The Ash Lad and the Troll

The Ash Lad and the Troll is one of the central confrontations in Kittelsen's fairy-tale illustration cycle, and the troll — the quintessential Norwegian supernatural adversary — was arguably Kittelsen's most important contribution to his country's visual mythology. His trolls became the definitive Norwegian troll: massive, ancient, associated with forests and mountains, possessed of a brute power that contrasts with their fundamental stupidity. The Ash Lad's victory over such creatures through cleverness became a cultural parable about the Norwegian democratic spirit.

Kittelsen's troll is rendered with the naturalistic conviction he brought to all his animal and supernatural subjects — a creature with physical weight and texture, dark and massive, rooted in the Norwegian landscape. The compositional scale contrast between troll and hero dramatises the apparently hopeless odds the Ash Lad faces.