Among the fairies, my favorite is the troll. I could never relate with the more wholesome fairies like gnomes and sylphs but I feel myself very connected with the seemingly brutish and intimidating trolls. It's true that most trolls are not so pleasant when it comes to looks and their minds aren't that sharp. Some trolls are actually smart (though it's more of street-smart cunning than academic intelligence) and trollish women tend to be gorgeous. In fact, there has been legends of human men marrying trollish women as accounted below.
THE grandfather of Reor, who dwelt at Fuglekärr (i.e. Bird-marsh), in the parish of Svartsborg (Black-castle), lived close to a hill, and one time, in the broad daylight, be saw sitting there on a stone a comely maiden. He wished to intercept her, and for this purpose he threw steel between her and the hill; whereupon her father laughed within the hill, and opening the hill-door asked him if he would have his daughter. He replied in the affirmative and as she was stark naked he took some of his own clothes and covered her with them, and he afterwards had her christened.
As he was going away, her father said. to him, "When you are going to have your wedding (bröllup) you must provide twelve barrels of beer and bake a heap of bread and the flesh of four oxen, and drive to the barrow or hill where I keep, and when the bridal gifts are to be bestowed, depend on it I will give mine."
This also came to pass; for when others were giving he raised the cover of the cart and cast into it so large a bag of money that the body of it nearly broke, saying at the same time:--" This is my gift!" He said, moreover, "When you want to have your wife's portion (hemmagifta),[a] you must drive to the hill with four horses, and get your share. When he came there afterwards at his desire he got copper-pots, the one larger than the other till the largest pot of all was filled with the smaller ones. He also gave him other things, [b] which were helmets, of that colour and fashion which are large and thick, and which are still remaining in the country, being preserved at the parsonage of Tanum.
This man Reor's father surnamed I Foglekärsten, had a number of children by this wife of his, whom he fetched out of the hill, among whom was the aforesaid Reor. Olaf Stenson also in Stora Rijk, who died last year, was Reor's sister's son.
- The Fairy Mythology by Thomas Keightly, 1870
Despite their ill reputation of being thieving troublemakers, trolls possess impressive magical powers just like any other members of the fae. Here are their powers as described by Thomas Keightly in The Fairy Mythology:
These beings have some very extraordinary and useful properties; they can, for instance, go about invisibly, [g] or turn themselves into any shape; they can foresee future events; they can confer prosperity, or the contrary, on a family; they can bestow bodily strength on any one; and, in short, perform numerous feats beyond the power of man.
Source
Since I have an affinity with trolls, I've been experimenting with what I call "troll magick". Basically, I invoke the power of the trolls. I read no books on fairy magick so, as a chaos magician, it's all up to me to create my own rendition of troll magick. Expect more articles on trolls and troll magick soon.
