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and from other literary traditions. The application of risi as a gloss for
gigantic figures from Judeo-Christian tradition is especially prominent. In
the collection of Icelandic translations of Old Testament material known
as Stjórn, Goliath is a risi. In this text risar also settle in the city of Hebron
after the Biblical flood, and more risar still are said to settle in Asia.
Goliath is also identified as a risi in the Norwegian tract on kingship,
Konungs skuggsjá, and in an encyclopedic section of Hauksbók. Further,
a risi descended from Goliath attacks Charlemagne in Karlamagnúss saga,
an Old Icelandic translation of the Anglo-Norman La Chanson de Roland.
In the same encyclopedic section of Hauksbók, one also finds a risi called
Nemroð, or Nimrod, to whom the construction of Babel is attributed.
Risar are also responsible for constructing Babel in the Old Icelandic
Elucidarius.29 In the indigenous riddarasaga Kirjalax saga, the giantlike
Kristeforus, or St. Christopher, is called a risi. In all of these examples,
Icelandic and Norwegian authors and translators selected the term risi to
describe beings from Christian tradition in preference to jötunn, which
they used sparingly and restricted to negative figures from Greek and
biblical tradition. From the earliest times, then, risi appears to have been a
preferable term to describe giantlike figures from other literary traditions,
and this was likely encouraged by its absence from mythological texts.
Because the term risi had no specific associations with a distinctly
Scandinavian past, at least in extant sources, it could be employed more
freely to describe giantlike figures encountered in exotic locales. Outside
of theological contexts, the term risi is used to describe “foreign” giantlike
figures which do not resemble those of Scandinavian tradition.30 Snorri
Sturluson’s use of risi to refer to creatures dwelling on the periphery of
the classical world has already been mentioned. Saga authors follow a
similar practice, as they frequently include risar in lists of exotic creatures.
29 In their capacity as the figures who construct Babel, these risar parallel the entas of Old
English tradition. Anglo-Saxon authors often used ent in preference to the more usual
eoten when discussing gigantic figures from biblical tradition. See Peter J. Frankis, “The
Thematic Significance of enta geweorc And Related Imagery in The Wanderer,” Anglo-Saxon
England 2 (1973): 261–4. The impulse here might have been the same as for Icelandic
authors: namely, that Anglo-Saxon authors wished to demarcate the gigantic figures of
biblical tradition from those belonging to their own cultural experience, and so used the
less familiar ent for the former. See Stephen C. Bandy, “Cain, Grendel, and the Giants of
Beowulf,” Papers on Language and Literature 9 (1973): 240.
30 See page 84–86 above.
A PROBLEM OF GIANT PROPORTIONS