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acters the term encompasses,37 and John Lindow explores how the term is
applied to all sorts of anti-social, potentially paranormal characters across
Scandinavian cultural history.38 there is a significant overlap between the
characters I consider socially monstrous and those who are referred to as
trolls, while others are compared to or otherwise linked to them. Indeed,
the term is used more frequently of revenants and magic-users than of the
mountain-dwelling ogres taken to be denoted by the term.39 Interestingly,
troll is not used to describe what a creature is, because trolls can be all sorts
of things, but what it does (being anti-social) and what effect these actions
have (disruption): “a troll may be categorised by trollish behaviour”,40 but
what exactly constitutes such behaviour needs to be explored.
Like many scholars who have studied monstrosity, Lindow concludes
by stating that “we cannot truly know trolls. If we could, they would not
be trolls.”41 Even in medieval Iceland, the monster escapes classification,
rendering the concept of trolls a vague one since it does not only refer to
non-human ‘others’, but also at times to ethnic or social ‘others’ like blá-
menn or magic-users. Using the term troll to refer to the characters under
discussion would therefore not be precise enough to facilitate approach-
ing, and maybe answering, questions regarding how these characters are
portrayed in the texts, and what cultural significance they might have car-
ried. I therefore use the term ‘monster’ (as well as the ‘monster theory’ that
comes with it) as a tool to try to better understand the socially disruptive
humans of the Íslendingasögur. to this end, I use an ‘etic’ approach, hop-
ing to achieve a new and better understanding of a subgroup of the ‘emic’
concept of troll.
37 Ármann Jakobsson, “the trollish acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: the Meanings of troll and
ergi in Medieval Iceland,” Saga-Book 32 (2008): 52: “a troll may be a giant or mountain-
dweller, a witch, an abnormally strong or large or ugly person, an evil spirit, a ghost, a
blámaðr, a magical boar, a heathen demi-god, a demon, a brunnmigi or a berserk.” outlaws
fall under the category of “abnormally strong or large” persons.
38 John Lindow, Trolls: An Unnatural History (London: reaktion Books, 2014), 12.
39 Ármann Jakobsson, “the taxonomy of the non-existent: Some Medieval Icelandic Con-
cepts of the Paranormal,” Fabula 54 (2013): 201.
40 Ármann Jakobsson, “the trollish acts of Þorgrímr the Witch,” 52.
41 Lindow, Trolls, 143.
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