The Genre of Trolls - Doria

In her doctoral dissertation Le troll et autres créatures surnaturelles dans les
contes populaires norvégiens (1996), Virginie Amilien ponders the construction
of the image of the troll and its world through the ages, and the symbolism
and associations of the figure. In exploring what one might call the
metaphorical association between the domain of the troll and the world of
the dead, Amilien focuses on the traits common to both realms. One such
characteristic is the location of these worlds, in the mountains. The dead
were thought to inhabit specific mountains in the landscape, whereas trolls
dwelt in the mountains of the imagination. Timelessness and the absence
of spatial specificity define both realms. The Christian division of the world
of the dead into Paradise, Purgatory and Hell recurs in the description of
the otherworld of the troll in which these three categories intermingle. According
to Amilien, the image of Paradise is present in the fertility of the
earth in the domain of the troll, as well as in the arduousness of the passage
to that realm (cf. the narrow path), visited by an elect few, but since the
world of the troll is often reached through a descent involving physical
mortification, it may also be linked to the image of Hell or to Purgatory.
The brilliant light encountered at the end of the journey, however, once
again associates it with Paradise (Amilien 1996: 108–117). In this study I
consider the paradisical associations of the otherworld as well, but I will
point to other reasons for doing so, and the conclusions are somewhat
different.
Amilien employs a longue-durée perspective on her material, tracing the
evolution of the troll from the Old Norse sagas to modern folktales and
contemporary popular culture. In Old Norse literature the troll was connected
with combat, and female trolls in particular were regarded as powerful
and vicious. With the introduction of Christianity all supernatural creatures
were denigrated, but only the troll was assimilated into the image of
the Devil. Amilien illustrates the influence of the Bible on folk narratives
with one, lucid example, tale types AT 300–303, The Dragon Slayer. The
attributes of the dragon, beast, troll or rise acting as opponent in these
types are drawn from the Revelation of St. John the Divine. The many
heads of the troll, the horns it is occasionally endowed with and the crowns
adorning its heads are to be found in the description of the beast in Revelation
13: 1, and the ability of the troll to regenerate when not all of its heads
have been lopped off in one stroke parallels the wondrous resuscitation of
the beast in Revelation 13: 3 (Amilien 1996: 135, 142–144, 146). I intend to
Trolls in the History of Research 17