A Norse farmer once carved a wooden figure and left it at the edge of his field. If he carved it tall with a hollow chest and long arms, he called it a troll and hoped it would guard the boundary. If he carved it slender with pointed ears and almond eyes, he called it an elf and left milk out at night. The difference was not in the wood. It was in what he feared and what he hoped for.
Trolls and elves are two distinct classes of beings from Norse and Germanic folklore, separated by origin, behavior, and relationship to humans. Trolls are solitary, often hostile creatures tied to stone and wilderness. Elves are luminous, ambivalent beings associated with ancestors, fertility, and the hidden dead. The two share a common root in Old Norse cosmology but diverged sharply in the medieval sagas and later folk tradition.
Where Do Trolls and Elves Come From in Norse Cosmology?
The oldest written source for both beings is the Poetic Edda, compiled in Iceland around 1270 CE from oral poems dating to the 9th and 10th centuries. In the poem Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy), the creation of the world involves the gods shaping the cosmos from the body of the giant Ymir. Trolls appear in this poem as descendants of the jötnar (giants), the chaotic forces that predate the gods. Elves, by contrast, appear in the same poem as a separate race called the álfar, dwelling in Álfheimr, one of the nine worlds.
The Prose Edda, written by the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson around 1220 CE, formalized this cosmology. Snorri divided the world into three tiers: the gods above, humans in the middle, and the dead below. He placed the elves in a liminal space between gods and humans. He described them as “fairer than the sun” and associated them with the Vanir, the fertility gods (Njörðr, Freyr, Freyja). Trolls he described as “the kin of the giants,” dwelling in mountains and caves, hostile to both gods and humans.
The key difference in origin is this: elves were created as a distinct race with their own world. Trolls were not. Trolls were born from the same chaotic matter as the giants, and they never fully integrated into the ordered cosmos.
What Did Each Being Actually Do in the Old Stories?
The sagas and folktales treat trolls and elves very differently in practice.
Trolls in the Icelandic family sagas (13th and 14th centuries) appear as antagonists. In Egil’s Saga (c. 1240 CE), the hero Egil Skallagrímsson composes a curse poem against King Eirík Bloodaxe and Queen Gunnhild, calling on the “trolls and spirits of the mountains” to drive them from the land. The troll here is a weapon, a force of nature summoned against an enemy. In The Saga of the Volsungs (c. 1270 CE), the hero Sigurðr kills a troll-woman who guards a treasure. She is described as “huge and dark, with a face like stone.”
Trolls in later Scandinavian folklore (17th-19th centuries) are almost always dangerous. They live in mountains, under bridges, or in remote forests. They steal children, curse livestock, and turn to stone in sunlight. The Norwegian Huldre (hidden folk) are sometimes conflated with trolls, but the true troll is never beautiful. It is ugly, stupid, and strong.
Elves in the same sagas behave differently. In The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi (c. 1280 CE), the protagonist dedicates his land to the god Freyr, who is closely associated with the elves. The elves are not described directly, but their presence is felt through the land’s fertility. In The Saga of the People of Laxardal (c. 1245 CE), a woman named Guðrún dreams of elves who offer her gifts. The dream is ambiguous: the elves can bless or curse.
In later folklore, elves became the älvor of Sweden and the huldufólk of Iceland. They are beautiful, often female, and they dance in circles that leave rings of mushrooms. They can heal or harm, but their harm is more often trickery than violence. They steal milk, not children. They lead travelers astray, not into caves but into fairy mounds where time moves differently.
How Did Their Physical Descriptions Differ?
The medieval sources describe both beings, but the descriptions are sparse and inconsistent.
Trolls in the sagas are consistently large, dark, and ugly. The Örvar-Odds Saga (13th century) describes a troll as “black as pitch, with a nose like a club and teeth like a horse.” They are associated with iron, stone, and cold. They cannot cross running water. They burst in sunlight. Their skin is described as “like bark” or “like rock.”
Elves in the same period are described as luminous. The Poetic Edda poem Alvíssmál (The Sayings of Alvíss) features a dwarf, not an elf, but the description of the dwarf’s appearance is telling: he is “pale as a corpse.” Elves are the opposite. They are “bright” and “shining.” The Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes), written by Saxo Grammaticus around 1200 CE, describes elves as “fair of face” and “clad in white.”
By the 19th century, the physical distinction had hardened into the images we recognize today. Trolls are huge, ugly, and stupid. Elves are small, beautiful, and clever. But this is a folk simplification. The original sources are more fluid.
