INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.
Happy December! It’s getting close to the holidays so I hope you’re getting your decorations up, and getting in the spirit whatever or if you celebrate at all.
DESCRIPTION:
This week we’re looking at a monstrous legend, and we’re heading back over to Scandinavia - for the almighty monster, the Troll. You have probably heard of or seen a Troll within a movie or some other form of modern media, but the Troll is one of the biggest and most remembered beasts within Norse mythology, so I’m very excited to cover them.
Now Trolls come in two types, so I’ll start by covering that. We have the giants or the Jotnar, which you might remember from my Jotunn episode - and the huldrefolk or the little folk. The Jotnar are massive giant like beings, often looking like rocks when they’re camouflaged, and they get their name from those icy giants, the Jotunn. They are often described as rugged, dirty and ugly - they can even have only one eye, or multiple heads. They are often known to be immensely large, going up to 11 ft in some cases and are supported by their equally massive limbs, and are of the earth enough to grow flowers or plants on their rocky bodies. They’re also known to be pretty slow, and pretty dumb. Huldrefolk however, are about the same size as a human, and would often disguise themselves to look like them too, and beautiful ones at that. The only thing that would give them away is their tail, which would be either cow or fox-like in appearance, but they often hid this away in clothing and are incredibly intelligent for Trolls.
Trolls are known to live in packs, however, they are not known to live peacefully with each other. The strongest is often crowned king of the pack, and has the right to order the others to do their bidding, but otherwise, there is no structure to their packs. They are known to have mates, as well as children so we do also know that there are male and female trolls - although the female and children trolls are more likely to be hidden away than in plain sight. Speaking of which, they make their homes usually in mountains, living in the dark corners of the world. However, they are known to also just live in caves, or forests away from the world of man.
But they are also known for pillaging, so they are never too far away from a human settlement - they will attack any travellers too close to their homes, and sometimes plan full battle tactics in order to destroy a village and eat the human inhabitants. But do they just eat humans? Well no, but we are a pretty good meal - Trolls are also known to farm and hunt for animals, so in theory, they have a pretty balanced diet. They’re also known for hoarding, stealing all the treasures from travellers and camps for them to hoard in their caves, tempting human adventurers to retrieve it.
Are they always bad? Pretty much, yep - there’s not many exceptions to this rule either. The only one you may find is that Trolls are known to take part in Changeling swaps. This is when a Troll child is switched with a human child, and raised by the human parents and vice versa. I did an episode on Changelings way back when I started the podcast if you want to know more about this mythical phenomenon. However, if you are kidnapped by a Troll, this is known as mountain-taking or bergtagning.
In terms of powers, they have quite a few but their biggest ones usually being their long-lives, hardened skill and brute strength. They were big enough to throw parts of mountains, or rocks three times their size at people or villages - even other Trolls. As well as this, they were known to wield weapons made from the land, such as uprooted trees for example. They also have a deep connection to nature, and some of the mightest Trolls were said to be able to conjure thunderstorms or causing avalanches. They also were known to have a powerful healing skill as well as being immune to poisons and diseases, and an affinity to magic - some Trolls went on to be powerful sorcerers within myths. Smaller trolls or the Huldre were more focused on shapeshifting and tricking humans with this magic too.
A fun fact about Trolls is that they also hate organised religion, which I think is incredibly funny - but they were said to be able to smell out and target churches and God worshipping people. This is all to do with their history, which we’ll get onto later.
Lastly, what are the Trolls' weaknesses? They actually have a few - one is sunlight, it’s said that if a Troll is exposed to sunlight, it will turn into stone and never be able to regenerate back into their fleshy selves. However, some myths state that they can just turn back at sunset. Also, much like Gargoyles, any damage done to their stone body is reflected in their living state, so if you took off a stone ear, the Troll would be down an ear in the night. Another is bells, they hate the sound of church bells or any other ringing thing - and often causes them to run away in a panic, which you can see how the organised religion hatred could certainly affect this. Lastly, lightning and thunderstorms, it was said that if a Troll is struck by lightning, they would always die - therefore, if you were being attacked and a storm came along, they would usually all flee. So make sure to keep your battles in a stormy area, which makes sense in the stormy fjords of Norway, Finland and Sweden I guess.
