Tonight, the trolls showed themselves. Uncoiling themselves from the steam from the kettle, they showed me a little of who they are, and they gave me another level to Helen and Alice’s story. I feel productive…
And he’s gone. Helen sits staring at the corner of the tent where the steam from the large aluminium kettle rises and clings to the inside of the tent as damp droplets. A faces writhes and forms itself in the haze. Another one – the trolls companion. They are small; about three feet in height, one wearing a crown of blue flame; the gas ring beneath the kettle.
Helen turns to Alice, huddled at her side. Alice returns in her expression the same sense of the impossibility, and the wondrousness of what have they seen, what they can see, across the room. In the strange light of an Icelandic night filtering through the weathered and stained canvass of the mess tent, the figures are formed solid, round of face, broad of smile. Their hair is thick and dark, the skin, tanned like leather, and their eyes; wide and childlike.
They are children, and giggle and whisper in play. One points across the room with his fat stubby finger, directly at Helen and Alice, sat close and next to each other at the table, their notebooks and pencils in front of them.
A draft brushes through the tent, and the candlelight flickers, dancing light and shadow up onto the girl’s faces. The trolls are gone.
Is there an Icelandic name for ‘troll’ ? In English the word has been spoiled by association with Tolkien and hobbitssses.
Funnily enough, I know exactly what you mean. Whenever I try and tell people about my novel, even after I say its set in Iceland, when I say that it has elves and trolls in it they think of Tolkein and his version of the creatures.
…and that’s not the kind of creatures that we are talking. It would be so much simpler if I could call them something else. Even if they are elves and trolls it would be nice to call them something different.
Hrmm. Me thinks some research is in order…