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Throughout the Harry Potter series, Hagrid's large size is repeatedly described. His feet are the size of baby dolphins; his hands are as large as (rubbish) bin lids; he seems to Harry to be too big to be allowed indoors; etc.

Using canon descriptions of Hagrid's size like the ones I just listed, is it possible to estimate how big Hagrid actually is? What is Hagrid's height and weight?

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  • Why don't you see Hagrid in movies? I think, movies use correct appearance described in books..
    – Doctor Doom
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 16:21
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    Mainly because I don't consider the movies to be canon -- they're a fun representation of the HP universe and I love them. Hagrid in the movies is characterized well, I think, but he seems smaller than the description of Hagrid in the books. :)
    – Slytherincess
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 21:04

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From the very first chapter of SS/PS, "he was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide.". So I'd say 11-12 ft tall. Weight goes up about the square of the height, so minimum 600 lbs, but five times is clearly more than just doubling his height would add so I'll go out on a limb and say about 1000 pounds.

My original guess was imagining a person 2.5x wider than me at the same height and guessing their weight, then quadrupling it. To be somewhat more quantitative, have some numbers:

I'm basing this off a 150-lb, 5'6" - 6' person. Double the size, quadruple the weight for 600 lbs. A torso is 40% of body mass, so making it 2.5x larger after that makes 600*1.6 = 960 pounds. Round to 1000. Bingo! Now, check BMI: 1000 lbs at 12 ft is 34, at 11ft is 40. I was guessing his BMI around 40 anyway, so I'll go with 11', 1000lb. (A bit under 3.5m and 500kg for the non-Americans).

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  • If you take the text literally, he should be at least 10x heavier (2x from height and 5x from width) than a normal man, and he'd look ridiculous if he wasn't also 2-5x deeper, so that would be 20-50x heavier, or 3000-10000 lbs depending on details of build and depth.
    – Rex Kerr
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 17:13
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    @RexKerr You're doing a straightforward cubic expansion, but as I mentioned it's closer to quadratic in human(oid)s. Think of a child, say half my size in every direction, I'd guess their weight at 45lbs. Double that in every direction like you are, that'd suggest I'm 360, square the expansion and it's 180, just what I weigh. The waistline is harder to guess, but I took a shot.
    – Kevin
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 18:31
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    @Kevin - The reason it's closer to quadratic is because taller people tend to have longer limbs and less broad bodies (in proportion to their height). Hagrid is explicitly described as not following that pattern, so a straightforward product is about right. (Note for example that children have relatively larger heads and torsos compared to their arms than do adults; this is why a child half as tall as you will generally weigh a good deal more than 1/8th of your weight.)
    – Rex Kerr
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 18:36
  • It would make more sense if they meant 5x as round, e.g the circumference.
    – AncientSwordRage ♦
    Commented Jul 18, 2016 at 1:10
  • Could you use the metric system next time?
    – Stephan Bijzitter
    Commented Sep 27, 2017 at 11:32
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Hagrid's size changed throughout the books.

Five times as wide

If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild – long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, He had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins.
(Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - Chapter 1 - text available on Pottermore)

Three times as wide

About twice as tall as a normal man, and at least three times as broad, Hagrid, with his long, wild, tangled black hair and beard, looked slightly alarming — a misleading impression, for Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew Hagrid to possess a very kind nature.
(Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Chapter 12)

For weight see @Kevin's answer

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    Looks like he went on a diet.
    – Ghostship
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 16:51
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    Could also just be that the first book is seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old kid (although, admittedly, the chapter that describes Hagrid’s size in numbers isn’t), while your second quote is seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old. In any case, it seems somewhat hyperbolic in both cases. That goes for the baby-dolphin feet, too: dolphins vary enormously by size, of course, but newborn calves of the most common type, the bottlenose dolphin, are usually between 40 and 50 inches in length, so his feet are supposedly at least four feet long—hardly realistic-sounding.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 17:44
  • Note "feet in their leather boots" - that 4 feet could be 2 feet of foot and 2 feet of ankle/calf.
    – Tim Sparkles
    Commented Oct 28, 2016 at 18:08
  • @Timbo - They good also just be big boots.
    – ibid
    Commented Oct 28, 2016 at 18:36

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