What Did People Actually Do With These Beliefs?
The practical relationship between humans and these beings was not abstract. It was agricultural.
For trolls, the practice was avoidance and appeasement. In Norway and Sweden, farmers would leave a portion of their field unplowed. This strip, called the trollåkern (troll field), was a gift to the trolls who lived in the nearby mountain. If you plowed it, the trolls would blight your crops. If you left it, they might protect your boundary. The practice is documented in Swedish folklore collections from the 17th century onward, notably in the work of Olaus Magnus (1555 CE) in his History of the Northern Peoples.
For elves, the practice was different. In Sweden, families would leave a bowl of milk or porridge on the doorstep on Christmas Eve or Midsummer’s Eve. This was not appeasement. It was hospitality. The älvor were considered ancestral spirits, the dead of the family who had not moved on. Feeding them was feeding your own blood. The practice is recorded in the Swedish Folklore Archive (Svenska Landsmål) from the 19th century, but it is much older.
The difference is crucial. You appease a troll because you fear it. You feed an elf because you remember it.
How Do Elves and Trolls Compare to Other Beings?
The closest parallel to the troll in other traditions is the Greek Cyclops or the Norse jötunn. Both are large, crude, and hostile to civilization. The troll is essentially a jötunn that has been localized to the Scandinavian landscape. It is the giant who lives under your mountain instead of in Jötunheimr.
The closest parallel to the elf is the Irish aos sí (the fairy folk) or the Roman lares (household spirits). Both are ancestral, both are tied to the land, and both require small offerings. The elf is not a nature spirit in the modern sense. It is a dead ancestor who has become part of the landscape.
A common modern confusion is the conflation of elves with dwarves (dvergar). In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson explicitly distinguishes them. Dwarves are craftsmen who live underground and turn to stone in sunlight. Elves are luminous and live in Álfheimr. The confusion arose because later translators, especially the Brothers Grimm in their 19th-century fairy tale collections, used “elf” and “dwarf” interchangeably. They were wrong, but their error shaped modern fantasy.
What Do People Get Wrong About Trolls and Elves?
The most persistent misconception is that trolls and elves are opposites in a moral sense: trolls evil, elves good. The original folklore does not support this.
Trolls are dangerous, but they are not evil. They are forces of nature. A troll who guards a mountain pass is no more evil than the mountain itself. In some Norwegian folktales, trolls help lost travelers or reward kindness. The Asbjørnsen and Moe collection (1840s CE) includes stories where trolls are stupid but not malicious.
Elves are not good. They are ambivalent. The Swedish älvor could curse a family as easily as bless it. If you offended an elf, it would blight your cattle or twist your child’s spine. The Icelandic huldufólk are notoriously vengeful. Building a house on their land without permission invites disaster. The idea that elves are purely benevolent is a Victorian invention, popularized by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595 CE) and later by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings (1954 CE).
Another misconception is that trolls and elves are the same thing in different sizes. They are not. They have different origins, different behaviors, and different relationships to humans. A troll is a remnant of the chaos before the gods. An elf is a remnant of the dead who still walk the land.
FAQ
Are trolls and elves related in Norse mythology? Only distantly. Both appear in the Poetic Edda, but trolls are descended from the jötnar (giants) while elves are a separate race with their own world, Álfheimr.
Can trolls turn to stone in sunlight? Yes, in later Scandinavian folklore. The belief is first recorded in the 13th-century Konungs Skuggsjá (The King’s Mirror), which describes trolls bursting or turning to stone when exposed to daylight.
Do elves have kings or leaders? In Norse mythology, the god Freyr is said to rule Álfheimr. In later folklore, elves have their own kings and queens, but the tradition is inconsistent.
Are dark elves the same as dwarves? No. Snorri Sturluson mentions “dark elves” (dökkálfar) in the Prose Edda, but scholars debate whether he meant dwarves or a separate class of elves. The term is ambiguous and likely a later invention.
The line between troll and elf is not a line of species. It is a line of relationship. The troll is what lives outside the boundary and must be appeased. The elf is what lives inside the boundary but cannot be seen. Both remind us that the world is not empty. It is full of presences that do not answer to us. For a deeper look at how these beings fit into the broader landscape of Norse and Germanic folklore, see our guide to mythical creatures. You may also want to read about the huldufólk of Iceland, who blur the line between elf and hidden folk, or our guide to Norse cosmology for the full nine-world framework.