jupitersterrain four

amarok witchy wolf waheela dog bear 

tiny ears and a  very thick tail 

‘tough-guy’ youths who have wept out loud when recalling their experiences there – telling of how they were knocked violently to the ground and assailed by what seemed to be an invisible wolf or dog snarling and snapping at their heads

wild, uninhabited area of swampland and scrubby pines

The mera or mare pictured on the 11 króna stamp is the original nightmare - a monster that appears at night, often adopting the guise of a beautiful woman according to Faroese belief, and sits upon a sleeping person's body, suppressing their breathing as well as disturbing their sleep, stimulating evil, frightening dreams. Worse still, if it succeeds in inserting its long skeletally-slender fingers into the sleeper's mouth and counts all of their teeth, that person will die

the ghost of a newborn or infant child who was murdered without ever having been christened. As a result, the child returns to earth as a niðagrísur, an apparition no bigger than a ball of yarn

Despite its horrifying appearance, covered in seaweed and pebbles, the florutroll serves an important, beneficial function – by scaring children away from the beach, it shields them from the danger of drowning in the sea or being swept away in the raging waves and surf

slow-witted, hideously ugly, huge, hairy, and unclothed, living underground during the day and only emerging at night, liable to eat unwary humans if any strayed into their dark, forested domains, sometimes encountered lurking beneath bridges, and fated to turn to stone if caught above-ground by the first rays of the morning sun

They are not even very monstrous to look at, troll-girls especially could even be exceptionally beautiful. However, they were magical, and "contrary" to humans. They lived under cliffs and mountains, they shunned steel, they feared thunder, were not Christian, and were cunning thieves. As shapeshifters they were most often seen as shadows, animals or "balls of string" (ball-lightning perhaps), and of course often they were invisible

Troll societies bound by laws and gifted with language, the wearing of clothes, exceptionally beautiful troll maidens, and the ability to change into spheres of string or lightning? It all sounds less like the grunge-associated trolls of yore that we all thought we knew, and more like the synopsis for a new slick fantasy movie

A 19th-Century engraving of the enigmatic but seemingly extinct izcuintlipotzotli