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The word troll (Old Norse troll) is old but shifting. In the Viking Age and in the Edda it first meant something uncanny, supernatural in general – often the giants (jötnar), the adversaries of the gods. Only in later folklore did it become the familiar figure: a being of the mountains, forests and rocks, apart from the human world.
"Troll" is no uniform image. In some tales trolls are mighty, dumb giants who throw boulders and guard bridges. In others they are smaller, cunning, thievish and live in hills or under stones. What they share: they belong to the wilderness, avoid the church and iron, and whoever meets them should be clever and polite.
A famous motif: some trolls cannot bear daylight. If they are caught by the rising sun, they freeze into stone. So folk tales explained many a bizarre rock formation in Scandinavia – the rock "was" a petrified troll. The giant Alviss of the Edda too is kept talking by Thor until sunrise and turns to stone.
"Wits must he have who wanders wide, but all is easy at home."Hávamál 5, after Henry A. Bellows 1923 (public domain)
Trolls are the face of the wild, untamed nature of the North – a collective image for all that lurks in the dark beyond farm and hearth. Related beings such as the huldra and the nisse belong to the same world.
The Huldra · Nisse & Tomte · The Draugr – the walking dead · The Troll Cross · Seiðr – the magic.
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