We're watching a series on Netflix called "Ragnarok". It's pretty good. It's dubbed English over the original Norwegian audio, but they seem to use superior technology for mixing the new audio compared to other dubbed series--you can barely tell it's dubbed. The story is a very old, oft repeated tale with a few adornments.
In the Norse mythology there is a race of god-like beings called "giants" that are in conflict with the gods like Thor. This story element is similar to the "Titans" in Greek mythology, and even has a mention in the Bible in the chapters and verses in Genesis about the Nephilim. "There were giants on the Earth in those days". That is fleshed out more in the book of Enoch.
There's even an encounter in the Bible between King David and a "Giant" who he kills with his sling.
Are all these different mythologies talking about the same thing? Probably. What exactly were they talking about?
Let's take a completely different form of mythology and folk belief to try to understand what the story could even mean. Some people in India think a dog bite can cause "puppy pregnancy". A dog bites you, you become "pregnant" with puppies, then die... so it seems to be a folk story that encodes the concept of rabies. If you think about the puppy pregnancy story for a while, you'll see it actually gets a lot "right". It's like a weird hysterical telling of the "scientific" version of rabies.
The scientific storyline of rabies is an animal bite contains some infectious agent that gets into the blood through broken skin; it's not that different of a concept from getting "pregnant" IRL. The "puppies" grow in the victim, the same way the invading germs do. Rabies culminates in death--the sacrifice of the "host". He or she becomes the parent of the disease "baby" really. In short, there's some actual information in the puppy pregnancy story.
There's probably information in the "Giants" stories, too. What is it exactly? It's pretty hard to say. By the way, this set of tales is the basis of countless movies and TV shows, especially in the sci-fi genre.
It's noteworthy that the term "giant" is used in the various mythologies, which seem to share a common source. In modern usage, "giant" can be applied in different ways. Literally, as in a very tall man can be considered a "giant", or figuratively as in a "giant of industry" who might be a literal short and small man. I think there's no way to reverse engineer the meaning of that particular description from the available sources.
It's noteworthy that the "giants" are in conflict with the "new gods" in the mythologies and in fact there is an overt war.
It's also noteworthy that the conflict takes place on or around the time of a great flood.
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