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Thomas Keightley - The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries

The Trolls are represented as dwelling inside of hills, mounds, and hillocks--whence they are also called Hill-people (_Bjergfolk_)--sometimes in single families, sometimes in societies. In the ballads they are described as having kings over them, but never so in the popular legend. Their character seems gradually to have sunk down to the level of the peasantry, in proportion as the belief in them was consigned to the same class. They are regarded as extremely rich for when, on great occasions of festivity, they have their hills raised up on red pillars, people that have chanced to be passing by have seen them shoving large chests full of money to and fro, and opening and clapping down the lids of them. Their hill-dwellings are very magnificent inside.

"They live," said one of Mr. Arndt's guides, "in fine houses of gold and crystal. My father saw them once in the night, when the hill was open on St. John's night. They were dancing and drinking, and it seemed to him as if they were making signs to him to go to them, but his horse snorted, and carried him away, whether he would or no. There is a great number of them in the Guldberg (_Goldhill_), and they have brought into it all the gold and silver that people buried in the great Russian war."[Arndt, Reise nach Schweden, vol. iii. p. 8]

They are obliging and neighbourly; freely lending and borrowing, and elsewise keeping up a friendly intercourse with mankind. But they have a sad propensity to thieving, not only stealing provisions, but even women and children.

They marry, have children, bake and brew, just as the peasant himself does. A farmer one day met a hill-man and his wife, and a whole squad of stumpy little children, in his fields; and people used often to see the children of the man who lived in the hill of Kund, in Jutland, climbing up the hill, and rolling down after one another, with shouts of laughter.

Like our Fairies the Trolls are sometimes of marvellously small dimensions: in the Danish ballad of Eline af Villenskov we read--

      _Del da meldte den mindste Trold,
      Han var ikke större end en myre,
      Her er kommet en Christen mand,
      Den maa jag visseligen styre._

      Out then spake the tinyest Troll,
      No bigger than an emmet was he,
      Hither is come a Christian man,
      And manage him will I surelie.