Troll

Shall I tell you about the mother who put the troll child on the cooking spade to get her own child back?
— Grandma to their grandchild
  According to old nordic folklore, Trolls were usually mentioned in connection to Giants, it is indeed believed by some that Trolls used to be Giants. The word, Troll, has been used for a lot of beings that have been considered evil. That's why Trolls generally have such a wide variety of appearances and mentality in Scandinavian folklore. Some look like humans, while others are huge and deformed. Though, you can usually spot a troll by its tail.   The Trolls did not like Christianity, and that's why they kept to themselves out in the forests and the mountains. Even though they disapproved of the humans, they kept very similar lives. If you were polite to a troll, they would generally be polite back. Though, some trolls were thieves and would steal from you or even go so far as to kidnap you. Their kind was a dying breed with the advent of Christianity, so they had to kidnap the young and old for new blood to revitalize their kind. If you hadn't christened your child or kept them safe with steel or a bible in their crib, a troll could exchange your child with one of their own.  

In Urskoga

The trolls in Urskoga look mostly human, though they have pointy ears and tails with hair on its tips. Their tails are usually the length of legs, but some trolls have shorter tails or longer ones. They prefer to live in small communities in the municipality. Not because a lot of people in the town are religious, but just because many of them don't want to use their magic to hide their ears and their tails when they do not need to. There are some blended small families that live closer to the town. These families usually have a Bortbyting parent with their troll partner.
 
As the myths say, they sometimes exchange their own children for that of a child in the town. These children are called Bortbytingar. The troll children grow up as humans in the town and live their whole lives in the town without knowing what they really are. While the human child grows up and live as a troll, even though they know that they are not since they don't look like a troll, and their troll family doesn't bother hiding it like they do their own child.

Sources
Troll, https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll.
Egerkrans, Johan: Nordiska väsen. S61-65, 2013.

Comments

Please Login in order to comment!
Powered by World Anvil