Talk:Trollkyrka

I think this info should be of interest to many, especially neopagans (this is the real McCoy) and others who like me are interested in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. Anyway, I think it deserves not to be confined to some books on local history that I found at parents' home. I have had to translate the poem into English, but the dialect is old-fashioned and from the other side of the forest. Consequently there are parts that I have had to do some research to translate, and there is one part of which I am not certain: håsorna äro i topparna vassa. This is the translation I arrived at: the trousers are pointed at the tops. I hope it makes some sense.--Wiglaf 11:48, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Coing by the eye-balling cognates method of translation this would come out as "Hosurnar eru í toppana hvassar" in Icelandic, which in turn would mean "The socks are sharp at the tops" ;)

This is a very interesting article. I'd like to read the primary sources for myself. - Haukurth 1 July 2005 12:56 (UTC)

Nine types of wood
Some versions of the Wiccan Rede have the lines "Nine woods in the cauldron go, Burn them fast and burn them slow" and then lists the nine types; Birch, Oak, Rowan, Willows, Hawthorn, Hazel, Appletree, Vine, Fir. No idea where they got that one from. Haukur (talk) 00:01, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

How reliable...
... is the information we have on it? All points considered, but especially that poem, it just strikes me as belonging in the tradition of Ossian and the like, i.e. it sounds much more what someone a hundred or two hundred years ago must have imagined "pagan gatherings" to be like, rather than what we could expect from any real and vibrant kind of cult. It is properly, horribly cheesy in its description of how someone imagined the rituals to have been performed: why on earth would a group of pagans bequeathe us a poem so utterly and schoolmasterly descriptive in nature rather than, let's say, a text of worship directed to the spirits in question? It reminded me of old schoolbok poems from the 19th c. on how our (Celtic) ancestors were supposed to meet in a (Germanic) thing. The fact that it is not paralleled by any reliably pagan (or pagan-derived) kind of verse does not help its case. Trigaranus (talk) 08:38, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

it's a folk poem of more than a century (or perhaps 300 years) after the practice had ceased. So if you like, I suppose it is a "cheesy" description of how someone in 1942 imagined the goings-on of a couple of generations before. It certainly shouldn't be treated as a primary source on pagan ritual. --dab (𒁳) 17:11, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Tröllakirkja, Iceland
Konrad von Maurer (Isländische Volksagen der Gegenwart, 1860, pg. 38) knew of at least three places in Iceland under this name. There is a reference in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, Ch. 4, relating to one of them (near Lón):

"Bárður Dumbsson lagði sínu skipi inn í lón það sunnan gengur í nesið og þeir kölluðu Djúpalón. Þar gekk Bárður á land og hans menn og er þeir komu í gjárskúta einn stóran þá blótuðu þeir til heilla sér. Það heitir nú Tröllakirkja."

Besides that, Trollakirkja appears to be one of a string of "troll"-based toponyms in the north, e.g. Tröllatúnga, Trölladyngja, Tröllaháls, Tröllaskógr, Tröllagata, Tröllaskeið, Tröllaskagi, etc. in Iceland, Trollaby and Trollatoft on the Isle of Man, Troller's Gill in Yorkshire, Trollhättan in Sweden, Trolltunga in Norway, Trollawatten in Orkney as well as Trolladale, Trollaskerries, Trolligart and Trollhoulland in the Shetlands. I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one journal article which collects and discusses these "troll" toponyms somewhere.

Of course, I'm not suggesting anyone engage in original research in mainspace, just offering some information which may be of interest and/or use to someone considering expanding this or a related article. --77.57.165.148 (talk) 18:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)