Tag: troll

15_Isotora

Just got a tickle to draw a Scandinavian Troll. Humon likes to talk about Scandinavian trolls a lot but I can’t actually find anything on the common encyclopedia sites that lines up with what she calls a troll. The art is heavily influenced by John Bauer’s image – as this was my first experiment with the creature I guess I didn’t have too much innovation on hand.

Anywhoo, this is Isotora. As the overseas land of Avori is based loosely on Scandinavia she’s a potential character I might use in future A Jagged Road stories. Trolls in scandinavian literature are much more magical in nature than more recent western versions of trolls, so Isotora can turn invisible and also move on the wind. Trolls, like most mythological creatures that occur frequently in myths, appear in a wide body of stories each with slightly different properties. I took some liberties here and made Isotora ugly like most male trolls are supposed to be – trolls frequently have reputations as shape-shifters and there’s no reason for males to be ugly but females to be extremely human-like unless they are using magic to transform themselves. In the future I’ll probably make a few ‘human form’ versions of her.

Isotora is not human and therefore doesn’t have human motivations – she’s more an incarnation of nature, and her actions are arbitrary. She may do benevolent things one day and malicious things the next. Trolls are also known for replacing human children with their own in Scandinavian lore, so I might integrate something like that in.