The Princess picking Lice from the Troll

The Princess picking Lice from the Troll is one of the most unsettling and darkly comic images in Kittelsen's Ash Lad cycle, depicting the captive princess performing the intimate domestic service of delousing for her troll captor. The image captures the folk tale's blend of the domestic and the monstrous that is central to the genre's psychological complexity. Kittelsen's ability to render the troll simultaneously ridiculous and threatening while showing the princess's resigned compliance gives the image a disturbing resonance that distinguishes it from conventional fairy-tale illustration.

Kittelsen places troll and princess in close physical proximity that emphasises the intimacy of the disturbing service being rendered. His characteristic troll — massive, dark, textured like stone or bark — looms over the small, neat figure of the princess, the compositional scale contrast amplifying the power imbalance.