What is a troll?
In Old Norse, trǫll is a broad term. It can mean giants, sorcerers, ghosts or simply something uncanny that does not belong to the human world. The Icelandic scholar Ármann Jakobsson has shown how open the word was in the Middle Ages. Only in later Norwegian folk tradition did it become the familiar figure: big, old, stupid or cunning, and living inside a mountain.
Characteristics
- Turning to stone: If sunlight strikes a troll, it turns to stone. Many mountains and rocks along the Norwegian coast are said to be petrified trolls, for example in the legend of Torghatten and the Seven Sisters.
- Church bells: Trolls cannot stand the ringing and move away as soon as a church is built.
- Changelings: Trolls were said to steal human children from the cradle and put their own children in their place.
Origins and sources
The major collections were made after 1814, when Norway broke away from Denmark and was looking for a culture of its own. Andreas Faye published his Norske Folke-Sagn in 1833, and from 1841 Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe followed with their Norske Folkeeventyr. Asbjørnsen distinguished between folktales (eventyr) and legends (sagn), that is, between stories told for entertainment and stories people believed to be true. Today’s image of the troll was shaped by the drawings of Theodor Kittelsen and Erik Werenskiold.
What scholars say
In 1958, Reidar Th. Christiansen cataloged the Norwegian migratory legends, including the legends about petrification and churches. The church bells can be read as an image of pre-Christian beliefs being pushed out. Belief in changelings served to explain children who were ill or developed differently, often with cruel consequences for those children; D. L. Ashliman has studied this. That the mighty troll nearly always loses makes sense in stories told by small and powerless people.
Episodes on this topic
- Trolls Part 1: Why Norway’s Mountains Have Faces (storytelling episode)
- Trolls Part 2: The Changeling and the Truth Behind Trolls
Further reading
- Ármann Jakobsson: The Troll Inside You, 2017.
- Andreas Faye: Norske Folke-Sagn, 1833.
- Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Jørgen Moe: Norske Folkeeventyr, from 1841.
- Reidar Th. Christiansen: The Migratory Legends, 1958.
- Oscar J. Falnes: National Romanticism in Norway, 1933.