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mentioned – Bárðar saga, Þorsteins þáttr and Samsons saga – lies in the fact
that these texts not only distinguish between risar and jötnar, but contain
episodes which rely upon and engage with the differences between these
two beings. These texts provide narrative arenas where the oppositional
characteristics of risar and jötnar translate into very real social and physical
conflict between them.
Conclusion
The crucial distinctions between risar and jötnar discussed above permit
some reflection on the use of the term “giant” and other, similar terms of
modern provenance that are used to translate the untranslatable in Old
Norse-Icelandic literature. The term “giant” was not a product of medi-
eval Scandinavia, and it seems apparent that Icelandic authors would have
identified a significant disconnect between it and the risar and jötnar to
whom it is applied. A search for the “giants” of the sagas turns up crea-
tures who are at times remote, hideous and savage, and at others beautiful,
civilised and socially articulate. This has led some scholars to wonder at
the apparent variability in the saga “giant,” but this confusing situation
might easily be avoided by appealing instead to the terms which Icelandic
authors themselves used.65 Ármann Jakobsson has discussed the prospect
of distinguishing between the different “kinds” of giantlike figures present
in this corpus, but suggests that “the sources are very unhelpful and pro-
vide no support for [this], showing us instead confusion and uncertainty
and distributing these terms in a random fashion.”66 Ármann’s contention
does not extend to risar, who are in fact distinguished from jötnar in their
origin and, with few exceptions, in their function and nature. Indeed, the
translation of both risar and jötnar as “giants” forces these two quite di-
vergent figures into a terminological straitjacket, to borrow a phrase from
Kalinke.67
65 E.g. Schulz, Riesen, 159–65.
66 Ármann Jakobsson, “taxonomy,” n. 26.
67 Marianne E. Kalinke, “Riddarasögur, Fornaldarsögur and the Problem of Genre,” Les Sagas
de Chevaliers (Riddarasögur). Actes de la Ve Conférence Internationale sur les Sagas. Toulon,
Juillet 1982, ed. by Régis Boyer (Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1985), 77.
Kalinke uses this to describe the effects of the modern fornaldarsaga genre on the texts that
it describes, but this term also usefully applies to the present problem.
A PROBLEM OF GIANT PROPORTIONS