The troll towering over this Olympic valley doesn’t look like much, but you can learn a lot about Norway from inside his belly.
The Troll (that’s his official name) is four stories tall sitting down. Legend has it that he fell asleep one night and was turned to stone at dawn by a ray of sunlight. In fact, he was cast from concrete 10 years ago.
But he is as ugly as any troll of legend. His hair is stringy, his nose is huge, and his smile radiates simple-mindedness.
“They’re stupid, and they have attitude problems,” said Marit Solheim, 26, a manager at the troll’s home in Hunderfossen’s Familiepark.
Nevertheless, during the summer thousands of Norwegians every day visit The Troll and the exhibit beneath him. Familiepark is Norway’s seventh-most popular tourist attraction.
“I could go visit him over and over and over. He reminds me of all these fairy tales we used to hear as children,” Olympic volunteer Monica Eriksson said.
Norwegian trolls are a far cry from their paler, weaker American cousins.
American trolls may lurk under bridges and demand small change from passersby. They may dangle from the rearview mirrors of cars with taste-challenged drivers, looking like victims of powerful electric shocks. But that’s about it.
Norwegian trolls can be big as mountains, treacherous as water, and seductive as beautiful women. Since before Christianity, trolls have been a part of daily life in Norway-a terrifying incentive for woodsmen to be careful and for children to be good.
In the old days, people fashioned trolls from inside their heads. A troll might lurk in an oddly shaped outcrop in a steep hillside, or in an isolated stand of trees. After sunset, a glow on the hillside might indicate that a troll was opening his single eye.
Step outside at night or enter a cave, and one of those mountain trolls might make a meal of you.
The water troll, nokken, lurked in every pond or stream. He waited for some child to walk on a slippery stone or row a rickety boat into deep water.
Menacing as they were, trolls could be beaten. They were never fast or quick-witted. Time after time, a small boy named Askeladden bested them.
He did it in model Norwegian style: not by working himself to death, but by being clever and considerate.
One exhibit within the bowels of The Troll at Hunderfossen portrays the tale of Askeladden and the Man Who Ate Stones.
To cut a long story short, the boy was on his way to a troll’s castle when he met several needy people, including a man so hungry he ate stones. Askeladen took pity on all of them, and brought them with him.
When they met the troll, he challenged them to eat all the meat stored on his estate. The man who ate stones did so.
The troll tried to roast the traveling party in a sauna, but one of the men Askeladden had helped carried the cold of 12 winters within him. He blew up a blizzard and saved the group.
As usual, Askeladden won half the troll’s kingdom and the hand of a beautiful princess.
Fables sometimes bled over into reality.
As recently as 150 years ago, a priest in the Gudbrandsdalen Valley led his congregation to the mountain where a young girl had disappeared.
They prayed for the trolls to release her and found her soon after in a barn, said Hans-Petter Kleiven, tourist chief of the Olympic region, which is known as “Troll Park.”
Kleiven fears younger Norwegians are losing touch with trolls.
Not to worry, said Solheim.
“We’ll always have trolls, if only so we can tell our children how to behave,” she said.
