Thread by @jessnevins

Incoming thread on Norse trolls!

Mute me if you're not interested. Otherwise, here we go....

Who wants to hear about trolls?

No, not that kind. The traditional Norse kind, the monsters from the sagas and poems.

They aren’t this. Or this. The real poem/saga trolls were and are a lot more interesting than either of those.

1/

Traditional Norse trolls—I’m just going to call them “trǫlls” from now on—are this. Or this. Or this. Or this.

2/

After all, we have it straight from a trǫll-woman herself in the Prose Edda:

They call me trǫll.
Moon of Hrungnir’s home,
Giant’s wealth-sucker,
Sun-shower’s grief,
Seeress’s companion,
Fjord-corpse’s guardian,
Heaven-wheel’s swallower.
What is trǫll but that?

3/

Translators, understandably, have had trouble with this passage. (“These metaphors are singularly unhelpful to anyone who wishes to know what a trǫll is.”) Basically, the trǫll-woman is saying that she isn’t one being, but many: a wolf, a curse, a friend to witches & zombies.
4/

When you delve into the sagas and poems, what you find is that “trǫll” is both a noun and an adjective. In the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lu… Vǫluspá a wolf is described as a “tungls tjúgari í trǫlls hami”: "the chewer of the moon in the guise of a trǫll.”

5/

In the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyrbyggja… Eyrbyggja saga the bellowing of a demonic bull is called a “trǫll’s shout,” and in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hr%C3%B3l… Hrólfs saga kraka a demon-possessed boar is referred to as a “trǫll.” Trǫll =/= humanoid.

6/

As en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rma… Ármann Jakobsson (your basic Widely Respected Expert on trǫlls in Scandinavian mythology and folklore, among many other things) puts it:

7/

In the Eyrbyggja saga, an average woman of good family, who happens to have magic powers and is part of a lawful search party, is referred to as a “trǫll.” Same with the zombies in the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Har%C3%B0… Harðar saga.

8/

In fact, in the Harðar saga one of the hero’s undead opponents, Sóti the Viking, is described as “mikit trǫll í lífinu, en hálfu meira, síðan hann var dauðr”: “a great trǫll in life but even worse since he became dead.” Possibly Sóti practiced witchcraft while living?

9/

(“Viking,” by the way, is *mostly* applied to Scandinavian nautical warriors in the sagas and poems, but is also used to mean “any lawless pirate,” and is applied to Moors and Muslims, among others.)

10/

“Trǫllish” (“trǫllsligr”) is equally broadly applied. In Eyrbyggja saga the exhumed corpse of a zombie is black as Hell & bloated as a bull, and therefore “trǫllish to look at.” In en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatnsd%C3… Vatnsdæla saga it’s a witch’s eyes which are "pointed trollishly."

11/

(Creepy fun thing about that witch from Vatnsdæla saga: when she charges the hero, she does so bare ass first, with her head between her legs. “The relationship between the infernal nature of the demonic and the rear end of humanity has been explored by Erlingsson (1994).”)

12/

In the notorious (in academic circles) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjalnesin… Kjalnesinga saga, the Icelandic heroes fight the “blámenn”—literally “blue-men,” but traditionally interpreted as referring to Africans that the heroes fought.

Now, the Africans aren’t presented well. BUT!

13/

Ármann Jakobsson convincingly (to my eyes) argues that “the blámenn of the sagas are first & foremost monsters against whom the protagonists are pitched in an uneven battle…they [the blámenn--Jess] have to be restrained by many men as they bellow & act ‘trǫllsliga.’”

14/

I said that the Kjalnesinga saga was “notorious,” which it is, as an example of the racism of Viking society. (See, for example, Richard Cole’s “Racial Thinking in Old Norse Literature: The Case of the Blámaðr,” Saga-Book #39, 2015).

15/

But I think Jakobsson’s right, and the blámenn don’t quite work as an example of Viking racism.

(FWIW, I also believe that the Vikings not only kidnapped N. Africans to be their slaves, but had Norse-African children by them—logic and the evidence lead in that direction)

16/

There are many other examples of Viking racism--“trǫll” was also used to describe the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi… Sámi people--but what is held up as the most infamous (academically, anyhow) example—the blámenn in Kjalnesinga saga—doesn’t quite qualify.

17/

It’s not until the concepts of race & species penetrate Scandinavian societies that the idea of the trǫll as a separate race, relegated to the mountains & wilderness, begins to take hold. Before that, “trǫll” described behavior rather than size, looks, or other externals. 18/

There’s “trǫllskapr,” “the trǫllish arts,” which include sorcery, witchcraft, and necromancy. And there’s “trýlldr,” which Jakobsson translates as “en-trǫlled,” meaning “being the subject of a necromantic ceremony.”

