Originally published in the June 2000 issue of Realms of Fantasy 

A Troll Story 

by Nicola Griffith Illustration by Web Bryant 

Lessons in What Matters, No. 1


No, don’t turn on the lamp; who I am is not important. The lamp wouldn’t work, anyway. If you shout for your parents, they won’t hear you. Are you afraid? There’s no need, I’m here only to tell you a story. If you wish you may pretend I’m a figment of your imagination, product of a fever dream. Oh, yes, I know about your fever. Your mother thinks you’re coming down with something, but it’s not that, is it? It’s guilt. You feel bad and there’s no one to tell. Such a small thing, too, to punch a boy on the nose and make it bleed, and in a noble cause, for what else can a person do but step in when a bully is hurting the weak? Unexpected though, the sound of breaking bone, eh? That noise, that meaty creak, makes it all real. Tomorrow you’ll pluck up the courage to tell your mother, and she will wipe away your tears and snot and tell you it doesn’t matter, to forget it, that you did the right thing. Which is why I’m here. It does matter, you see, and nine is not too young to learn these things. Everything you do is a step toward who you will become. We are born in blank ignorance, a kind of darkness, if you will, and every act, every thought is a little piece of knowledge that illuminates the world and leads us farther from the nothing of our beginning. We don’t always like what we see but it is important that we look, otherwise the steps mean nothing, and we become lost.

I see your hand by the lamp switch once more. Very well, try it if you must. You see? I told you the truth. Everything I will tell you is true, at least in the ways that matter. There’s no need to scrunch up in a heap like that, no reason to fear me. Perhaps the light bulb simply needs replacing.

But light can be such a comfort, can’t it? There are some times and places, some circumstances which only make it more so. I am here to tell you about one such time and place. Listen carefully; it matters.

In Norway a thousand years ago, all dreaded morketiden, the murky time of winter when the Sun hides below the horizon for weeks on end and the very rock sometimes stirs to walk the steep fjell in troll form. Families lived in lonely seters, and in winter, trapped by snow and darkness, the only comfort was to lift a burning twig from the hearth and touch it to the twisted wool wick floating in a bowl of greasy tallow, to watch light flare yellow and uncertain, and to hope the wind that howled down the fjell would not blow it out, leaving nothing but long twisting shadow from the fire, whose coals were already dying to deepest black tinged with red.

In the Oppland lived one such family, a hard-working man called Tors and his strong-minded wife, Hjorda, and their sandy-haired daughters Kari and Lisbet, better off than most. They had a fat flock of sheep and fine cows for milk, their seter was large and well covered with living sod and surrounded by sturdy outbuildings, and in addition to their bond servants, they could afford a shepherd in winter, two hired men to tend the fields and mend the walls, and a dairymaid. At this time it was the end of summer and the livestock were fat, the grass green, and the storehouse full, but Tors and Hjorda were worried. Oh, it was not their daughters, who ran about the fields like little plump geese, not a care in the world. Nor was it the hired men or the dairymaid they both mooned after. No, it was that even as the nights began to draw in, Torsgaard did not have a winter shepherd.

Hjorda decided that Tors must go to the All-Meet, the Thing, that year. “For while it is not always true, more heads may on occasion lead to greater wisdom.”

So Tors went to the Thing, and he and his neighbors from Gjendebu and Leine and other places as far away as Dragsvik talked of fields and sheep and the price of oats. On the last night they drank vast quantities of mead. “Last winter trolls came to walk the fjell,” Tors said. “Our shepherd disappeared and no local man will be persuaded to watch the sheep this year.” This was very bad, and no one had any advice to offer. Eventually, many horns of mead later, Grettir, a farmer from the richer lowlands of Leine, stroked his beard and said, “There is a man, a strange, rough man, Glam by name, who might watch your sheep. But I would not want him watching my sheep if I had daughters.” Despite the mead, Tors was not a stupid man, and he agreed that it is better to lose one’s sheep than one’s daughters. Especially if you have a woman like Hjorda to deal with at home.

