Abstract
The Norse concept of the troll has covered a variety of meanings, and this study engages with the medieval meaning. The troll appears in medieval sources, such as eddas and sagas. After the Middle Ages, it has an afterlife in folklore and, finally, in modern popular culture. This study engages with some cases from medieval literature to demonstrate how vague the meaning of the concept often is and how broad the term is. Thus, the medieval troll category will include creatures that others refer to as witches, magicians, sorcerers, ghosts, zombies, and vampires, but also possessed animals and gigantic ethnic others. In the Middle Ages, trolls were not really thought of a race or a species; that was a later development influenced by scientific taxonomy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The Prose Edda (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar) exists in four main manuscripts (the Regius, Wormianus, Trecht (Trajectinus), and Uppsala versions) and some medieval fragments, dissimilar enough for scholars to speak of versions. Thus, there is no absolute certainty as to the precise content of the original Edda of the learned magnate Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), presumably composed around c. 1220. All the manuscripts are copies, and the Edda is only attributed to Snorri in one version, the Uppsala tradition from the early fourteenth century. This is still the most reliable attribution of any medieval text to Snorri. On the disputed origins of the Edda and the different versions, see, for example, Sävborg (2012, 2013), Pálsson (2015).
- 2.
“þa er hann oc vm skog nokqvorn sið um qveld.” The complete version of this anecdote, with the verse of the trollwoman, is only in the Regius and AM 748 II manuscripts. In Snorra-Edda , there are two characters called Bragi, a skaldic poet from the ninth century and one of the Norse deities. It is perfectly possible that these are the same, and Bragi the poet became a god after his death. See Lindow (2006) . The actual evidence of any pagan cult of Bragi is very thin, and it may even be a post-pagan idea that this deity was ever venerated, although he is mentioned in skaldic poetry traditionally believed to be from the Viking Age (though extant only in manuscripts from the thirteenth century and later).
- 3.
No Icelandic prose texts exist from before 1120, Ari the Learned’s Íslendingabók being the oldest, and the entire medieval corpus of Iceland, thus, consists of high medieval and late medieval texts. The composition of sagas seems to gain ground in the thirteenth century and bloom in the fourteenth century. Thus, it is useful for medievalists to think of Old Norse texts as predominantly late medieval and think primarily of the fourteenth century, although the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries are also important periods of saga writing.
- 4.
Some of the observations made in this short review are presented at greater length in Jakobsson (2017) .
- 5.
This verse is found in all three major versions of the poem: Konungsbók, Hauksbók, and Snorra-Edda. Most of the medieval sources referred to in this chapter (all categorized as sagas save this one poem) are from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but I will not go into detail as to their exact age; it is sufficient to state that the trolls of this study are horrors of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iceland, although the term survived for centuries longer.
- 6.
One such attempt may be found in Bárðar saga , in which trolls are clearly regarded as separate from risar (giants) and said to be hostile and strong, whereas the giants are large, fair, and friendly. See Vilmundarson and Vilhjálmsson (1991, pp. 101–102).
- 7.
“Saga” is normally used to refer to any kind of prose narrative from medieval Iceland, including romances and hagiography, but the examples discussed here are mostly from the Sagas of Icelanders ( Íslendingasögur ) and the legendary sagas ( fornaldarsögur ), two literary genres originating in the thirteenth century but thriving in the fourteenth and even fifteenth centuries. The Sagas of Icelanders take place mostly in Iceland, but the legendary sagas take place in the North outside Iceland.
- 8.
On the avarice of the undead, see Hume (1980, pp. 13–14).
- 9.
After numerous attempts to get rid of this evil spirit, Þórólfr Twistfoot seems to eventually end up inside the demonic calf Glæsir (the same bull referred to as a troll, not surprisingly since the undead and the calf are essentially the same evil spirit), which kills its owner Þóroddr, thus finally bringing the unrest caused by Þórólfr to an end (Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1934, pp. 175–176). Possibly the “bull” metaphor is a warning about this.
- 10.
The first three categories in the collection were theological tales (goðfræðissögur, mostly tales of elves and ogres referred to as trolls), ghost stories (draugasögur), and stories of witchcraft and magic (galdrasögur). The taxonomy employed in this volume was not of Jón Árnason’s creation but was rather conceived by German scholar Maurer and slightly modified by Jón himself.
- 11.
The relationship between the infernal nature of the demonic and the rear end of humanity has been explored by Erlingsson (1994).
- 12.
The monstrous blámenn have recently been explored by Vídalín (2017).
- 13.
In medieval Iceland, before the end of the so-called Commonwealth era in 1262–1264, there was no state, and the only functionary was the law-speaker at the general parliament (alþing), the “attorney general,” an office held by Skapti Þóroddsson (d. 1030) for a long while in the early eleventh century.
- 14.
