Trolls - Creatures from Norse Mythology

At first, trolls are mostly perceived as Northern Europe counterparts of giants in southern parts of Europe. Yet their characteristics differ in many important details. If we start in the oldest Norse myths trolls are mostly gigantic creatures, significantly larger than humans, sometimes even huge as hills.

A typical troll is strong, hairy, solitary (or living in a small family union of mother and son or another group with two or three members), clumsy, and slow-witted. In stories, trolls often serve as some kind of guardians, blocking the passages, like bridges, sometimes demanding an answer to a puzzle, when a human wants to pass by.

A popular story we can use as learning material about trolls tells how Askeladden (in some way a Scandinavian male version of Cinderella) tricked a troll. His father was in debt and wanted wood from the forest to get some cash. Askeladden's older brothers tried to get wood but failed due to their fear of the troll.

Askeladden tricked the troll by convincing him about his strength when he squeezed whey out of cheese (the troll believed he squeezed water from stone) and then beat him in an eating contest (with a hole in his knapsack under the shirt he could still pretend to eat while troll was already full, then suggesting the troll to cut his stomach so he could eat more, what eventually led troll to kill himself). Askeladden brought home treasuries from the troll's house and the family got rich.

In this story we can clearly recognize the scenes from Valiant Little Tailor by the Brothers Grimm (with strength demonstrations) and Jack the Giant Killer from English Folktales (with the antagonist cutting his own stomach). It's hard to say which element came first and which folklore copied from where. But something is clear. With the Romantic period in art, trolls (and giants) who were in older stories mostly portrayed as personification of nature forces became cultural obstacles.

Apart from obvious physical strength, trolls in older legends and sagas in numerous cases possessed some supernatural (for our ancestors every natural phenomenon which could not understand was depicted as supernatural) powers with shapeshifting being the most popular of all. Again, remember Puss in Boots, where the title character defeated the ogre and acquired his possession for his master by flattery about the ogre's shapeshifting abilities?

For many centuries, the main problem for trolls was lightnings, thrown by Thor. Later, with the rise of Christianity (note: the capital of Norway was called Christiania or Kristiania till 1925) trolls became frequently portrayed as un-Christian creatures. The connection is obvious: Christianity equals civilization and progress, and Paganism equals everything bad from old times.

Approximately equal was the transition of the appearances of trolls. While the old ones were gigantic and deformed (extremely large noses, wrinkled skin, only one eye, etc.), later versions depicted them in a wide variety of looks. They could be small, even much smaller than humans, they could also look like regular people. The saying 'devil can wear many faces' comes to one's mind.

Lightning was not so much of a problem for the trolls. They started to fear church bells. There are many stories where bells drive away trolls and situations where a troll attacks the construction site of the church. Another change was the effect of light - trolls became presented as night creatures (again, un-Christian) who would be paralyzed and changed into stones. The similarity with other un-Christian creatures - vampires, is obvious.

The look and behavior of trolls are also often overlapped with several other creatures from Norse mythology, like gnomes and goblins. But we won't go too much into detail at this very moment. This article will present as many pictures, illustrations, and drawings of trolls as possible. Several artists had an especially great affinity to portray them.

We'll start with Erik Werenskiold and his contemporary and personal friend Theodor Kittelsen. Then we'll see where our journey will bring us.

Troll Pictures by Erik Werenskiold

The contrast between large ugly trolls and tiny white girls was too good to not be exploited, so we can find even more such compositions in black and white illustrations.

As you can see, there are many different pictures by Erik Werenskiold from different occasions, some scanned from the best-selling books, other presented as mere copies of sketches, all loaded with artist's creative powers.

To be continued (hopefully anytime soon)...