The Giant with No Heart in His Body

 So we open this story with a king who has seven sons, which is just excessive, especially since six of them do absolutely nothing here. At least, not after the second page.

On the first page, the older six go out to seek brides, but the king makes his youngest stay home. His brothers are supposed to pick up a bride for him while they’re out.

They find six princesses, forgetting all about baby bro, and on the way home, they run into a giant, who turns all twelve of them, princes and princesses, to stone.

The king and Boots—the youngest prince is named Boots, which is an…interesting name for a prince—wait and wait, but they never come home. Eventually Boots convinces the king to let him go looking for them, and for his own bride, but he has to take a crappy horse, because the older brothers took all the nice ones.

(BTW. It may be a weird name, but like, at least he has a name! Love when they give me something to actually call them when I’m criticizing their life choices.)

(Note: on further study I have learned that Boots is just sort of the default name for a male protagonist in Asbjørnsen and Moe. There are, like, 5 stories that feature someone named Boots in the title, according to the table of contents for my less common collection.)

While he’s out, he feeds a starving raven and rescues a salmon who’s come out of the water. We’ll see them again later.

If you know fairy tales, you know the youngest son always befriends three animals. Boots’ third animal is a starving wolf, but instead of coming back later, the wolf starts helping right away. All Boots has left to feed the wolf is his crappy horse. So the wolf fills in for the horse, and Boots rides him to the giant’s house.

The wolf offers to take him there, and this is a bit of a plot hole, because Boots doesn’t know the giant took his brothers, and he didn’t tell the wolf that he was looking for his brothers, so I’m really not sure how we wound up here.

Anyway. We see the sculpture garden that used to be his brothers and their future wives. The wolf tells him there’s a princess in the giant’s house who’ll help him get rid of the giant.

The princess is there, and beautiful, and willing to help, but, like. I don’t know why she’s there? The text never explains why there’s a princess chilling in the giant’s house. It doesn’t say that she’s been kidnapped, which I guess would be my first assumption, but wouldn’t that be addressed, then? I don’t think she’s there willingly, or she wouldn’t be on board with getting rid of him.

She explains that the giant can’t be killed, because he doesn’t keep his heart in his body. She hides Boots under the bed. The giant comes home and smells Christian blood, which the princess makes an excuse for.

So the princess, presumably, isn't a Christian. Which might just mean that she’s, you know, not a Christian, but as previously discussed last week, our two people groups in this setting seem to be Christians and trolls. Giant=troll. Princess=????

The giant and the princess go to bed. Apparently in the same bed. Which would imply romantic involvement. Is this consensual romantic involvement? If so, why does she want to help kill him? If not, why aren’t we told she’s a prisoner or something?

I have so many questions about this whole situation.

We have next a full Samson and Delilah situation, where she keeps asking where the heart is, and he keeps lying, and she keeps checking, and even though he knows she’s looking for the heart, he eventually tells her the truth, like an idiot.

Far away there is a lake. In the lake there is an island. On the island there is a church. In the church there is a well. In the well there is a duck. In the duck there is an egg. In the egg there is his heart.

His heart is in a duck? How did he put it there? Will the duck not eventually lay this egg? The logistics here are baffling.

When the giant goes out for the day, Boots calls the wolf, and rides him to the lake. They swim across the lake and reach the church, where the key is hung too high to reach, and Boots calls back the raven to get it for him.

He catches the duck. The duck drops the egg. (Does that mean it’s already been laid?) The salmon fetches the egg.

And this is when the whole thing falls apart.

“Squeeze the egg,” says the wolf.

Boots does.

The giant screams and cries and begs.

“Make him fix your brothers and their girlfriends,” the wolf says.

The giant does.

Last I checked, the giant was several days ride on wolf-back away from Boots and the egg. Did the story forget to tell us they went back to his house? Did they forget to tell us that the giant came chasing after him?

“Squeeze the egg in two,” the wolf says.

Boots does. The giant bursts.

How does the wolf know what to do? This is a very knowledgeable wolf, and I feel like we could have skipped the whole princess bit, and just had him run the whole show.

Once the giant is dead they ride back to his house. So now we have their location sorted, but I’m still not sure where the giant was located, or how we were communicating with him.

The brothers and the brides are saved. Boots “goes into the hillside after his bride.” Which I assume is the same princess he was working with to defeat the giant? But I guess it doesn’t technically say. And, like. We still don’t know anything about this girl, except that she was apparently romantically involved with a giant she then conspired to murder.

Where is she the princess of? Is she a human or a troll? Does she have a family somewhere, worrying about her? Was her relationship with the giant consensual? If so, what drove her to murder?

What are we telling Boots’ dad about this situation? I’m assuming not the truth, because I feel like kings are probably sticklers for, like, if not virgin daughters-in-law, at least not-a-dead-troll’s-ex daughters-in-law.

I just. I have so many questions about the princess. And none of them will ever be answered. And that sucks.

Feel free to share any speculations you might have about our assorted unanswered questions!