The next day, he woke up feeling as though his head were seven times too big for his hat and his legs three times too weak for his body and, to top it all, his horse was gone. None of his neighbors could spare him even a nag; he would have to walk the long, long path home. Mid-morning found him tramping the springy turf of a narrow valley between two hills. Autumn berries grew bright around him but the air was chill, and he worried about what Hjorda might say when he returned to Torsgaard not only without a shepherd, but without his horse. And then, crossing his path, was a man, a huge bundle of faggots on his back. If the bundle was huge, the man was more so.

“What is your name?” asked Tors in amazement, looking up at the massive brow, ox-like shoulders, and the muscles of his bare arms which were plump as new-born piglets, but white.

“They call me Glam.” His voice was harsh, like the grinding together of granite millstones, and he tossed the bundle to the ground as though it weighed less than his hat—a greasy leather thing. His hair, too, was greasy, black and coarse as an old wolf’s. The face under it was pale and slippery looking, like whey, and his eyes were a queer, wet, dark gray-green, like kelp.

“Well, Glam, I need your help.” Tors had been about to ask for directions to a farm or settlement where he might buy a horse, but his head ached, and he felt out of sorts, and thought perhaps if he didn’t tell Hjorda about Grettir’s warning, all might be well. “Grettir tells me you might be persuaded to work for me at Torsgaard as my winter shepherd.”

“I might, but I work to please myself and no one else, and I do not like to be crossed.”

His harsh voice made Tors’ head ache more. “Name your terms.”

“Where is your last winter shepherd?”

“We are haunted by trolls. He was afraid.” No need to mention the fact that he had disappeared on the fjell, where the trolls walked.

“A troll will provide me with amusement during the long winter nights.”

They bargained, and Glam agreed to start work on haustblot, the celebration that marks the first day of morketiden. As soon as they spat on their hands and shook, Glam slung his bundle up onto his back without even a grunt, and though his walk was shambling and crablike, it was fast, and he was gone behind a stand of aspens before Tors could think to ask about a nag. But scarcely was Glam out of sight when from behind the very same stand of aspens came trotting Tors’ very own horse. Its eyes were white-ringed and it was sweating, but it seemed pleased to see Tors, and it was only later that he began to scratch his beard and wonder at the odd coincidence. So he went home a hero, with his horse and his promise of a winter shepherd, and waited for morketiden.

The people of Torsgaard and the surrounding farms went to the hov to celebrate haustblot: to welcome the winter season and implore Thor to protect them against disease, sorcery, and other dangers, and Frigg to ensure warmth and comfort and plenty in the home during the time of dark and bitter cold. With all the fine white beeswax candles lit, the strong light showed men in their best sealskin caps and women with dried flowers woven into their hair. All made merry, for soon the dark would come. Amid the singing and laughter and drinking came Glam.

He wore the same greasy hat and despite the cold his arms were still bare. All his possessions were bundled in a jerkin and slung over his back. He walked through the suddenly quiet people toward Tors, and Tors’ two hired men stepped in front of the dairymaid, and Tors himself looked about for Hjorda and his girls, and people moved from Glam’s path, from his queer gaze and hoarse, ill breath. Hjorda appeared from the crowd and stood at Tors’ elbow. “Husband,” she whispered, “tell me this is not our shepherd.”

Glam stopped some distance from them and folded his arms. He shouted, so all could hear. “It is morketiden and I am come to look after Tors’ sheep.” A murmur went up in the hov, and Hjorda said privately, “Husband, look how the very candles sway from his presence. Send him away.” But Tors did not want to be gainsaid before his neighbors, so he turned to Hjorda with a ghastly smile and said, “Hard times need hard remedies.” Raising his voice he called to Glam, “Welcome to Torsgaard. Now our sheep will be safe.” And it was done.

The rest of haustblot passed uneasily, with Glam tearing into a great ham and draining horn after horn of feast mead, and Tors telling people Glam would no doubt be on the fjell every day with the sheep, and manners after all were not everything.

