciting possible translation and refusing to reconsider it. There may once have been giants, and I should be delighted if someone found one, but an Aesir is not rendered a giant merely because he can reach a shelf that inconveniences the rest of us.