The Folklore of Discworld

more hostile to human beings. They are thought to be the direct descendants of the dangerous Giants of Scandinavian myth, but differ from them in being generally solitary creatures. They are immensely old and strong, and probably not as stupid as humans say they are. They have had a considerable impact on the landscape – quite literally so, since they often quarrel and hurl huge boulders at one another, and never clear the pieces away afterwards. They also send avalanches and rock-falls crashing down on anybody who annoys them by shouting among the mountains. Many of them object to humans building churches in their district, partly because they dislike Christianity itself, and partly because they hate the noise of bells. The troll’s solution is always the same: heave a large rock at it. He always misses. At least, so the stories say, but can we be sure that there are no squashed churches under any of the rocks that litter the landscape? Has anyone checked?
    There was once a Norwegian troll who tried a different plan. Hearing that St Olaf was trying to build himself a church at Trondheim, he volunteered his services as a stonemason. But this was in fact a plot to kill Olaf. ‘I’ll build your church for you,’ said the troll, ‘but I’ll take the sun and the moon and the heart out of your breast as my fee – unless you can guess my name before the last stone is in place.’ The troll turned out to be not only extremely strong but also a remarkably quick worker, and in no time the walls were done,and the tower was rising fast. But then one night as the saint wandered gloomily along the mountain paths, he heard the voice of a she-troll from inside the rocks, as she sang her little ones to sleep: ‘Hushabye, hushabye, your daddy Finn will soon be home, and he’ll bring you the sun and the moon to play with, and the priest’s heart too.’ Next morning St Olaf strolled up to the church, just as the troll was setting the last course of stones on the tower. ‘Splendid work, Finn,’ said Olaf. Now, it is one of the basic rules of folklore that to know a magical creature’s name gives you the power to destroy him – and another, that somehow or other the secret is sure to get out. So the troll crashed down dead, but Trondheim cathedral is still there.
    The physiology of Earth’s mountain trolls must be based on silicon, like that of their Discworld counterparts, judging by the way they all too easily turn into large boulders, which in their case are permanent. One variety, the Icelandic Night-troll, hides in caves all day and only comes out at night, because any ray of direct sunlight petrifies it at once. There are several spectacularly tall rocks offshore which are said to be trolls caught unawares by the sunrise while wading out to sea.
    Naturally, the best defence against a Night-troll is to keep it talking till the sun comes up. There was once an Icelandic girl who had been left at home on Christmas Eve, to look after her baby brother while everyone else went to church. In the middle of the night she heard a deep voice outside the window, serenading her.
    Fair seems your hand to me,
Hard and rough mine must be,
    Dilly-dilly-do.
    But she did not look round. Instead, she sang to the baby in the cradle:
    Dirt it did never sweep,
Sleep, little Kari, sleep,
    Lully-lully-lo.
    When the troll praised her eyes and her feet, she told the baby that she had never looked on anything evil, never trodden on dirt. And so it went on all night, till dawn broke and the girl sang in triumph:
    Stand there and turn to stone,
So you’ll do harm to none,
    Lully-lully-lo.
    And when the family came home from church, they found a huge boulder on the path between the farm buildings, which had certainly not been there the night before.
    As this tale shows, one difference between the way trolls evolved on Earth and in the Discworld is that the Earth ones can get amorous towards humans, an idea which would never enter the head of a troll on the Disc. Icelandic she-trolls sometimes kidnap a handsome young man to be their mate, or lure him up into their caves by magic chants. There, they do all they can to seduce him, and to persuade him to eat trolls’ food; they rub him with strange ointments, stretch his limbs, and bellow into his ear, to make a troll of him. It is said that men who do not manage to escape gradually do turn into trolls themselves. In the Norwegian legend of Peer Gynt, the King of the Mountain wanted Peer to marry