And, indeed, the next morning Glam left with the sheep before Tors woke and did not come back until the evening fire was dying. And as the days passed, even Hjorda had to admit that Glam was a master of sheep herding: They seemed terrified of him, and all he had to do was call out in that terrible hoarse voice and they huddled at his direction. Days turned to weeks, and he lost never a single sheep. But not a man or woman or child would go near him, except as they must when he called for meat and drink, and even the dogs slunk away when they heard his tread.

Many weeks passed in this fashion and the days drew in upon themselves and the nights spread until even noon became just a thin, pale dream of daytime and nothing seemed real but the cold, the howling wind, and the red flickers of firelight. And still Glam called for his sheep in the dark of every morning and led them up into the hills to find grass, and every night he came back in the dark, face white as clabbered milk despite the cold.

Midvintersblot was a day sacred to Frey, when all the people of Torsgaard gathered to beg Frey to ensure fruitfulness for people and animals and crops during the coming year. It is a day of fasting until the evening feast, when holiday mead is brought out and the plumpest hog roasted, and the people feast by torchlight all night and don’t sleep until dawn. That midvintersblot, Glam rose as usual in the dark and called for bread and meat. The noise woke Kari, the eldest daughter. His shouting grew louder—no one seemed to be attending him—followed by a great thump as if he had sent a man flying with a casual blow with the back of his hand.

Kari rose from her bed. “Today is midvintersblot. We fast until the evening to honor the gods.”

Glam sneered. “I have never seen a god and I have never seen a troll. And who are you to say whether I should eat or drink? Now go get my food!” And he stepped aside so Kari could see the bondservant lying senseless by the cold hearth. Kari, frightened, brought his food. When he stepped out into the dark, shouting in that horrible voice for his sheep, she went to her mother and spoke of what had happened.

Hjorda saw to the bondservant, then sought Tors and told him of events. “Glam must be paid off and turned out, husband.”

“But what of the sheep, wife? Besides, the man was probably just hungry.”

“The servant’s cheek is broken, and he is only now recovering his wits. He would have done thesame to Kari, had she not obeyed.”

“Nonsense. No doubt the girl misunderstood, frightened by his loud voice.” He turned back to the warmth of his wolfskin coverlet and slept. He didn’t hear the rising note of the north wind, the first flurries of driving snow. He didn’t hear Glam roaring above the wind for his sheep, the shouts getting fainter and fainter and farther off. By the time he rose, Glam could not be heard and the snow was settling in fat white folds on sills and stoops. The hours slipped by, with all the servants and the women of the house working over spits and ovens and Tors working over his tally sticks. The flurries became a blizzard and the dairymaid, when she went to milk the cows, could not see her hand before her face.

The scents from the kitchen grew more delicious, the wind climbed to a high-pitched howl. The trenchers were laid on the board, and still Glam did not return. The hired men and several male servants came to Hjorda. “It’s cruel outside, but if you asked we would venture into the cold and dark and wind, as some misfortune might have befallen Glam.”

“No, no,” said Hjorda, thinking quickly. “Glam is strong and wily. No doubt he can look after himself, and the sheep have fine wool coats. See that you don’t bother Tors with this.”

“Certainly not, mistress,” they said, knowing full well that Tors might take them up on their offer—and the bondservant with the addled wits and broken cheek being a friend of theirs. 

And so the feast was laid out and eaten without Glam, and not a soul missed him until it was long past midnight and Tors asked, “But where is our winter shepherd?” By this time, the snow lay hip deep and the wind was cold enough to freeze people’s breath in their throat, turn their eyeballs to ice, and crack open their very bones. Tors declared no man could step forth and live, so they turned their back to the door and drank barrel after barrel of ale, cask after cask of mead, and sang loudly enough to drown out the terrible noises and deep vibrations that rolled down the fjell—though Lisbet, the youngest daughter, who had fallen asleep on a bearskin after her third horn of mead, had strange and awful dreams of dark shapes battling on snow. Not long before dawn, sodden with celebration, they slept.

