Quoting Tom Becker (t...@fanac.com):
> Norway is fascinating! I'm curious if there is any folk history
> about trolls, specifically about trolls spreading disease. Like when
> the Black Death came through. Silly question, and completely
> hypothetical, obviously.
I can't find any mythological connection with disease. There were two
types of trolls, mountain trolls (fjelltroll) that lived in the
wildlands including the forests and cave trolls (huletroll) who lived
completely underground in caves. The former were big, dumb, and
brutish, while the latter were smaller than humans, stubby, rotund.
Both were portrayed as troublesome and generally hostile -- but not
known for disease, just vexing riddles to cross bridges ("fjelltroll")
or baffling and deceiving travelers ("huletroll").[1]
They were of course supposed creatures of Norway's vast wilderness.
My dad's folk were generally from the towns and cities on the coast,
the "north way" (Old Norse "Norvegr") route that gave the country its
name and gave it vitality especially in the fjord-laden west where
there's hardly any topsoil and agriculture is poor. Trolls were part of
the culture of the interior, whereas my dad's folk looked to the sea.
"Troll", or to spell it properly in Old Norsk, trǫll, is actually a
somewhat vague term and could signify any uncanny being, including but
not restricted to the Norse giants (jötnar).
These days, you of course see them as kitsch carvings in gift shops.
(The Icelanders tend to take trolls and their distant uncanny kin the
nissen semi-seriously.)
The Black Death may have hit Norway harder, especially the
trade-oriented west coast, than any other European country, killing
possibly as much as half of everyone, and any legends from that era
(around 1349-50) are lost from that and the subsequent Little Ice Age --
along with much else including the entire old Norwegian language.
That was when Norway was in such steep decline in all areas that it
became a hick backwater dependency of the Danish crown -- and, to this
day, what is now called norsk, the Norwegian language, is actually a
hick dialect of Danish, the "prestige language" of the distant rulers
that replaced Old Norsk.
Dad's town, Kristiansund, was founded specifically as a foreign trading
town on some rocky islands midway between Bergen and Trondheim, by
permission of the crown in København (Copenhagen) in 1742, greatly
expanding a small fishing settlement: King Kristian VI and his court
had the glimmerings of a clue that Europe's prevailing mercantalist
policies were self-defeating, and therefore specifically invited Spanish
and Portuguese ships to come trade -- which made Kristiansund rich and
gave Iberian traders a reliable supply of dried, salted cod, called
Bacalao (a Basque word) in Spanish -- valued particularly for Lent and
other traditionally meatless periods (e.g., Fridays) per Canon Law.
https://talknorway.no/klippfisk-what-is-norwegian-klipfish-norway/
What the Norwegians got back from the visiting Iberians included chile
peppers, with the weird result that Kristiansund is the place in
northern Europe that gave hot peppers to all the other countries around,
and the source of historical spicy-cooking recipes.
[1] In Norwegian, the word troll is both singular and plural. (I don't
speak any Old Norse, just norsk aka hick Danish.)
--
Cheers, Grammarian's bar joke #26: A gerund and an
Rick Moen infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
r...@linuxmafia.com
McQ! (4x80)
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