Giants

Giants are mainly beings of legend. Gandalf the Grey was known for telling stories about them, and Bilbo had heard of Giants in tales.

A local legend among the indigenous people of Gondor told of Giants living in the lands by the Sea, north of the Bay of Belfalas. The tale says that Giants made the White Mountains to keep Men out of their lands. One of them, Tarlang, tripped, and broke his neck. The other Giants did not clean up his body, which became incorporated in the land instead. The Giant's neck became Tarlang's Neck, his head Dol Tarlang, and the stones he was carrying Cûl Veleg and Cûl Bîn. The city of Minas Tirith, as stood on Amon Tirith, seemed to have been "carved" by Giants out of the rock.

The Ettenmoors owed their name to some gigantic creatures of that land, although these were perhaps merely some kind of trolls.

Some say that Beorn is a bear descended from the great and ancient bears of the mountains that lived there before the Giants came, though Gandalf found this story less likely to be true.

The "stone-giants" lived in the Misty Mountains during the late Third Age where great bears lived there before their arrival. They found a sport in throwing rocks at each other, and then into the depths below to hear them shatter among the trees.

Presumably, not all Giants were savage or evil, as Gandalf hoped to convince a decent Giant to block the Front Porch to Goblin-town to make the High Pass in the Misty Mountains safe again.

Some Tolkienists assume that giants are a fleeting idea of Tolkien's while writing The Hobbit that was never considered again for incorporation into the developing legendarium. John D. Rateliff has argued that they might have become "free agents"; not wicked, but simply not aware of their surroundings. Robert Foster comments that the stone-giants "may be no more serious than Golfimbul".

Other theories attempt to include the Giants among the known races of Arda. For example, they might be a large race of Men (like Hobbits are a small race of Men), Trolls, or simply "nature spirits" more or less like Tom Bombadil. Furthermore, Douglas A. Anderson's annotations in The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition express the opinion that stone-giants are a variety of Troll.

The Book of Lost Tales and associated writings

Giants originally had a larger part in the legendarium. In one early manuscript, the Giants are counted among the úvanimor, servants of Melko. In another manuscript, the Giants are counted among the Earthlings, and are divided between the "wood-giants" (Qenya ulbandi) and "mountainous-giants" (Qenya taulir). And in other early writings, two Giants are named: Nan (said to be like an Elm-tree) and Gilim (whose name is Gnomish for "winter").

Giants and Ents

Giants were the wicked precursors of Ents. The elm-like features of the Giant Nan, and that in early versions of The Lord of the Rings it was the Giant Treebeard who held Gandalf captive, not Saruman, makes the connection between Giants and Ents within Tolkien's imagination clear.

An early name for the Ettenmoors was called "Entish Lands". As Christopher Tolkien notes, "Ent" comes from an Old English word for "giant", and was used before Tolkien conceived the later benevolent Ents of The Two Towers. The word is seen at various points in Beowulf, for example line 2717, enta geweorc, "the work of Giants".

Giants as a subgroup of Men

In a draft for what would become the chapter The Shadow of the Past from The Fellowship of the Ring, it is mentioned that the Necromancer was rallying his forces and causing wars and devastation from his stronghold in Mordor, and that Giants were said to be among those forces. There, the Giants were described as "a Big Folk only far bigger and stronger than Men the [?ordinary] Big Folk, and no stupider, indeed often full of cunning and wizardry".

Other names and etymologies

An early root for "giant" is given as NOROTH. This yields Quenya norsa, and Noroth (likely supposed to be a Noldorin word). A discarded Quenya word was hanako, from a root KHAN-AK.

In Germanic mythology names for the Giants were jotun (Norse) and eoten (Old English). From the latter word Tolkien derived the name "etten".

In the Return of the King it is noted that Minas Tirith "seemed to have been not builded but carven by giants out of the bones of the earth". Hammond and Scull have suggested that this notion derives from Old English mythology, in which Giants were often portrayed as builders of ancient structures.

In Farmer Giles of Ham, a giant troubles Farmer Giles' land, who chases him off with his blunderbuss.

In a rejected portion of the Foreword to The End of Bovadium, Dr. Gums mentions that "a race of giants" that once inhabited "the prehistoric remains in this island" were often employed to excavate "vast pits and tunnels for no ascertainable purpose" and to transport "large quantities of stone to inaccessible regions", according to "popular tradition".

Films

2012: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey:

Stone-giants are seen throwing rocks and crashing into each other as Thorin and Company travel over the Misty Mountains. In the film, they are interpreted as literally being colossal stone entities.

Games

1982: Middle-earth Role Playing:

Several divisions and races of giants are described and given statistics, such as Stone Giants, Ice Giants, Giants of the Southern Misty Mountains, and Red Giants.

1995: Middle-earth Collectible Card Game:

Giants, called Thunder's Companions, are one of the Hazard Creatures.

2003: The Hobbit (2003 video game):

Stone-giants are golem-like creatures that appear in the fourth level, hurling rocks at Bilbo as he tries to travel along a mountain path. They are completely made of stone, and their stones are dangerous.

2006: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II:

"Mountain Giants" are large and powerful beings in the Goblin faction, with brown scaly skin. They can hurl stones at great distance, and serve as the faction's artillery units.

2007: The Lord of the Rings Online:

Several tribes of giants appear in the game, including Stone-giants, Ogres (also called Jorthkyn or Earth-kin), and Ice-giants. While some are enemy creatures, others remain neutral and can be befriended by the player.

2011: The Lord of the Rings: War in the North:

A renegade Stone-Giant named Bargrisar appears in the game, serving as a boss character. Swayed by Sauron to serve him, he becomes the leader of a large party of Orcs and Trolls. Backed by his army, Bargrisar seeks to destroy the nests of the Great Eagles and plunder the North for riches. Similar to the portrayal in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, he is a being composed entirely of stone.

2014: Lego The Hobbit: The Video Game:

Multiple stone-giants appear as the main conflict in the level Over Hill and Under Hill, in which their fighting poses a threat to the party.

Other

1989: The Hobbit (comic book):

Giants are displayed as bearded gigantic men with regular leather attire.

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