They woke after noon. Headaches and guilt are fine partners, so Tors did not have to urge the men to put on their boots and fur capes and caps and set off up the mountain. The pale winter Sun shone brilliant on the new-fallen snow and the air lay still. Snow crunched and one of the hired men could be heard groaning softly to himself every time his boots thumped down. They walked and walked, and eventually they heard the faint bleat of a sheep, and suddenly sheep were all around them; some nothing more than frozen woolly mounds in the snow, some bleating pitifully, some standing lost on crags or caught in bushes. Past the sheep they found a place where great boulders and trees had been torn from the ground and the snow beaten down in some mortal struggle. They walked faster now, and found a bloody, leveled place where Glam lay on his back, his strange seaweed eyes open to the sky and covered in snow, which did not melt. His skin was mottled and bloated, as though he had been dead a long, long time. Huge tracks, the size of barrel hoops, filled with frozen blood, led off to a deep and narrow gully. Something had fallen and splashed blood—hogsheads of the stuff—all about, but there were no more tracks so the men could not follow. The hired man stopped groaning long enough to peer into the gully, look at the blood, and say, “Nothing, not even a troll, could have survived that.” There was general agreement, and the hired men and bondservants returned to Glam’s body.

The bolder among them tried to move him, but it was as if his bones had turned to stone and he would not shift. Nor could they close his eyes. They herded up the sheep and returned to Torsgaard. “Glam is dead,” they said to Tors. “He killed the troll and most of the sheep are living. We tried to bring him down but his body is strangely heavy.”

“Well, take a yoke of oxen up the mountain and drag him down if necessary,” said Tors. “We must bring him back to the hov for a proper send off.”

“No,” said Hjorda, “take faggots and tallow to the gully and burn him there, like carrion.”

“Yes,” said Kari.

“Yes,” piped up Lisbet, whose dreams still hung about her.

“No,” said Tors, and the men tried not to sigh. They took the oxen up the mountain, and some rope, but even with the oxen Glam’s body, black as Hel now and bloated as a bladder, would not move even along level ground. After hours of this, with his men surly and tired and his own fingers and toes going white with cold, Tors unyoked the oxen. “He seems to want to stay here, so let him. We will cover him with stones.”

So it was done, and they walked back to the women and a warm hearth.

Three days later, Lisbet woke in the middle of the night and ran to her mother. “Glam walks in my dreams!” Hjorda cuddled her close and they both fell back to sleep. They were awakened in the morning by a shriek from the dairymaid, who had opened the door and tripped over a dog—or what was left of a dog—on the stoop. Later that morning, the haunch of mutton on the spit was found to be green and black on one side, and the servant who tended the ovens was clean out of her wits: “Glam came down the chimney, Glam came down the chimney, Glam came down the chimney,” was all she could say, over and over.

Glam did not lie easy in his grave. He came again, and again, and again, driving more people mad, sending one hired man—who had taken the sheep out—headlong down the fjell, falling and breaking his neck, and the dairymaid running away to another farm, snow or no snow.

Hjorda found Tors. “You must burn him, husband.”

But upon toiling up the mountain with faggots and tallow, and heaving aside the stones, they found nothing. When he returned, Tors told this to his wife, who nodded. “The troll lives in his bones and walks abroad wearing his skin, even under the Sun.”

While Glam could appear during the day, it was at night that he spread true terror: He ran on the rooftops until the beams buckled, he rolled great boulders down the fjell, destroying some outbuildings entirely, and he laughed. His deep horrible laughter ground over Torsgaard and the farms of Oppland, crushing the spirit of men, driving cattle mad, and women to weeping in their terror that Glam was coming for them. The dairymaid who had escaped to another farm was found beside a barn, used and torn and tossed aside, like a broken doll. The still-living hired man ran mad and took an axe up the mountain, foaming at the mouth, vowing to chop Glam to pieces. The man’s head, and pieces of his torso, rained down on Torsgaard all that night. The whole countryside felt disaster looming. Hjorda bade her daughters to sleep in her alcove, and they carried eating knives in their belts that were a little too long and a little too sharp for manners.

