Troll Call

I am starting a campaign to defend a much beleaguered and unappreciated ancient minority from what has been a relatively recent association with individuals of malicious and inflammatory intent.

The term "Internet Troll" seems to pop up with great regularity in matters concerning social media and popular culture.

In its crudest derivation the use of Troll where the internet is concerned is meant to depict someone displaying stupidity, ignorance and with the combination of these attributes spelling a real or perceived danger of encouraging arguments and controversy.

My allegiance is not to these faceless troublemakers but to the original and authentic Trolls of Scandinavian myth.

There is a need to remind ourselves about the folklore and fantasy of Trolls and by doing so retrieve a considerable amount of lost ground for their legendary status.

I grew up with Trolls.

I should qualify that rather startling statement.

Trolls were a part of my formative years through their roles in the fairy stories and tall tales of my childhood.

Many of my generation will have been, in equal proportions, thrilled and terrified by the menacing presence of the Troll who lived under the bridge in the Billy Goats Gruff.

In classic literature there is the horrific image of Grendel in the epic Beowulf poem.

These two particular Troll characters are in the category of forest and mountain dwellers. They are strong and athletic and I have deeply imprinted images from a young and impressionable age of this type of Jotnar Troll careering about in the dramatic Scandinavian scenery in a quest for human flesh and to accumulate treasure and riches. The 2010 horror drama and thriller "Troll Hunter" brought a very realistic representation of the Jotnar using the mockumentary genre.

Other Trolls lived deep underground and this was reflected in a rather reclusive and unsociable temperament as seen in the Tolkienian World.

In contrast the tone poem Peer Gynt Suite tells the story of a human who becomes involved with a Troll enchantress or Huldra, an altogether more pleasant and interesting prospect although no less dangerous if crossed.

My own children were brought up with the loveable creations of Tove Jansson, the Moomins although they were in fact Trolls (the creations I mean, not my children).

It is difficult to differentiate fiction from fact where Trolls are concerned.

One theory is that the legends were based on the distant memories of  Cro-Magnon Man some 40,000 years ago of their ancestors the Neanderthals. Regarded as the earliest modern humans in stance and physiology the Cro-Magnons may have adopted a bit of a smear campaign, as dominant races and species often do, against their rather backward and thuggish predecessors.

Archaeological evidence for this idea has been inconclusive although understandably so given the passage of time and dramatic climatic and topographical changes as Northern Europe emerged from the Ice Age.

The faintest of ideas of a legendary creature have been enough for the emergence of Trolls in culture and folklore giving plenty of licence to writers and creators.

True, they do not come off well in any confrontation with humans and that risk of being turned to stone if struck by the first rays of sunlight is a bit of a disadvantage in developmental terms.

I hope that I have put forward a good defence for Trolls to be disassociated in name with the modern connotation of  pathetic and cowardly internet users.

Why not refer, instead, to these sad individuals as say, Muppets, Smurfs, Chipmunks, Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers?