Stone-Giants

[Mhoram]

I recently remembered the 'stone-giants' from the Hobbit and I have never figured out what they were. Here are some quotes:

When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang.

They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.

"If we don't get blown off or drowned, or struck by lightning, we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football."

"I must see if I can't find a more or less decent giant to block it up again," said Gandalf

These Giants seem to clearly be living breathing things, and not an illusion to a mountain or a storm. They can't be trolls because they would have been called such. No where else in the Legendarium have I heard tale of them, anyone have any thoughts?

[Niere-Teleliniel]

That's really interesting, I'm gonna have to do some reading on that. It kinda reminds me of the giants CS Lewis describes in The Silver Chair...

[Aralaithiel]

Now when I get through Lost Tales II, I'll have to re-read The Hobbit. You come up with fascinating topics, Mhoram! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[Lush]

Did my musings on the storm in The Hobbit bring this question about, Mho? I was actually going to post an identical thread regarding the giants, but you did it first.
I guess the giants are those creatures that pop up mysteriously, and are never seen again, leaving us to scratch our heads. Tolkien seems like an author who enjoyed prompting head-scratching, and shrugging. I think he wanted us to savor mystery.
The clearest example of that is Tom, but the giants certainly qualify!
*Lush goes off scratching her head, and whistling to herself*

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: Lush ]

[Birdland]

From "The Ring Goes South" - the Company on Caradharas:

"It may have been only a trick of the wind...,but the sounds were those of shrill cries, and wild howls of laughter. Stones began to fall from the mountain-side, whistling over their heads, or crashing on the path besides them...

'We cannot go further tonight,' said Boromir. 'Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices on the air; and those stones are aimed at us.'

'I do call it the wind,' said Aragorn. 'But that does not make what you say untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs, and yet are not in league with Sauron, but have purposes of their own. Some have been in this world longer than he.'

There they are again - the Stone Giants. In the film they blame the attack of the mountain on Saruman, but I always like that Tolkien implies that...well..."stuff happens" in Middle Earth.

Makes you wonder what evil was created by Sauron, and what evil he just used to his advantage. For instance, Orcs and Wargs.

[littlemanpoet]

The trouble on Caradhrascould have been caused by stone giants. As Lush says, Tolkien doesn't really come out and say. Stone Giants come from Norse mythology, Tolkien's stock in trade. He wanted them in there, so there they are. Just adds to it.

[Gorin Icearms]

Perhaps they were a corrupted form of Ents? Since Melkor could take things that were made and twist them to his whim. Maybe they were a more powerful form of trolls? The trolls in "The Hobbit" turned back into stone with the dawn. Melkor might have made stone giants stronger, but dumber, so they wouldn't turn into solid stone.

[Amarinth]

...or perhaps they were another natural "incarnation" in middle-earth, like the ents and (sorry aule believers) tom bombadil, hence aragorn's reference to "beings not in league with sauron" as birdland kindly quoted. i'm constantly hit with the impression that many elements of lotr (now the hobbit too) were left "stranded" in the tolkien cosmology as he developed and expanded it.

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every man's life is a path to the truth -- hesse

[Lush]

But we have evidence that shows that the stone giants, whoever they were, were not all terribly bad.
After escaping from the goblins in the Misty Mountains, Gandalf says that perhaps he should find a "more or less decent giant" to block up the goblins' new pass. And if Gandalf himself could have dealings with these creatures, mayhap they were not as horrible as, say, the Orcs. Maybe they were one of those races that weren't on anyone's side at all, but looking out for their own interests.

[The Half-Hobbit]

I pictured them like that. Sort of a stone version of Ents. Which isn't too unlikely, I like to think that there was way more in Middle Earth than Tolkien had time to write.

[Mhoram]

Thanks Aralaithiel [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Here's what Robert Foster makes of them:

STONE-GIANTS Creatures of great size and strength living in the high passes of the northern Misty Mountains. The stone-giants are mentioned only in The Hobbit, and may be no more serious than Golfimbul.
-A Guide To Middle-Earth

So yeah, I guess there really is nothing to them.

[ainur]

Yeah, not too much to them. but Tolkien was an author, and wouln't let a possibility slip. While I reverence his accomplishment with "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion," I realize that he may have been 'hedging his bets' when it come to the works published in his lifetime. The Stone Giants were just a possibility when he created them in the text of "The Hobbit" etc., but I have no doubt that he knew exactly where they fit into the scheme of Middle Earth. He just never got around to writing about them in more detail.