For centuries, mystery has surrounded the meaning behind one of Dorset’s most-known landmarks - and now academics could have answered the question once and for all.

It was traditionally believed that the Cerne Giant, near Cerne Abbas, dated back into the reaches of prehistory. However tests carried out by Martin Popworth for the site owners, the National Trust, in 2021 found the markings to date to the Anglo-Saxon period.

Now academics Helen Gittos and Tom Morcom have hypothesised as to why the Anglo-Saxons carved the Giant.

They claim it depicts the Greek mythological demi-god Hercules, and it comes from a period when the locals had to fend off attacks from the Vikings as a muster station for their armies.

“It’s become clear that the Cerne Giant is just the most visible of a whole cluster of early medieval features in the landscape,” says Helen Gittos, associate professor in Early Medieval History at the University of Oxford.

The academics say that the tale of the mythological hero was well-known throughout the Middle Ages, with a spike in popularity around the ninth century.

By the tenth century, Cerne was in the hands of the ealdorman of the Western Provinces, one of the king's leading thegns in the south-west. A thegn is a title of someone who owned five ‘hides’ of land and were obliged to serve the king in battle.

Research shows that the topographical location of the Giant, on a spur jutting out from a ridge, with impressive views and proximity to major routeways, is characteristic of a special type of Anglo-Saxon meeting place.

The academics further say that attacks by Vikings, found on the Ridgeway near Weymouth, as well as access to fresh water and local supplies from the nearby estate make the Giant an ideal place for mustering West Saxon armies with the herculean backdrop.

A century later, in the 1200s, monks worshipping at a nearby monastery at the bottom of Giant Hill, reimagined him as an image of their saint, Eadwold, implicitly referring to the Giant in the lessons they read on his feast-day. This is one of many ways the Giant has been reinterpreted throughout the years.

Tom Morcom, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, said: “The Giant’s identity was already open to reinterpretation. The monks of Cerne wouldn’t have portrayed their patron saint as naked if they were carving him from scratch, but they were happy to co-opt him as an image of Eadwold for their own purposes.

“The Giant has long been loved and looked after and such reidentifications continue into the present day.”

T. Morcom & H. Gittos, ‘The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context’ is published in Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, in the edition released on Monday, January 1, at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/spc/forthcoming