Planar Adventures for Dummies: troll

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Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Dwarfs in Norse myth were dwarfish trolls and dark elves

The modern stereotype of the dwarf was codified by Tolkien. Prior to his legendarium, dwarfs were ill-defined in mythology and folklore. To put it simply: dwarfs were not distinguished from dark elves, gnomes, goblins, kobolds, trolls, et al like they are in Dungeons & Dragons. In myth and folklore these fairies are largely synonymous.

Some unique traits displayed by dwarfs in Norse myth included:

The dwarfs were considered a type of elf. They were called dark elves, as opposed to the light elves.
The dwarfs were considered misshapen and ugly, like goblins or trolls. Likewise, trolls were described as dwarfs when they were not giants.
The dwarfs, trolls, and giants alike all turned to stone under sunlight. The dwarf Alvis said his kind referred to the Sun as "Dvalin's Delight" (presumably ironically).
The dwarfs forged abstract concepts into magical equipment, which they presented to the gods on multiple occasions. This equipment included Freya's necklace, Thor's hammer, and Fenrir's chain.
The dwarfs were themselves forged by the gods from the flesh of the first giant Ymir (i.e. the earth itself) and/or the maggots that spontaneously generated from his corpse.

In other folklore they gain a variety of other properties and magical powers. For example, some folklore claims they spend the daylight hours as frogs or that they are members of the Unseelie Court. (See Encyclopedia of Fairies in World Folklore and Mythology by Theresa Bane for more details.)

Research links

Friday, June 14, 2019

Gnolls, gnomes and trolls

The gnoll has undergone a dramatic evolution over the course of its appearances in fiction. It first appeared in the work of Lord Dunsany as a vaguely described gremlin or goblin. Next it appeared in early Dungeons & Dragons as a gnome/troll hybrid, perhaps derived from the way "gnoll" could be interpreted as a portmanteau name for the hybrid offspring of gnome father and troll mother. The writers soon thought this was too silly the changed the creature to a humanoid hyena, while retaining the non-indicative name. From there, the new gnolls eventually evolved from generic savage humanoids to hyenas mutated by demonic possession by the most recent or "fifth" edition of the game.

Jotuns versus trolls

In Norse and Scandinavian mythology we have jotuns and trolls (including their various cognates in the Scandinavian languages). They never coexisted in mythology, with jotuns being Norse and trolls being Scandinavian. This is because of Christianity, which caused the Scandinavians to forget their Norse myths and develop new myths to replace them. The replacement of jotuns with trolls is one such instance of this.

To put it bluntly, trolls are just a later incarnation of the jotuns. They aren't distinct species. Of course, this hasn't stopped modern writers from trying to force them to coexist in the same stories. I too am guilty of this.

Having jotuns and trolls in the same story sounds redundant, doesn't it? When you get right down to it, the only difference is that jotuns are always gigantic whereas trolls may range in size from giants to dwarves (in the dictionary and folkloric sense, not modern fantasy gaming's definition taken from Tolkien). In fact, trolls seem to be closer to more generic conceptions of fairies and nature spirits as compared to other cultural mythologies of Europe (e.g. the "wood nymph with a hollow back" is considered a type of troll). So you could easily argue that jotuns are a subset of trolls, specifically the biggest.

Of course, since we aren't making any pretensions of being accurate (insofar as that ever made sense for myths that weren't consistent in the first place) then maybe we could devise different criteria for distinction? Trudvang Chronicles, for example, maintains the distinction that jotuns are elemental beings whereas trolls are not. However, trolls are commonly considered giants in fantasy gaming. Could this be reconciled?

I think that, mirroring the evolution of Norse mythology into Scandinavian mythology as a result of Christianity, the trolls could be explained as degenerate jotuns that have lost their elemental power and sometimes shrunk in size. One side effect of this is that trolls are photosensitive, often turning to stone under sunlight.

Although it isn't mentioned nowadays, jotuns were originally thought to turn to stone under sunlight. This explains both why they aren't around anymore and why a lot of rock formations resemble faces (in reality, the human brain is simply wired to see faces where none exist). Since trolls are an evolution of the jotuns in folklore, they inherited this weakness.

However, not all trolls myths describe them as photosensitive. Depending on the country of origin, the trolls in stories may be entirely photosensitive, not photosensitive, or photosensitive only sometimes. In fact, aside from the names being cognates there are seemingly no traits that all trolls in all Scandinavian tales share in common.

Of course that's really annoying to us modern folks with our anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive taxonomies, so lets just pretend that for the purposes of our modern stories and games that all trolls have common properties selected from a single list. That list is:

Tufted tails
Horns (and/or tusks and/or other bony growths)
Huge noses (and/or ears and/or other cartilaginous growths)
Photosensitive (variable severity ranging from being nocturnal to dying)
Turn to stone upon death (and/or entering any comatose state)
Like other giants, may have extra limbs and/or heads

Trivia: The "wood nymph with a hollow back" has a number of different names in the Scandinavian languages.

elverpige (elver "an elves" + pige "a girl", "a she-elf")
ellepige (elle "an alders" + pige "a girl", "a dryad")
huldra ("the fairy")
skogsrå (skog "a forest's" + rå "a fairy", "a dryad")

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

My trolls are different?

Scandinavian mythology has a diverse array of creatures all referred to as trolls, ranging from dwarves to giants. D&D, on the other hand, has a single variety of troll whose shtick is that they are nearly impossible to kill without fire (they were copied wholesale from a single troll encounter in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, which was presumably intended to be a unique individual rather than a race). I decided to bring the mythological diversity into the game and expand the variety of trolls, using Trudvang Chronicles as a guide.

That monster's name does not mean what you think

Many of fantasy gaming's monsters originate from mythic, legendary, folkloric and literary sources. In many cases their portrayal in mangled in the process. For example, a number of monsters have name which had completely different meanings before being co-opted by fantasy gaming.

Giants versus Ogres versus Trolls

In the dictionary, the words giant, ogre and troll are generally synonymous. A giant is "an imaginary or mythical being of human form but superhuman size." An ogre is "a man-eating giant." A troll is "a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance." If you did a little deeper you will find a surprisingly diverse mythology of giants all around the world. Greek giants have snakes for legs, trolls live under bridges, and so on.

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