ORIGIN:
Onto etymology, the word Troll is derived from the Old Norse word troll and the High German trolle - both meaning fiend, demon or Jotunn. However, the Old Norse verb trylla means to enchant or to turn into a Troll. Of course, German matters here as all of the Scandinavian languages are Germanic based, so if you speak one of them, you can figure out a lot of what the others are saying. For example, I speak quite a bit of German and I spent a lot of time with Danes, and can read some Danish and Swedish without knowing any of their languages, other than swears because of course I know them.
Their history though is so much more interesting than this. They are first mentioned in the Poetic Edda, which is one of the oldest human texts ever found - I end up talking about this with most of my European monsters to be honest, either that or Beowulf at least. Anyway, in this encounter a Troll and a skald or poet have a row about what they are to each other, but here’s the extract of the Troll talking about herself;
'Trolls call me
moon of dwelling-Rungnir,
giant's wealth-sucker,
storm-sun's bale,
seeress's friendly companion,
guardian of corpse-fiord,
swallower of heaven-wheel;
what is a troll other than that?'
They are also technically mentioned in Beowulf, however, the monster Grendel is often described as a giant, so we don’t actually know if he is a Jotunn, a Troll or just a very large human being with supernatural flair. Speaking of confusion with these monsters, they are also mixed up a lot in folklore too with Jotunn, þurs and Risi - which are all other types of evil giant within Norse mythology. It’s said that they actually represent four different classes of beings, with the Jotun being the lords of nature, the Trolls being the mythical magicians, the þurs being the hostile monsters, and the heroic beings being the Risi - although they are all giant type monsters.
Now I said I’d talk about the church and Trolls, and actually this does relate to their history quite a bit. Of course, Norse mythology is based on Norse paganism, which was a full blown active religion back in the day and is definitely making a resurgence now. We also know that the Vikings from Denmark and Norway were mostly pagans, but this was around the same time that Christianity was sweeping across Europe from the Roman influence, which we know was around 793–1066 AD. So when this started to happen, the Pagans around the world were forced into Christianity, or punished for not doing so, and the Scandinavians were not left out of this.
How does this affect Trolls? Well it’s said that Trolls hated Christians because of their bells, however, Trolls are from a time of pagan belief, and believing in monsters such as these from a Christian perspective distracted from the real sins - therefore, Trolls hating churches and religious people is almost a protest against the teachings of the church dismissing their existence - and is why they target them, and also why they fear the bells.
But why do they fear thunder and lightning then? And why does this specifically kill them? Well this also links to the rest of Norse myth and the monster's history - it’s said that the Trolls were unbelievably aware of what happened to the Jotunn, a race driven from the lands of the gods by the god of thunder and lightning, Thor. Therefore, the Trolls feared Thor and his wrath so much due to what he did to their ancestors, they would run if they saw any storms start, thinking it was the god coming down to reenact his violence to the Jotunn on the Trolls. We’re not sure why it kills them, but we do know that they are descendents of the Jotunn in some way, and they were killed by Thor’s powers - so it might just be a weakness that is exploited by a vengeful god that has passed down the genetic ladder.
The myths of Trolls live on today though, in more than a mythical way too. However, some story books speak of Trolls living under bridges, bargaining with people to get across - such as in the Billy Goats Gruff, which was a translation from a Norwegian story - so we do know this myth comes from the same place which is good to know, however, it’s not ever noted that they love bridges especially in folklore that I found. It was translated over to English in the 1850s, and since then they were associated with bridges, by the English, rather than the Scandinavians who created the monster.
Another way they’re remembered is actually within architecture within Scandinavian countries - any wide open fields with unexplainable rocks are often named after Trolls, such as the Trollstigen, Trold-Tindterne or Trolltunga in Norway which are named this way due to the rocks being thought of as Trolls that had hardened under the harsh sunlight.
