The Giants

The Giants in "Ragnarok"

Also known as **Jötnar**, the **Giants**, are a race of supernatural, God-like entities that go around destroying everything in their path in Norse mythology. They represent chaos and destruction, and are the sworn archenemies of the Gods, especially Thor.

## Biography

In folklore, Giants are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance.

### In *mythology*

In Norse mythology, the **Jötnar** (ON "Devourers" or "Eaters"; pronounced "YOT-nar"; singular **Jötunn**, pronounced "YO-tun", a cognate with *ettin*) are often opposed to the Gods. While often translated as "Giants", most are described as being roughly human-sized. Some are portrayed as huge, such as frost giants (*hrímþursar*), fire giants (*eldjötnar*), and mountain giants (*bergrisar*), while few adopted/born with beast-like appearance.

The reason why jötnar often translated as such was the result misleading Anglicization of the name of these primordial entities; during the Norman (French) William the Conquerer's takeover of of England in 1066 CE, the English language became filled with French words. Among these loanwords was the Old French *geant*, the ancestor of the modern English word "giant", which replaced the Old English *eóten*. *Geant* referred to the Giants of Greek mythology, who were a group of spiritual entities that enemies to Gods of Olympus just as Jötnar being enemies to Gods of Asgard. The Greek ancestor of *geant* in turn, was once used to translate a Hebrew word that denoted beings of enormous size in the Bible, and over time this connotation of *giant* became the word’s dominant meaning.

The jötnar are the origin of most of various monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the Fenrisulfr) and in the eventual battle of Ragnarök, the giants will storm Asgard and fight the Gods until the world is destroyed. Even so, the Gods themselves were related to the giants by many marriages and there are giants such as Ægir, Loki, Mímir, and Skaði who bear little difference in status to them. The Chief God Odin was the great-grandson of the giant Ymir.

### In the series

The jötnar in the series are masquerading as humans called the Jutul family, with the intention of killing everyone in the fictional town of Edda by poisoning the town's water supply.

## List of members

* Living
* Deceased

## Personalities

The giants represent the forces of the primeval chaos and of the rash, destructive nature. As such, many of them believed that they can do whatever they want, not taking the well-being of others into account, mortal races such as humans in particular.

* **Vidar Jutul**: He completely believed that giants were better than humans and Gods. Vidar was shown to be ruthless, determined and vengeful.

* **Ran Jutul**: In addition of as cold-blooded as arrogant to the point of not taking others' threats seriously until it's too late, Ran proved herself to be the most vindictive of Jutuls.

* **Fjor Jutul**: Fjor grew up with the mentality of being better than the humans around him. At first, Fjor initially put up the facade of classic example of a "school's most popular boy" - snarky, full of himself, and more often than not, a bully. However, he became softer as he got closer to humans and, more specifically, Gry Isungset. He came to realize the impact his family's factory has on the environment. Fjor grew tired of living a lie and expressed his desire to be a normal kid like his fellow classmates. However, this all changed after the death of Vidar, in which he bitterly succeeds his father rather than wanting to be normal he intended to be.

* **Saxa Jutul**: In addition of posing as the school's Alpha B\*tch as one can put it, she takes pride over her divine lineage and can be easily offended should her family or her kind painted in negative light even at slightest.

## Appearance

According to mythology, giants are often attributed a hideous appearance – claws, fangs, and deformed features, apart from a generally hideous size. Some of them may even have many heads, such as Þrívaldi who had nine of them, or an overall non-humanoid shape; so were Jörmungandr and Fenrir, two of the children of Loki, viewed as giants. With bad looks comes a weak intellect; the Eddas more than once liken their temper to that of children. That's not to say that they're completely unintelligent savages: Some such as Útgarða-Loki aka Skrýmir and Thrymr chose to adapt the more civilized lifestyle not unlike Vikings of the old.

In the series, the Giants are masquerading themselves as humans, for the purpose of taking over everything and killing everyone. The fact that Jutul family posing as humans who manage their namesake company suggested that later generations of this species has since considered aforementioned latter lifestyle as a norm, which helps since it enables them to blend in among humanity at its fullest.

## Curiosities

* Giants are closely linked to Old World traditions, involving for example:
	+ Only male giants rule the families, however, due to Vidar's death, it is unknown if the rule will apply.
	+ They have a so-called council of war where they put an ax on the table and vote on taking a certain important action.
* The likelihood of Jutuls being Jötnar only in the perspective of Magne's schizophrenia was foreshadowed by apparent absence of other members of their kind.