Trolls have escaped from the black lava wastes of Iceland and the dense pine forests of Scandinavia to take on a new life in the collective global imagination. They may not steal goats and eat people quite so much, but they remain disruptive and dangerous, even if their limited imaginations sometimes make them comic and even quite likeable.

Emerging from Scandinavian mythology, trolls are contradictory creatures: fleshy in their desires but turning to stone in sunlight, as large as slumbering mountains or small enough to help you with your washing, charmingly charmless or genuine threat. They lurk in pine forests and peat bogs, overrunning homesteads, abducting princesses and generally nagging society with their troublesome presence.

Immortalised in the artworks of Theodor Kittelsen, John Bauer and Erik Werenskiold, this beautiful little book follows their journey from the dense forests of Norway to Middle-earth.