| Everybody believe that there are
no trolls no more. Nonsense! You may find trolls at a lot of places if
you happen to be on the right spot and are lucky, but I feel that I
must warn you. They are extremely difficult to detect, almost impossible
to predict and even worse to
handle. I had been hunting moose in the area for years only to discover the other year that everything was not quite what I expected it to be. I had sat down at my post with my rifle waiting for moose to advance on me pursued by a Norwegian Grey Moose Dog, high up on the slope of Black Mountain. Waiting for moose inevitably gives you time to think and above all presents you the possibility to study the nature all around you. Uphill from my hunting post was an old pine crag next to a huge mossy boulder. The next day I again happened to be waiting for moose at the very same spot. Troll shit, the boulder was gone ! Then and there I understood that the moss grown boulder may very well have been a scruffy mountain troll. Old names in the area reflects an ancient precence of trolls. On the eastern side of the valley is the Troll Hill, and further south is Little Troll Hill. Towards north east is a pair of smaller lakes called Jetningen (Jette - still another name for trolls) and Little Jetningen, true indications that trolls once eked a living here. Close by is Troll Gate Creek. I will bet you that somewhere in the dense birch covered slopes there is an old hidden troll gate, an entrance to a mysterious but closed troll cave. Nowadays the close vincinty sports leisure cabin areas and tourist hotels, as well as rich winter ski facilities. Well marked hiking trails run in all directions from the hotels and ski lifts, one of them quite close to Troll Hill actually. To all luck it is a winter trail for cross country skiers. |
Fortunately the trolls are dozing off the hours in their cave lairs during the snowy season . Still, in the mosquito season hordes of tourists staying at the hotels and the cabins wobble along every marked trail. Should you happen to walk these alpine forests for some odd reason, you would enevitably hear human voices of somebody talking too loud and frenetic most of the time. The reason? It is city dwellers on vacation walking the hiking trails. Tourists are totally scared of silence and makes such noise that they will never risk seeing any trolls or wild life, even if they ever wanted to.
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