Giants in the Earth is a novel by NorwegianAmerican author Ole Edvard Rolvaag telling a story of a Norwegian family who struggles to make a new life as pioneers in the Dakota territory The novel follows the grim realities of pioneering and the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind among the depictions of snow storms locusts poverty hunger loneliness homesickness the difficulty of fitting into a new culture and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land