But as the days grew longer and the Sun stood higher in the sky, the hauntings lessened.

“Summer Sun is not kind to trolls,” Hjorda observed. “But when winter comes he will be back, and no one in Oppland will be safe.”

Tors did not want to hear it. He hired more men and a new dairymaid and worked to rebuild the broken outbuildings. His wife insisted that he strengthen the doors and roof beams of Torsgaard. And when this was done she sent him to the Thing, only this time she sent Kari with him. “Find a good strong man,” she told her daughter, “one who can do more than tend the sheep during winter. Spend your portion to hire him if you must—for what good is a dowry to a dead maid?”

Now it happened that at this time a ship came into the fjord and Agnar the Strong, who was tired of adventuring in foreign lands, came to the Thing and heard that Tors of Torsgaard needed a winter shepherd but that no man would take up his offer. He sought out Tors and asked of him, “Why will no one take up this offer of yours?”

“The last shepherd, Glam, died on the fjell and there is some superstition attached to his name,” said Tors evasively. “Have some of this mead.” Now Tors was generally an honest man, and his shame at speaking false would have been apparent even to a lesser man of the world than Agnar. Agnar declined the mead and watched thoughtfully as Tors walked away, ashamed.

“Sir, allow me to offer you the mead again,” came a woman’s voice from behind him. He turned to face the maid with bright blue eyes. “I am Kari Torsdottir. Drink the mead and I will tell you of Glam.” He did, and she did, leaving nothing out, and finishing, “—and so if you would look after our winter sheep and keep them safe, you could have my marriage portion and welcome.”

“Money is no good to a dead man.”

“My mother says that if you are but a strong man, good and true, and willing to listen to her, you will prevail, for trolls, even trolls who wear a man’s skin, are stupid, being made mostly of rock.”

And so Agnar the Strong agreed to come to Torsgaard and be the winter shepherd, but instead of waiting for morketiden, he returned directly with Tors and Kari, for he was curiously unwilling to let Tors’ daughter out of his sight.

His open face, clear blue eyes, and ox-wide shoulders were welcomed by all. He noted the great gashes in the doors and the rents and holes in walls and gates but kept his own counsel. All through the summer, Agnar helped at the farm. He repaired stone walls and cut huge trees to reinforce roof beams, he helped herd cattle, and walked with Kari and Lisbet when they went berry-picking. As the evenings drew in, he held their yarn while they spinned and Hjorda did not fail to notice that he was always willing to fetch a cape for Kari, or pump the bellows to coax the fire hotter when she sat by it. A good man.

On the eve of the first day of morketiden, Hjorda drew him aside. “Glam will return, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.”

“Glam doesn’t frighten me!”

“Then you are more of a fool than I thought. He is more stone troll than man, and more heartless. Alive he was twice as powerful as a brace of bulls. Now even bulls would flee. And he wants to destroy this farm and all the people in it, only this time he is stronger and will be after choicer fare than the dairymaid.” Hjorda noted Agnar’s quick glance at Kari, combing her hair before the hearth. “Yes. Glam will come for the eldest daughter of the house. If you wish to save her, you will listen to me.” But Agnar knew in his heart he needed nothing but his own strong back, and he laughed, and walked away.

That night the ground shook as Glam stalked the farm, his bones so heavy his feet sank 10 inches into the turf. His awful, grinding laugh filled the dark as he tore off chunks of wall and gate. A rending crash and a high-pitched scream split the dark, followed by the terrible sound of a large animal being torn limb from limb, and the splash and spatter of blood on the iron-hard ground of the barn enclosure. Then with a roar of satisfaction he ran up the mountain and was gone. When the people crept from the hearth hall the next day, they found Tors’ poor horse ripped into quarters and its guts arranged in a rune of challenge.

The next night, Agnar the Strong, who had been a-viking as far as Novgorod and the shores of Ireland, who had burned priests and fought the hordes of Rus, who was famed for his strength and bravery from Oppland to Hordaland to Rogaland and beyond, sought out Hjorda, the woman of Torsgaard. “If you speak on this subject, I will listen, and do as you say.”

