This post is brought to you by the Swords of Fire 4, now out at last. Like the three previous collections, this one features four longer Sword & Sorcery adventures with the longest being “The Dragon God”, a Sirtago & Poet tale set in a country much like Japan. This is by Jack Mackenzie, of course. There is also the next adventure of Bradik the Slayer by M. D. Jackson, “The Star of Kanshalsus”. One of the other two tales is a new Arthan the Bear Man story, “The Twilight War” featuring an army of mercenaries versus giant spiders. And to round out the quartet, “Between the Dragon and His Wrath” by Will Parker. For the previous anthologies, go here.
I am currently on my thirteenth Shannara book, Tanequil, in my quest to read the entire series. This one features Terry Brooks’ Rock Trolls. These creatures aren’t like Tolkien’s cave trolls, being large, powerful with barklike skin. They are intelligent and far more likeable than JRRT’s more traditional monsters. Which, of course, got me thinking about trolls in Sword & Sorcery and heroic fantasy. Like dragons and unicorns, trolls are a gift from mythology and legend that has found its way into modern fiction.
The word “troll” comes from the Old Norse for demon, giant or witch. It was a catch-all word for big magic monster. If you are like me, you instantly think of the trolls of John Bauer (1882-1918), the Swedish artist, who gave us the troll dolls of popular culture. Bauer’s trolls are dangerous but also comical. More modern artists like Brian Froud (1947-) continue the Bauer tradition in recent years.
Folklore and fairy tales from Scandinavian countries produced a large body of work including Boots and the Troll (1841) by Peter Asbjornsen, Weird Tales from Northern Seas (1893) by Jonas Lie, Anna Wahlenburg’s Swedish Fairy Tales (1901) and many other collections. These tales explore trolls in new ways while remaining within a tradition. The fiction we are looking at doesn’t really get going until the 1930s. (Sword & Sorcery as a sub-genre dates to 1929.)
“The Troll” (Gone to Ground, 1935) by T. H. White is not really a Sword & Sorcery story at all. It is a horror tale in which a man witnesses the terrible acts of a troll. It is set in modern times and often appears in Horror anthologies, though also, incorrectly, Fantasy ones.
The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien contains a classic scene where the dwarves are captured by trolls and it is up to Bilbo and Gandalf to save them. Once exposed to sunlight, the trolls turn to stone. The Rankin-Bass cartoon was a fav from the 1970s. The Peter Jackson version, I felt, went a little too off-trail, making Bilbo appear less adept.
The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien featured occasional reference to cave trolls. Frodo is attacked by one and saved by his mithril armor. The film franchise added many into battle scenes and on top of the Black Gate. I thought of Tolkien’s friend, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series at the same time, but couldn’t think of any particularly trollish encounters. Old Clive had trolls but also plenty of other monsters in the scene where they kill Aslan on the Stone Table.
The Broken Sword (1954) by Poul Anderson was a classic that was forgotten for most of twenty years but came back as part of the Ballantine Fantasy Series. Anderson presents a traditional Scand version of trolls and elves with plenty of Sword & Sorcery style action. He continued to use this world setting in a series of short stories collected in The Merman’s Children (1979).
Battered, Tattered, Yellow & Creased
“The Valor of Cappen Varra” (Fantastic Universe, January 1957) by Poul Anderson was a later tale that uses trolls mostly for humor. For more, go here. Cappen Varra would later appear in Thieves’ World in the 1970s. The trolls did not.
“The Word of Unbinding” (Fantastic, January 1964) by Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the early Earthsea stories. before diving into A Wizard of Earthsea and other novels. Le Guin tried out her name-based magic in a couple of stories, this being the second. A wizard is held captive by another who has a troll jail-keeper. Pursued and pursuer change into different animals as part of their chase.
“The Barrow Troll” (Whispers, December 1975) by David Drake is probably Sword & Sorcery’s most noted troll tale. This story appeared in a Horror (Dark Fantasy) magazine. Which isn’t really surprising since the tone of the tale is very dark. The tale feature the unlikable Ulf. For more, go here.
There are many more examples of modern Fantasy with trolls after this. The magazines and paperback anthologies are filled with them but I am not so interested after 1975 or so. For example, “The Valley of the Troll” by Charles de Lint (Sword & Sorceress #1, 1984) The reason is below.
Conclusion
We wouldn’t have a proper troll-fest here if we didn’t mention the classic troll from Dungeons & Dragons (circa 1977). Or should I be talking about Tunnels & Trolls? Whichever game you liked, the troll was a bad one to encounter when you were low level characters because of its regeneration powers. If you weren’t sporting some magic weapons, every time you hacked one apart, it just grew back together. Fire, of course, is the dungeoneer’s second best friend (after rope). That works too.
AD&D changed much outside the gaming world. Sword & Sorcery as well as Epic Fantasy no longer felt so distinct. RPGaming acted like a bit of a homogenizer, blending Tolkien, Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance and the rest into a standardized formula. It was hard to imagine a Fantasy novel without elves, for instance. Trolls, dragons and other critters suffered a similar familiarity that I can easily identify in that Terry Brooks novel I am reading right now. Fantasy after AD&D, The Sword of Shannara and the rest of the 1970s (I would even go so far as 1982 and the Conan the Barbarian film) was never the same. Trolls are still with us but they, like so much else, will never have the unknown quality they once had. This make me a little sad as I plow on through Brooks and his bark-skinned super warriors.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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