19/

Ultimately, “trǫll” meant “enemy,” that which persecutes and haunts, that which is the Nemesis-like bogeyman: magical (in some form or fashion) and threatening and deadly. It was only centuries later that “trǫll” came to mean the giants they are today portrayed as.

20/

Funny thing about “trǫll.” It’s got an additional associated meaning: “ergi.” Now, the received wisdom among academics in this field is that “ergi” meant, in Old Icelandic and Old Norse, “gay sex, especially being a bottom.” But, as with “trǫll,” things aren’t so clear-cut.

21/

In en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egil%27s_… Egils saga einhenda a “trǫllish” woman is gripped with a lust for men which she herself describes as “ergi.”

In the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauksb%C3… Hauksbók Venus (Roman goddess) is described as behaving in an “ergi” fashion because of her many affairs. 22/

Clearly, it’s not just men who can be described as “ergi,” and it’s not just being the receiver in anal sex which is “ergi.” Contrary to received academic wisdom, “ergi” isn’t confined to just gay men.

(Though lesbians are never described in the sagas & poems as “ergi.”)

23/

Just as “trǫll” is every strange, evil, magical thing, so is “ergi” every “deviant” (according to the Icelanders & Norse), “unbecoming” sexual act: incest, bestiality, homosexuality, the blurring of gender roles, aggressive female lust, gender-shifting, and sex sorcery.

24/

Which may seem to be a distinction without a difference, admittedly, and transphobic & homophobic (putting gays & lesbians in the same category as bestialiters and associating them with trǫlls via the linking of “trǫll” with “ergi”).

However! This has implications.

25/

We know from some surviving pieces of jewelry that there were not just out gays & lesbians in Viking-era Scandinavia, but wedded couples who were buried together.

Would they have been seen as “ergi”? I tend to doubt it, because apart from being gay they weren’t “deviant.” 26/

These couples were probably farmers (most Viking-era Scandinavians were). They were probably semi-successful. (Only way to afford the silver jewelry that survives). And they were probably accepted members of their communities (as shown by their burial sites’ locations).

27/

These gay and lesbian couples were likely lower-middle or middle class karls (freemen) (a handy way to remember the Scandinavian social classes is “thralls, karls, and jarls”).

Apart from being queer, there seems to have been nothing unusual about them--in life or death.

28/

Which means they wouldn’t have been called “ergi”! This is pure heteronormativity, I admit.

But I think the very *ordinariness* of these queer couples would have mitigated against the use of slurs thrown at them.

29/

The situation for queer Viking-era couples likely was like that of queer adult couples in USian suburbia in the 1980s/1990s: general social disapproval of the concept combined with a surprisingly widespread acceptance of individual examples as long as they acted “straight.”

30/

So Viking popular culture—poems and sagas and folktales—about “ergi” wasn’t a direct reflection of reality, but a more exaggerated version of it, and the actual people of Iceland and Scandinavia during the Viking era had more progressive attitudes than we assume they did.

31/

What does this have to do with trǫlls? (Which is what I promised I’d do this thread about)

Simply this: in the poems & sagas, trǫlls are the supernatural enemy, the reverse of humanity, and “ergi” (which is associated with trǫlls) describes all that is deviant & unnatural. 32/

As Jakobsson puts it, “the words trǫll and ergi both encapsulate that essential quality of magic as turning the world on its head. In magic, everything is upside down or inside out, and that can be described as ergi or trǫllskapr.”

33/

But there’s evidence of a counter-narrative at work. The gods practiced ergi while still being worshiped. Odin Allfather personified both masculinity *and* ergi while still being the most worshiped god. The real-life queer couples were ergi but were also solid citizens.

34/

Perhaps the Icelanders & Scandinavians were simply more comfortable with ambiguity and paradoxes than we are. Or perhaps “ergi” was a more complex term in common use than it was in literary use, and that “trǫll,” associated with “ergi,” had its complexities as well.

35/

There’s an example in Kjalnesinga saga of a respected & valiant (tho mischievous) hero being called a trǫll by the Law-Speaker of the Allthing (a respected historical figure). Listeners/readers know that the hero is a good guy. Why does the Law-Speaker think he’s a trǫll? 36/

The saga doesn’t answer that question for us, but leaves it for the listener/reader to decide for themselves—but the implication is that the word “trǫll” does not have an objective meaning, but is rather one that is subjective and depends on the user’s opinion, not facts.

37/

So Icelanders & Scandinavians, I think, were comfortable with “trǫll” and “ergi” being opinions, not facts—which throws every use of the words in the poems & sagas into question. If the “trǫll” in Kjalnesinga saga is actually a hero, what other “trǫll” might also be heroic? 38/

If a “trǫll” could be a hero, could someone with “ergi” also be?

There’s a surprising amount we don’t know about the Vikings. And over the past thirty years a lot of the traditional received wisdom has been overthrown. I think there’s more overthrowing yet to be done.

39/fin