The Genre of Trolls - Doria

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do it. Butterbelly was going to show her and placed her on the bench. Butterbelly beheaded
her and cooked soup on her. But in anticipation of the troll’s arrival, Butterbelly
placed the daughter’s head under the skin rug, so that her face was upward. Butterbelly
served the soup and made everything ready on the table, but hid himself by the door.
The troll came home with his guests and invited them to the table as it was ready. They
thought the daughter was sleeping. They ate heartily and Butterbelly [i.e., the troll] sat
tasting it and said: “The Butterbelly soup tastes good”, but Butterbelly sat inside the
door and said: “The daughter soup tastes good”. The troll was angry and was going to
kill Butterbelly, but Butterbelly took tree stumps and killed the troll, and that was the
end of it.
The troll can be vengeful if it considers itself to have been badly treated.
Six brothers going on a wooing trip come across a forest troll, and it asks
them to find a wife for it as well. The boys agree to try, but when they fail
the troll is so disappointed that it turns them and their spouses, with the
exception of the youngest girl, into stone (Nyland 1896, 129: 151).
The troll may also have other frightful functions. In a tale of a queen
desperate to have a girl, the troll takes all her children born to date, twelve
boys, in return for giving her the one girl, and transforms the wretched
boys into wild ducks by day, while allowing them to retain their human
form by night (SLS 202 Sagor II, 66: 908). The queen has violated a norm,
and her sons have to pay for it.
The association of the troll to a prohibition is prominent in some texts.
Its status as a moral guardian can be combined with its role as the protector
of the forest, as in the story of a princess running away on the back of a
blue bull, her only confidant. The bull forbids her to touch anything in the
forests they are passing, but each time she ends up with a leaf in her hand,
and the troll guarding the forest appears and challenges the bull to a duel.
The latter wins eventually, but it is so sore after the battle that it can hardly
stand upright (Nyland 1887, 19: 15).
The three trolls acting as house squatters in the dwelling of three princesses
in the White Country seem to be driven by pure malice, or possibly
by pure greed. In order to eliminate the rightful owners they have buried
the princesses to the neck in the ground, and they cannot escape until some
valiant man allows himself to be spanked by the trolls three nights in a row
(SLS 202 Sagor II, 8: 377). Such altruism is a rare quality indeed, or so the
trolls appear to think. Being plagued by trolls might form part of a test of a
suitor, as in a text about a boy seeking to earn himself a wife. The condition
for acceptance of his suit is that he can endure a night of harassment
Description of the Troll Tradition