Depictions of Trolls

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1. The trolls in northern Norway are just fantasy figures in fairytales. We don’t speak about the other ones…

2. There is a blurred line between different kinds of hidden folk, often called “tusser og troll”.

   Tusser are close to dwarfs in the Tolkien universe, kinda smaller trolls like the guys who lives in barns and are visible on old norwegian christmas cards.

   Then you have Huldra who is more like the german Lorelei who lives up in the mountains and often seduces men, (pretending to be a human woman), but in Norway she has a cow tail and a hollow back so the hero usually discovers that in time, lol.

   There is also Nøkken, who seems to be a male Lorelei, a guy who lives in forest lakes and plays the violin so sexily that he can seduce women to drown by it.

   Nøkken was portayed by Kittelsen more like a heap of branches, and there was a scifi tv series years ago where they used that Kittelsen image to make Nøkken into a sumberged ufo.

3. Norway is a quite big country so there’s of course cultural and genetic differences between north and south.

4. Troll literally means (black) magic and is used for a wealth of supernatural beings and also the act of trolling (fooling or hexing by ill-willed magic, not the internet kind), so naturally there will be variations.

   A couple of northern trolls are draugs and stallos.

   The draug is a drowned person, typically a fisherman. He’s out in low light or bad weather and can look like a sea-dressed man, rotted corpse, or a tuft of kelp and debris from a shipwreck. He’s lurking on dark beaches or around cemeteries, or riding half a boat in storms. He will want to warn you about danger ahead at sea or tell you it’s too late, loan your boathouse for his Christmas party, or just scare the wits out of you.

   A stallo is a Sami troll. He can be huge and man-like (maybe this is the one you’ve heard of?) Stallo can be a monster made by nature or a scare based on tsjudene, russian war raiders/tax collectors from bygone times. He will do and go through anything to get to eat you and your children (or put the lot of you in his sack to keep as a snack for later). He can have pointy teeth and be stealthy.

   Notable for a foreigner wanting to depict Norwegian trolls: they are NOT sexy (with the exception of hulder, nøkken and fossekallen*). They do NOT look like Hollywood or Tolkien elves; trolls are scary, dangerous, hulking monsters and their features are inspired by Norwegian nature and weather, not Japanese folklore. Read up and be critical of your inspirations, as there are more bad ones than good if you truly want to be accurate.

   *ETA: Sorry, I meant fossegrimen.

5. Tons of litterature has been produced about this, that can be found on [nb.no](http://nb.no) (in Norwegian).
   Here are some examples:
   [https://www.nb.no/items/3df89412a5dfac0746923a2157e6ebb1?page=0&searchText=trollmakter](https://www.nb.no/items/3df89412a5dfac0746923a2157e6ebb1?page=0&searchText=trollmakter)
   [https://www.nb.no/items/ee79f39aadcdb0cb50c47883abf2d53b?page=13&searchText=trollmakter](https://www.nb.no/items/ee79f39aadcdb0cb50c47883abf2d53b?page=13&searchText=trollmakter)

   You might have to use a VPN, and/or a translator app.

   Good reading! Very interesting subject.

6. Theodor Kittelsen was the most known Norwegian artist depicting trolls. One of his drawings is here, “the troll thinking about how old he is”.

   https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll?wprov=sfla1

7. You should also be aware of the term “underjordiske”, subterraneans, which encompasses most of these beings. Some can take human form, Nøkken, Bergekongen, Bergetrollet, Huldra (not fully. Tail and hollow back) (songs, Liti kjersti, Herr Mannelig, Trøllabundin)

   Depictions are one thing, but in tradition huldrefolket is very prominent in both North and South. (Huldre, hidden). Most of these take human form (at least when we see them) and live almost like a mirror image of the overworld, bringing their cattle up to graze. Sometimes they try to abduct humans or animals. That magic can be broken by throwing a piece of steel over the afflicted. Most Huldrefolk fit with the icelandic elves, both swap newborns with humans, byttinger (tradelings), but in Norway they are ugly and in Iceland they are breathtakingly beautiful.

   It seems to me that the huge trolls are more of a remnant of the creation stories. The largest troll (jotne) is the one who’s remains we live on, our planet, which Odin made from Ymir after killing him. Then there are several mountains and rock formations explained by how some ancient jotne was turned to stone by the Sun. (Hestmannen, Vågakallen, de Syv Søstre) In that sense there are larger trolls in the North, as many mountains are part of such creation stories.

   I wouldn’t be surprised if remnant populations of neanderthals or people with a large percentage of such genes gave rise to some of this.

8. So, this will not be the answer you’re looking for, but could be interesting never the less.

   In the saga’s (1300’s ish) the word “troll” was used to refer to magic wielders, and often meant Sámi people. It neither meant large being, nor giant.

   The jotne were sometimes referred to as giants, but more often not. In the Viking Age, the Norse of Northern-Norway created myths about their lineage, stating that they were descended from jotne and åse (Norse gods). However, they did not use the word troll about themselves nor the Sámi (not that we have many texts from that time, but the ones we do have do not refer to Sámi or jotne by that name). The link between “troll” and “magic user” appears to arrive after Christianity.

   When Christianity collided with Norse culture, something happened to the texts and how they were translated. “Troll” became a word for “magic wielder”, and were seen as evil. Then in later translations of sagas, you find numerous examples of trolls being translated as “giants” rather than just calling it a troll. My theory is that this happened because of the giants that were already a part of Christian mythology. The two words/creatures merged, creating the “new” creature: a blend of troll (Norse) and giant (Christian).

   The Stallo is a whole other creature. The Stallo was always a large being that wanted to eat you, and theories are that the Stallo-creature came to existence after Norse and tsjude raids, since the Stallo is the only mythical creature in Sámi belief that can be killed (as far as I know).

   It is not unlikely that the lust for human flesh (or specifically Christian flesh) is a trait the Christian version of the troll adopted from the Stallo.

   So to summarize, the troll we know today is relatively modern and not to be confused with the jotne, nor Stallo, nor giants. It has large variations in form and shape because it is a creature based on different characteristics from other “creatures”. Depending on the traditions in your area, the troll will have different traits and characteristics.

9. In the traditional fairy tales collected by Asbjørnsen og Moe they come in many different shapes and sizes. Some of them have three heads (Soria Moria slott) or eyes as big as tin plates with a nose as long as a broom stick (De tre bukkene bruse). You also have trolls with an undefined appearance such as Bøygen, which is featued in Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. It is described as an omnipresent invisible creature. Most of the stories about Bøygen have their origin in Telemark and Gudbrandsdalen.

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