Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Serendipity of Gigantism

So, this is a bit old now, nearly a month in fact. Thus, I will not post links. But about 3.5 weeks ago I had one of those moments when various strands and streams of thought converged. This time the point of convergence was giants.

For various reasons I was reading about Rabelais and his giants, esp. Pantagruel. The whole thing rather reminded me of Snorri's tale of creation in Prose Edda. That brought to reflecting on the Marduk and Tiamat tale of Babylonian mythology that many think lies behind biblical Genesis 1.

At the same time, I had reason to review Grettir's Saga, the part where Glam enters the hall and the battle between the two begins. The saga describes Glam as quite a large draugr.

Meanwhile, J. J. Cohen was talking about an encyclopedia article he was writing about....yes, giants and gigantism etc. Then on Facebook Cohen also mentioned that he had found a review of his book, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, And The Middle Ages.

All these giants kept hitting me. Should I take the hint?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

All these giants kept hitting me. Should I take the hint?

At the very least you should roll for initiative.

theswain said...

Low roll. And no hit points left...but I got hit again over on Modern Medieval....more giants.