Trolls | Three Ravens Bestiary #15
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Show notes
For this week's Bonus Episode, we're wandering wild places to explore the history and folklore of Trolls, which, though they sound pretty ancient, are a surprisingly modern folkloric creation!
We start off chatting about the modern perception of Trolls, including the quite sinister online iteration we all know as the "Internet Troll" and the mass-produced toys, invented in the 1950s, now an animated film franchise more associated with pop music than pagan fiendishness.
Then though, we wind back the clock, discussing how Trolls first appear on record, in scant scraps of Old Norse, and start to discover a problem: that Trolls were not 'one thing' but actually a whole class of kinds of things, the word used interchangeable with several others, with associations ranging from incest to kidnapping to the moving of mountains.
Thankfully, as we track across time, we explain how and why Trolls came into clearer focus, particularly as a counterpoint to Christian Scandinavians.
From the formation of nations such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden through to the Enlightenment era, during which Trolls almost become a kind a ghost, through to the 19th and 20th centuries, it emerges that Trolls have become a symbols capable of representing very different ideas over time.
So, is a Troll the same thing as a werewolf? At some points, yes! How about a form of Giant? Absolutely, but not always.
With answers to these questions and many others, including the links between Trolls and street walkers, their associations with barrow tombs, and the reasons why they're so scared of church bells, it's a stranger episode of the Three Ravens Bestiary than most.
About Three Ravens 🔮
Three Ravens is a completely independent English myth and folklore podcast where we share stories, celebrate folk culture, and fall backwards through the hedgerows of history.
Hosted by real-life couple Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, and mostly recorded at our home in rural Sussex in southern England, Three Ravens is rated 4.8/5 from over 500 reviews and has grown by word of mouth care of our lovely listener community ‘The Conspiracy of Ravens.’
We release three episodes a week, on Mondays, Thursday and Saturdays, through which we explore folktales, folkways, fairy stories, folk songs, mythology, local heritage, seasonal customs and traditional beliefs.
Our research inspires our retellings of stories from across history and culture, with episodes standing alone but connected together across over 500 chatty, mostly light-hearted, swear-free installments driven by passion, kindness and curiosity.
Now ranked as an all-time Top 5 podcast across several categories by Goodpods, charting in the Spotify, Apple and Rephonic UK Fiction Top 10 across 2024, 2025 and 2026, if you’re interested in ghosts, monsters, regional beliefs, and the things that unite us all, then join us round the campfire and listen in…
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