Scandinavian legends and Folk Tales - The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body
A. Context.
“The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body” is a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe and reprinted among other folktales in 1843 in the volume entitled Norske Folkeeventyr. Sir George Webbe Dasent was the first to translate the tales into English, so that his Popular Tales from the Norse (1859), contained all 58 tales from the initial edition of the original collection. More than that, George MacDonald retold it as "The Giant's Heart" in Adela Cathcart. A version of the tale also appears in A Book of Giants by Ruth Manning-Sanders.
The volume consulted contains tales retold by Gwyn Jones, and its original edition, Scandinavian Legends and Folk Tales, was originally published in 1956.
B. Summary
Growing lads, the seven sons of a deeply caring king asked for their father`s permission to go off and find suitable brides. But the king couldn`t bare the idea of being left alone so the youngest one, Agnar, had to stay home and keep him company, since the brothers promised to bring a princess for him, too. However, they forgot the given word as soon as they met a king who had only six daughters with yellow hair. Their joy didn`t last much because when returning home with their princesses, they passed a giant`s house and because they disturbed him with their laughter the giant turned them all into stone.
Their prolonging absence worried the king so that he eventually accepted Agnar`s decision to go and look for them. On his way out, some animals asked for his help and even if Agnar was sure that these creatures could never return his favour, he accepted. Therefore, the prince fed a raven, put a salmon back into the river, and gave his horse to a starving wolf. After eating his horse the wolf became so big and strong that Agnar rode on his back so that soon they reached the Giant`s house. The wolf advised Agnar to overcome his fear and go inside the house in order to meet another helper, a captive princess. This way, the prince found out that the Giant didn`t keep his heart inside his body, therefore it was impossible to kill him. Still, the princess, who was longing for her escape, asked the Giant repeatedly about the place that sheltered his heart, and eventually the monster revealed it: in the heart of the forest there was a lake with an island where a church was placed; inside the church there was a well where a duck swam and the giant`s heart was placed in the egg of that duck.
Helped again by the wolf, Agnar rode to the church, where he had to ask the raven to bring down from the tower the keys of the church, while later he was helped by the salmon to grab the egg out of the well. Thus, holding the egg in his hand and guided again by the wolf, Agnar squizzed the giant`s heart inside the egg and forced the giant to bring back to life his brothers and their brides. After that he squeezed the egg into two, causing the Giant`s death, and went back to his father`s house with the captive princess as his bride and accompanied by their brothers and their princesses.
C. Position in the Aarne-Thomson-Uther Index.
It belongs to the category of the TALES OF MAGIC 300-749, the subcategory Supernatural opponents 300–399 - The Giant Without A Heart, 302.
D. Characters and functions according to Vladimir Propp.
Types of characters according to Vladimir Propp
The hero: Agnar, king’s youngest son
The villain: the giant without a heart in his body
The princess/Prize: the princess saved by Agnar
The dispatcher: the king who had seven sons
The donor: the raven- brings the keys from the church tower
The magical helper: the wolf, helping the hero to reach the Giant`s house and find his heart in order to defeat the villain
Functions according to Vladimir Propp
The 2nd Sphere
F8: Villainy and lack - the Giant turns Agnar`s brothers and their princesses into stones
F10: Counter-action - the hero decides to search for his brothers
F11: Departure - he leaves home
The 3rd sphere
F14: Acquisition – the hero receives help from the wolf. The well-known image of the hero`s white horse is replaced by that of a gigantic wolf, which is a more representative image for Scandinavian mythology
F15: Guidance – the hero receives guidance from the wolf, after eating Agnar`s horse.
F16: Struggle – Agnar and the Giant did not fight in direct combat since the hero managed to find out the place where the Giant`s heart was placed
F18&F19: Victory and Resolution – Agnar kills the giant but only after the initial misfortune is resolved (the brothers and their princesses were brought back to life).
C. Similarities with other known tales (Romanian, Hungarian, French, German...)
Tsarevich Petr and the Wizard is a Russian Fairy Tale, presenting Koshchei, the most powerful of all the wizards that also keeps his heart inside an egg.
D. Modern-day editions in English and Romanian
The video game Paper Mario tells a variant of the story when Mario must battle the villain Tubba Blubba, a giant whose heart was removed in order to gain invincibility but resulted in him becoming miserable. Mario first battles the heart, then the villain Tubba Blubba after it returns to his body and he becomes mortal again.
The song "The Giant Who Had no Heart in His Body," on experimental metal band Ana Kefr's album "Volume 1", uses the fairytale to symbolize the death of the conscience (the Giant), discussing amorality and liberation from tradition within the symbols and events of the story.
https://archive.org/stream/scandinavian ... 3/mode/2uphttp://research.omicsgroup.org/index.ph ... en_and_Moehttp://research.omicsgroup.org/index.ph ... n_His_Bodyhttps://archive.org/stream/MorphologyOf ... p#mode/2uphttp://www.surlalunefairytales.com/auth ... heart.htmlhttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... dTheWizard
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
