There's a Shinto concept about how objects can develop souls and consciousness after a given amount of time and eventually begin to behave like animals or people. That's part of what's going on with the hopping lamp in Spirited Away, for instance, although I have also seen things like parasol demons in old prints.
Also why the passage of swords down family lines (or other kinds of heritage) was often and can still sometimes be a big deal in Japanese culture. While a similar gravity was lent to heritage of some objects in the West, it's never quite on the level of "this thing is borderline sentient in its own right and therefore should be treated with the care one would show a human being" kind of thing.
On the actual topic, I think it's actually pretty cool how The Hobbit discusses the economic fallout of a Germanic dragon's greed. The films botched it, but it's pretty neat how a popular children's story introduces economic themes during its final act. In the legend of Sigurd/Siegfried and Fafnir, if memory serves, Fafnir started life as a dwarf and was ultimately consumed by greed; this manifested as a transformation into a dragon. Tolkien puts his own spin on things during The Hobbit (with Thorin becoming more like Smaug psychologically upon taking control of the treasure), but C.S. Lewis also provides a contemporary example; in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the petulant and self-centred Eustace undergoes physical transformation into a dragon upon sleeping among a treasure trove while wearing a bracelet from among it.
The common threads, of course, are jealousy, greed, and self-importance. Eastern dragons are relatively impartial representatives of their respective environments and landmarks, whereas the Germanic dragon is a symptom of corruption -- particularly in sentient beings. This doesn't apply to all Western dragons; my memory is foggy, but I recall some Serbian legends describing two dragons, one of a protective nature towards humanity and one of an antagonistic nature. You'll find different patterns again among myths from different broad culture types, be those of Celtic origin, Greek origin, or whatever you might to look into. The point of this paragraph is that the greedy, hoarding dragon is historically specific to Germanic cultures (especially in a pagan context) and has been generalised through the popularity of the works of Tokien, Lewis, and their ilk.
In literature of Christian cultural origin, particularly later in the Middle Ages and onwards, you'll find more generalised notions of antagonistic dragons. A hoard is optional at this point; the authors of these later works are more concerned with the razing of countrysides and the slaughter of virtuous maidens.
This is a really interesting bit of cultural memetic... something going on here. As is the whole "the sword is basically your grandpa" thing in Japan and a few other places, which I was actually tangentially aware of despite never making the connection between that and dancing angry parasols. Thank you, Alex.
Always happy to longpost. Medieval mythology and history are among my "things", especially insofar as they pertain to the late medieval period.
In that they created different kinds of giants to encapsulate all the kinds you might see in stories(giants that live in castles in clouds, stand-offish giants that love to throw stonesbig ogrish giants that live in caves, nordic frost giants) and then eventually came up with the idea that these different giants were once castes in a now vanished giant-empire, and every individual giant still respects hierarchy even though they rarely interact with different castes anymore.
That is fascinating. Someone needs to do something with this.
Really, that is verging on Overside territory.
I like it because it kind of sheds a new light on the way some of the giants act.
The Stone Giants were the artisans of the empire, but now they have no one to answer to, so they spend their days making increasingly compex stone cathedrals in the mountains and throwing stones at each other as a hobby.
The Cloud Giants were the aristocrats of a once great empire, but now the empire is gone, and they're left lording over islands in the skies as petty tyrants, doomed to be the dictator of a tiny fragment of a once glorious whole.
The Frost Giants and Fire Giants were warriors, and now they spend their time pursuing military action for the sake of military action, the Frost Giants raiding to keep raiding, the Fire Giants building weapons and then using them to justify building them.
The Hill Giants were foot soldiers and laborers who don't have a master to serve anymore, and who are reduced to squatting in hills and devouring the local wildlife and vegetation, stupidly copying the aspects of civilization they vaguely remember.
The Storm Giants were the rulers of a once massive empire, and have now withdrawn to the distant corners of the earth, watching the skies and contemplating the world, in hopes that they will discover a way to restore their empire.
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The Cloud Giants were the aristocrats of a once great empire, but now the empire is gone, and they're left lording over islands in the skies as petty tyrants, doomed to be the dictator of a tiny fragment of a once glorious whole.
The Storm Giants were the rulers of a once massive empire, and have now withdrawn to the distant corners of the earth, watching the skies and contemplating the world, in hopes that they will discover a way to restore their empire.