Lastly, we can’t forget the modern meaning of Trolls - which is the online bullies that I’m sure all of us have faced in our online lives. This most likely comes from a completely different original meaning, such as trawling - a type of fishing, which makes sense with what trolling is online, a baited provocation with the pleasure of watching what comes back. There are a few images linked to trolling, but none of them look like an actual Troll, therefore it’s actually quite difficult to link this monster to this term - I honestly think it’s from the fishing reference and people have got it mixed up. I will say though that Trolling is not kind, and not nice, and I recommend not partaking - in the UK you can actually be prosecuted for online harassment and potentially get 6 months in prison for it, so don’t do it.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Now onto modern media, there is so much content for Trolls as they are so prevalent within movies and tv.
For art, we have a few such as The Troll Mother and her sons from 1915 by John Bauer, Skogtroll or Forest Troll by Theodor Kittelsen from 1906 and The Princess and the Trolls by John Bauer from 1913.
In movies, we have; Frozen, Cat’s Eye, Border, Absentia, Troll and Troll 2, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King, Hansel & Gretel, The Boy Who Loved Trolls, Moomins, Troll Hunter, the Harry Potter series, Willow, Ernest Sacred Stupid, The Boxtrolls, Lord of the Rings, Adventures of a Teenage Dragon Slayer, The Hobbit, My Neighbour Totoro, Shrek, Trolls, Trolls World Tour, Bridge to Terabithia, Enchanted, Hilda and the Mountain King, The Snow Queen, Quest for a Heart, The Kid Who Would Be King, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters & A Troll in Central Park.
For TV, we have; Hilda, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Disenchantment, Ugly Americans, Trollhunters, Stone Protectors, My Little Pony n Friends, Magical Super Trolls, Goldie & Bear, Fangbone!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Knightmare, The Rings of Power, Merlin, Once Upon a Time, So Weird & The 10th Kingdom.
In video games, we have ones such as; God of War, Fable, EverQuest 1 and 2, Final Fantasy 11, Gears of War, Gothic, Golden Sun, Guild Wars, Legend of Spyro, Legend, Magicka, Majesty, Might and Magic, ROKI, Monster Sanctuary, Myth, Nethack, Nexus War, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Dwarf Fortress, The Elder Scrolls, The Bard’s Tale, Age of Mythology, Pillars of Eternity, Pokemon, League of Legends, Puzzle Quest, RIFT, Runescape, Sacred, Sacrifice, Heroine's Quest, Kameo, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Spellforce, Stonekeep, Tibia, Temtem, Total War, Troll and I, World of Warcraft, The Witcher 2 & 3, Battle of Wesnoth, Castle Crashers, City of Heroes, Drakensang, Dungeons 2 & Ancient Domains of Mystery.
My book recommendation this week is Boggarts, Trolls and Tylwyth Teg: Folk Tales of Hidden People & Lost Lands by Peter Stevenson for some interesting facts on these types of monsters, or for more specific facts on Trolls themselves, Trolls: An Unnatural History by John Lindow.
DO I THINK THEY EXISTED?
Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?
I’m going to say no on this one, I think they’re still a little too big to get away with, and that if they did exist - we would have seen them by now. However, maybe the Scandinavians have been hiding the existence of them ever since - who knows! I do like the idea of them just being secret rocks, don't get me wrong though.
If you want to see an amazing depiction of Trolls, have a watch of Hilda which I mentioned in TV earlier - because it’s firstly a super cute cartoon, but full of Norse mythology references in the modern age - as well as a great depiction of Trolls and how Norse villages would prepare against them, and how they would do it in a more modern time. It’s a very good show, and they’ve just done a movie, all on Netflix - so I really recommend it for some great Troll content.
But what do you think? Did the Trolls roam the Earth? Let me know on Twitter!
OUTRO:
What a great monster - I was so excited to cover this one, they’re such a cool monster and one that is so massive in the Norse mythos that I couldn’t resist covering them. Not to mention their current day context, thankfully, we’ve been lucky enough not to tempt those to the podcast yet.
Next week, we’re heading back home to Britain and a little of Scandi I suppose, for a mythical figure of the holidays, and no we’re not talking Santa, we’re talking a personification of the winter season - keep an eye on those windows for Jack Frost next Thursday!
For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.
Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.
But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.