The Giants are one of Skyrim's most-memed enemies, known for launching the Dragonborn into Tamriel's stratosphere with a single swing of their clubs. Although famous for their antics in-game, the race also has some very interesting lore.
The Giants and the Nords have a long history that goes far back beyond either race's arrival on Tamriel. There are some fascinating in-universe theories about the Giants and their origins. One thing's for certain, there's far more to the Giants than the lone nomads seen in Skyrim.
On The Origin Of Giants
The anatomy of the giants goes without saying for any Elder Scrolls fan. They're giant. While the origins of the race has never been unambiguously confirmed in the games, there are some interesting theories presented by some of Tamriel's scholars.
Although the giants seen in Skyrim have pointy ears like Tamriel's Elves, it has been suggested that they actually share a common ancestor with the Nords. The book Giants: A Discourse by Kord the Curious speculates that Giants and Atmorans were actually the same race back on Atmora, the frozen continent to the North of Skyrim. His treatise on the Giants of Skyrim reads as follows:
"The Atmorans were huge and smart. Nords descended from these ancient folk became the small (relatively speaking), intelligent people that we are today. Giants, on the other hand, became the huge, stupid creatures that we watch from a distance."
Although Kord suggests that the Giants and Nords have a shared history, he also believes that their futures are intertwined as well.
"Once we honored cousins with offerings of cows, but this practice has fallen out of favor [...] This will be our undoing. To disrespect the Giants is to disrespect ourselves. If we can't live with our huge cousin, I fear that conflict could become an all-our war."
Kord the Curious also goes on to describe another interesting part of Giant nature. He points out that although the Giants are often seen with mammoths in Skyrim, they do not actually herd them in the same way humans herd livestock. Instead, they seem to have an inexplicable ability to communicate with their mammoths, protecting them in return for milk, cheese, and, he suggests, companionship. According to Kord, Giants do eat mammoths from time to time, but the meal is conducted with an almost religious reverence rarely seen from their kind.
Giant Society, War, And Interbreeding
The belief in the shared ancestry of Nords and Giants fell out of favor after the First Era, but it doesn't seem like it did so because of any particular evidence to the contrary. Kord's writing about the Nord's increasing hostility to the Giants hints that the belief may have become less common because it made a growing desire to treat the giants as a nuisance and drive them away from Skyrim's cities harder to stomach.
Songs of the Return, Volume 27 is a book about the return of Ysgramor and the Five Hundred Companions to Skyrim after their initial attempts at settlement were disrupted by the Falmer. Although most Giants seen in Skyrim are solitary, Songs of the Return shows that this isn't always the case. The book describes Ysgramor killing Sinmur, a half-Giant chieftain from the Merethic era. Sinmur was said to lead around a hundred of his kind, showing that the Giants can sometimes organize into sizable societies.
He isn't the only half-Giant described in the Elder Scrolls lore. Lyris Titanborn is a Nord with Giant ancestry who was a member of the Five Companions - not to be mistaken with the Five Hundred Companions - in The Elder Scrolls Online. Their ability to interbreed would also seem to suggest that the Nords and Giants shared a common ancestor on Atmora.
Giant Art And Language, The Dwemer, And The Giant King
Although war between the Nords and Giants has broken out several times in Tamriel's history, the book All About Giants by the Bosmer Bonorion the Wanderer describes them as generally peaceful overall. Bonorion notes that Giants often paint rocks and trees around their camps, and suspects that this is to attract female giants, though he's never seen one himself.
Bonorion's claims about the more passive side of Giants should be taken with a pinch of salt, however. A note from Jeggord the Learned appended to the end of his book says that the Wood Elf was found with every bone in his body broken, having been launched over a league away from the nearest Giant camp by one of their clubs. Jeggord ends his note with a simple warning: "don't try to befriend a giant."
Giants may not be very chatty in The Elder Scrolls 5, but it's clear they have their own language. Giantish is a language skill in Daggerfall that can be used to pacify the creatures, and it is believed that the Dwemer were first referred to as Dwarves by the Giants because of their relatively small size. This might also suggest that Giants and Nords are related, with Nords only becoming as small as the Dwemer further down the line, explaining why the Dwemer were called Dwarves and not the Nord's Atmoran ancestors.
Michael Kirkbride, a former Bethesda writer who has written a lot of official and unofficial Elder Scrolls lore, also suggested that Talos once visited Atmora and held council with a Giant king of that land. Perhaps the Giants of Skyrim and the Nords alike have greatly changed from their shared ancestor up north. If players ever get the chance to explore beyond Tamriel, they may find that the Giants there are very different from their quiet cousins in Skyrim. The Giants may be happy to stick to themselves in Skyrim, but throughout Nirn's history, they have raised armies, fought wars, created art, developed language, and perhaps even built societies beyond Tamriel.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.