The Genre of Trolls - Doria

to return to his cows. The shepherd followed the orders he was given.
Since no-one knew who the lucky winner was, the king issued a royal proclamation
to the effect that everybody of the shepherd’s age had to present
themselves at court. The old man came to the boy and brought the finest
garments to him, and made him dress in them underneath his ordinary
clothes. The apple and the ring were to be placed in his pockets. The troll
revealed its identity and said that it could do nothing more for him, and
then it walked away (SLS 1, 3: 14–20).
Thus the troll comes back to help the prince, as it promised, and the
prince is reinstated in his former estate and gets to marry the princess
thanks to the intervention of the troll. The condition for his happiness is
that he agrees to follow the troll’s instructions once more, just as he did
when he rescued it from its captivity. It is worthy of note that the hierarchical
relation of the enemy and the friend of the troll is similar to that of
the aggressive and the friendly troll: the king is in a dominant position,
whereas the prince is in a subordinate one. The conclusion drawn previously
is therefore valid for the inverse case as well.
3.3.6 The Troll and Christianity
The troll’s relation to Christianity, its representatives and phenomena connected
to it is touched upon in some texts, and I have been able to discern
three types of relationships: firstly, an explicit antagonism to Christianity
and all things Christian; secondly, an implicit conflict evident in the fact
that Christian symbols can be utilized to protect against or attack the troll,
and thirdly, an observed difference in religion which does not result in any
major tension, i.e., relative tolerance. As for explicit conflict, the troll expresses
or is presumed to entertain negative feelings about Christians or
Christian phenomena in seven texts. In three of them the hostility felt by
the troll is concentrated textually in the line “It smells of Christian blood”
(SLS 137 II, 1: 52; SLS 137 I, 1: 9; R II 394; cf. Amilien 1996: 54, 57, 93 who
states that “l’extrême sensibilité du troll à l’odeur du sang humain peut être
perçue comme une atténuation d’une ancienne forme de cannibalisme”). 22
In another narrative humans in their capacity as Christians cannot trespass
on the troll’s domains, for then it would turn them into some sort of ugly
22 “The extreme sensibility of the troll to the scent of human blood might be perceived as
a diminution of an old form of cannibalism.”
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Description of the Troll Tradition