Swedish Trolls Folklore

Troll in early scandinavian folklore giant monstrous being sometimes possessing magic powers.

Swedish trolls folklore. Snorri sturluson swedish folklore trolls. Sweden is a country in northern europe. Later trolls became characters in fairy tales legends and ballads. Scandinavian folklore became the preferred method for introducing new christian beliefs in an otherwise pagan land.

The swedes are nordic people descendants of the mighty vikings. Folk tales began to take on a new flavor as early as the 11th century as trolls became scared of church bells and only people of strong faith could defeat dragons and sea monsters. Troll norwegian and swedish trolde danish is a designation for several types of human like supernatural beings in scandinavian folklore. Today let s take a look at 10 famous scandinavian folklore tales of good versus evil and sinister creatures disguised as beautiful mortals.

If exposed to sunlight they burst or turned to stone. Trolls will continue to fulfil many roles in fiction and reality. In the 1890 s something changed in the way common scandinavians saw themselves and their culture. Huldra looks like a normal woman though with one major exception her long tail.

The collection of folktales from sweden consists of one book with 28 folktales. Hostile to men trolls lived in castles and haunted the surrounding districts after dark. They are mentioned in the edda 1220 as a monster with many heads. A troll is a being in norse mythology and scandinavian folklore in old norse sources beings described as trolls dwell in isolated rocks mountains or caves live together in small family units and are rarely helpful to human beings.

Later in scandinavian folklore trolls became beings in their own right where they live far from human habitation are not christianized and are considered. Previous article next article. Their very lack of definition means they will always have a niche to fill so long as there is a sense of otherness we need to explain and explore. In later tales trolls often are man sized or smaller.

The scandinavian folklore consists of a huge variety of creatures good or evil which have frightened people for centuries. The swedish empire empire was one of the great powers of europe in the 17th and 18th century. Scandinavian trolls by john bauer public domain the seductive huldra. Largely due to recent hollywood movies constantly increasing interest is seen in scandinavian folklore.