On the complex attitudes to politics, gender, and language in this particular saga, see Jakobsson (2007).
- 15.
There are two versions of this saga, and, in the second version, Ögmundr becomes more prominent than in the first, in which he is only mentioned in one chapter, possibly a demonstration of the allure of the monster to a late medieval audience . Tulinius (2002) has suggested that, in the saga, Ögmundr is symbolic for death and that the emphasis on him may reflect the importance of death in the worldview of people in the fifteenth century, following the plague (pp. 163–164).
- 16.
“Aptrganga” is one of the more frequent terms for the undead in the sagas. However, it never refers directly to a being (an aptrganga), as it may in modern Icelandic, but rather always to hauntings (aptrgöngur) of the undead. Thus, this term signifies the actions of the troll rather than whatever being held responsible for them.
- 17.
Warner phrases it elegantly: “Bogeys make present what we dread” (1998, p. 382).
Bibliography
Árnason, Jón, ed. 1862. Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs.
Arnold, Martin. 2005. Hvat er Tröll nema Þat?: The Cultural History of the Troll. In The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, ed. Tom Shippey, 111–155. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Erlingsson, Davíð. 1994. Frá hrópi til saurs, allrar veraldar vegur. Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags 91: 137–148.
Halldórsson, Jóhannes, ed. 1959. Kjalnesinga saga, Íslenzk fornrit XIV. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Hume, Kathryn. 1980. From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature. Studies in Philology 77: 1–25.
Jakobsson, Ármann. 2007. Masculinity and Politics in Njáls saga. Viator 38: 191–215.
———. 2008. The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: The Meanings of Troll and Ergi in Medieval Iceland. Saga-Book 32: 39–68.
———. 2011. Vampires and Watchmen: Categorizing the Mediaeval Icelandic Undead. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 110: 281–300.
———. 2013. The Taxonomy of the Non-Existent: Some Medieval Icelandic Concepts of the Paranormal. Fabula 54: 199–213.
———. 2017. The Troll Inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North. Brooklyn: Punctum.
Jakobsson, Ármann, and Þórður Ingi Guðjónsson, eds. 2011. Morkinskinna, Íslenzk fornrit XXIV. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Jónsson, Finnur, ed. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
Jónsson, Guðni, ed. 1936. Grettis saga, Íslenzk fornrit VII. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Kristjánsson, Jónas, and Vésteinn Ólason, eds. 2014. Eddukvæði, Íslenzk fornrit. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Lindow, John. 2006. Narrative Worlds, Human Environments, and Poets: The Case of Bragi. In Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions, ed. Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert, and Catharina Raudvere, 21–25. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.
———. 2014. Trolls: An Unnatural History. London: Reaktion Books.
Pálsson, Heimir. 2015. Bók þessi heitir Edda: Uppsalagerð Snorra-Eddu. Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan.
Rafn, C.C., ed. 1829. Örvar-Odds saga. In Fornaldar sögur Nordrlanda, II, 143–254. Copenhagen: Prentadar í Enni Poppsku prentsmidju.
Sävborg, Daniel. 2012. Blockbildningen i Codex Upsaliensis: En ny metod att lösa frågan om Snorra Eddas ursprungsversion. Maal og minne 1: 12–53.
———. 2013. Snorra Edda and the Uppsala Edda. In Snorri Sturluson – Historiker, Dichter, Politiker, ed. Heinrich Beck, Wilhelm Heizmann, and Jan Alexander van Nahl, 247–266. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.
Slay, Desmond, ed. 1960. Hrólfs saga kraka, Editiones Arnamagnæanæ B I. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur, ed. 1939. Vatnsdœla saga, Íslenzk fornrit VIII. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
———. 1954. Brennu-Njáls saga, Íslenzk fornrit XII. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Sveinsson, Einar Ólafur, and Matthías Þórðarson, eds. 1934. Eyrbyggja saga, Íslenzk fornrit IV. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Tulinius, Torfi H. 2002. The Matter of the North: The Rise of Literary Fiction in Thirteenth-Century Iceland. Translated by Randi C. Eldevik. Odense: Odense University Press.
Vídalín, Arngrímur. 2017. Skuggsjá sjálfsins: Skrímsl, jöðrun og afmennskun í lærdómshefð íslenskra sagnaritara 1100–1550. Unpublished PhD-thesis. Reykjavík: Háskóli Íslands.
Vilmundarson, Þórhallur, and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, eds. 1991. Harðar saga, Íslenzk fornrit XIII. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Warner, Marina. 1998. No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. London: Vintage.
Þórólfsson, Björn Karel, and Guðni Jónsson, eds. 1943. Gísla saga, Íslenzk fornrit VI. Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jakobsson, Á. (2018). Horror in the Medieval North: The Troll. In: Corstorphine, K., Kremmel, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97406-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97405-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97406-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)