Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/64

 THE NORTHERN TROLLS.

BY DAVID MAC RITCHIE.

the traditional and semi-historical literature of Scandinavia, there are many references to a race of beings known as "Trolls," who are described as in frequent contact with the ancestors and contemporaries of the saga-writers. That they originally constituted a distinct race, wholly different from the Scandinavian colonists, is indicated by Professor Nilsson, when he states that—"The name Troll is never given to any man or woman of the Saga, relating to the Asa race; it was given out to the foreign (i.e. aboriginal) tribes who were looked upon as conquered, for troll or tröll, seems to be the same as thrall, and signifies "serf." But he points to an amalgamation of the two peoples when he says, on another page that a certain Scandinavian Chief, was the son of Stalbjörn, surnamed Half-troll, which shows that his mother was descended from a Troll race." That such an amalgamation was apparently general is also indicated by Mr. Du Chaillu in his Viking Age, "At the time of the arrival of the Asar on the Baltic Shores," says this writer, "they found the large Scandinavian Peninsula and that of Jutland, and the islands and shores of the Baltic, populated by a seafaring people whose tribes had constant intercourse with each other. . . . These people intermarried with the Asar . . . and hence arose tribes called half-Risar and half-Troll." It will be seen from an extract which Mr. Du Chaillu makes from the Hervarar Saga (ch. i.) that the term "Risar" has no reference to the invading people, for it is there stated that "before the Tyrkjar and Asia-men (or