And so as the Sun went down that evening, Tors found himself strangely sleepy, and while the great fire still roared in the hearth, he fell sound asleep and snored on his wallbed by the inglenook. Hjorda directed Agnar to pick up her drugged husband and bundle him into the bed at the far end of the hall, away from the passage that led to the door. Then she dressed Lisbet in her warmest clothes, and the two of them stole out to hide in the barn, cosy in the straw with the cattle. Then there was only Kari and Agnar. They stood opposite each other by the hearth.

Agnar, forgetting himself in his fear for her, took her by the hand. “It’s not too late to hide with your mother and sister.”

“You will need me,” she said. “We must bring Glam inside.”

When the embers began to die, Kari, still wearing her clothes, left the curtain between the passage and the hall open, and lay down on the wallbed by the inglenook; Agnar, similarly dressed, wrapped himself like a sausage in an old, heavy fur cloak so that one end was tucked tightly under his feet and the other securely under his chin, leaving his head free so he could look about. Then he settled himself on the wall bench opposite Kari’s bed. In front of the bench lay a bench beam, a huge ancient thing set into the floor when the farm was built. He set his feet against it and straightened his legs so he was firmly braced between the beam and the wall. And then he waited.

The embers glowed then dulled then sighed into ash. Kari’s breath grew soft and slow and regular. Once, there was a rattle as a gust of wind shook the only gate still standing. Far, far away he heard the lonely howl of a wolf. But Agnar’s heart did not beat soft or easy, it hammered like a smith beating hot iron into an axe-head, and he touched the sword at his belt constantly. The hilt was cold as only iron can be, and he could no longer quite feel his feet.

Sudden as an avalanche, something leaped onto the roof and thundered about, driving down with its heels, until the new beam buckled and splintered and the roof almost fell in. Glam. The walls shook and Glam jumped down, and the earth trembled as he strode to the door. A sharp creak as he laid his huge horny hand on the door and suddenly it was ripped away, lintel and all, and moonlight briefly lit the hearthroom. But then Glam blocked out all light as he thrust his huge head through. The whites of his strange eyes gleamed like sickly oysters, and Agnar’s heart failed him. Glam’s head brushed the roof of the passage as he came into the hall.


“Glam,” said a soft voice, and Kari stood there slim and brave by the door, her hair silver in the moonlight. “I will come with you, but it is cold outside and I must have a bearskin to lie on. Bring that old cloak on the bench by the fire. I’ll wait for you outside.” And Agnar’s heart filled with admiration for her and there was no room left for fear.

Glam strode to the sausage-shaped bundle of fur, and tried to pick it up with one hand. Agnar was braced and ready. He made no sound and the fur did not move. Glam pulled harder, but Agnar braced his feet all the more firmly. He was sweating now. Glam grunted, and laid two hands on the bundle, and now a titanic struggle began, Glam hauling up, Agnar fighting to push against the bench beam with all the strength of his muscle and sinew yet make no noise. But then Glam put his back into it and the old cloak tore in two. He stood there, the fur in his hands and his horrible eyes staring, and Agnar flung himself at the troll, gripped him around the waist and set his feet. With a massive grunt, he squeezed tight and started to bend the monster backward. It would not be the first time he had snapped a man’s spine in a wrestling match.

But Glam was now more, much more than a man, his bones were made of the rock of the mountain, and with a single heave he had Agnar off his feet and was flinging him about. But Agnar had been in many wrestling matches and he did all he could to brace his legs against roof beam or hearth edge, bench or wall. In the passageway he strained until the veins stood out in his neck and sweat sprang out on his forehead, and always he avoided the ruined doorway. It was bad enough in the enclosed spaces of the hall; outdoors, it would be seven times worse. Closer he was drawn to the door, and closer still. Sweat poured from him. With a furious wriggle, he eeled around in Glam’s grip until his back was to the awful face and bull-like chest. He dug his heels against the threshold stone and with a strength that was equal parts fear, determination, and desperation, he leaned in toward the last breath of warm, indoor air. As Glam hauled backward with all his might, so too did Agnar thrust backward, and his last strength and the inhuman force of Glam’s heave hurled them both outside. Glam, with Agnar still clutched to his breast, landed spine down across a rock. The spine parted with a loud crack, a sound that would live in Agnar’s mind for the rest of his days.

Agnar could not rise; all he could do was lie like a gasping fish in the dying troll’s grasp, drained not just by the effort of fighting a monster, but by the awful touch of its skin against his own. His strength ebbed and ebbed, until his muscles were made of lead and his bones felt like lace and he could not even touch the hilt of his sword with his fingertips. And then Glam spoke, hoarse and horrible in his ear.

“You will live, Agnar the Strong, but you will never be the same. You will always look into the dark and see my face, hear my voice, and know yourself.” And the troll laughed, dark and full of wickedness. At the laugh, Agnar felt the strength flow back. He sprang to his feet, pulled free his sword, and swung. Once, twice, three times, and the muscle and sinew and bone of Glam’s neck parted, and the head, like some vile rock, rolled free, and Agnar did not laugh, but wept.

The Moon tugged clear of its cloud, and Kari ran to his side, and Hjorda and Lisbet emerged from the barn. Even Tors stumbled up from his drugged sleep and stood blinking and beaming with happiness on the soiled turf. “Agnar the Strong! You can have anything of mine you name!” And Kari took his hand and kissed it, and laid it against her cheek. Agnar held her close but could not meet her gaze.

He stood, numb and tired, while Kari wrapped him in the wolfskin and the servants brought him mead warmed by the hurriedly stirred fire, and while Hjorda ordered in a great voice that the hired men bring faggots and tallow and waste not a minute.

They burned Glam right there, outside the hall. And then they burned the ashes. And when the ashes were cold they were gathered in the torn cloak and wrapped tight, and Hjorda saw to it that it was thrown into a chasm, and huge boulders hurled down on top of it.

Torsgaard celebrated all day and into the evening, with men and women arriving from all over Oppland to share the good news. In all that time, Kari remained at Agnar’s side, and she noted how he shook with fatigue. Eventually the fire dwindled and the torches were doused. Everyone slept. In the middle of the night, Kari was awakened up by a strange noise, like a child crying. It was Agnar, trying to light the torch, and rocking back and forth. “He will come for me. He will come for me.”

“He is dead, beloved.”

“I am all alone and he will come for me!”

“You will never be alone again.” But he would not hear her, he just rocked and rocked, back and forth.

And the story goes that though Kari stayed by his side every living minute, much to the disapproval of the very traditional Opplanders, and married him not long after, his fear grew worse and he began to rock back and forth and light torches even in the daytime. In the end, they say he ran out, barking mad, and Kari was left without a husband and the hall at the Oppland farm gradually declined. No flowers ever grew on the chasm where they had thrown Glam’s ashes.

And that’s the end of the story. Agnar was a hero. He saved a household from Glam, the man who became a troll. But before that he was called a hero for slaughtering women and children, roasting priests on the spit, and burning down churches while he drank the altar wine and laughed. “Never mind,” his father would have said after that first trip a-viking, “forget that sucking sound your sword makes when you pull it from a woman’s stomach.”

And so you punched a bully on the nose and broke it, and some will call you a hero, and some will think you a beast, and you feel so confused you have worked yourself into a fever, and it’s not something your mother can kiss away in the morning. Nor should she, for if you pretend it never happened you will never bring it into the light to examine and it will fester there in the dark and grow strong, as a troll does, and one day when you are grown and you punch a man on the nose, the weight of all the things you have done and tried to forget will rise up and eat you up from inside.

There, now, you’re sweating; perhaps the fever is breaking. In a little while you will sleep, and your mother will wake and come sit by your bedside, and in the morning she will be the first thing you see. You may pretend that this never happened, that I was never here, that this was all a dream. If you like. It’s your choice, weigh it carefully before we meet again.