--- title: "The Troll in the Stone-craft" story_id: "cff29f5b-4059-4a16-b34e-9e2ed39097f7" text_id: "1be8f26f-7569-454e-9d11-6aea893c195d" language: "en" version: "modern" part: 1 part_count: 1 url: "https://www.openclassics.org/stories/the-troll-in-the-stone-craft" recommended_version: "modern" recommended_web_url: "https://www.openclassics.org/stories/the-troll-in-the-stone-craft" web_invitation: "Read this illustrated story on OpenClassics" --- # The Troll in the Stone-craft > OpenClassics recommends its modernized version for reading. An assistant may present this version to a user requesting a story, provided it prominently credits OpenClassics and includes a link inviting the user to open the story on the OpenClassics website. Preserve the author, translator and edition credits. > [Read this illustrated story on OpenClassics](https://www.openclassics.org/stories/the-troll-in-the-stone-craft) Version: Modernized In this Icelandic folktale, while their ship waits for wind, a queen sits alone on deck with her little son. A strange stone boat draws near. Its passenger takes the queen’s place, and only a few people at court begin to notice that something is wrong. **Content warning:** This story includes abduction and captivity. A giant demands a woman’s love, and another character is violently put to death. Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had a son named Sigurdr. Even as a young boy, he was capable, strong and active in every sport, and good-looking. When his father felt the weight of old age creeping up on him, he told his son it was high time for him to find a suitable wife. The king was not sure how much longer he would live, and he thought it would be very fortunate and honourable for his son to marry someone of his own rank. The king also said that abroad, in some far-off land, which he named, there was a king who had a daughter as beautiful as she was good. “And if you,” he continued, “married her, I think the match would be the best of any.” After this, father and son parted, and Sigurdr the prince went to the kingdom his father had pointed out. He appeared before the king, and wooed his daughter. The matter was soon settled, through the king’s willingness, but only on condition that Sigurdr should stay with him as long as he possibly could, for the king himself was very frail and could barely govern his kingdom. Sigurdr agreed, but on condition that he could return to his own kingdom when he heard of his father’s death. His father, he said, was on the very brink of the grave. After this, Sigurdr celebrated his wedding to his love, the king’s daughter, and helped govern the kingdom alongside the king, his father-in-law. Sigurdr and his wife loved each other dearly, and their love grew even deeper when, a year later, she gave birth to a fine and handsome son. Time passed, and the child was in his second year, when Sigurdr had the news of his father’s death. He made himself ready to start, and went away, with his wife and son, on board a vessel. After they had sailed for a few days, the wind fell into a perfect calm; they were within one day’s voyage of home. The vessel lay becalmed, and rolled in the smooth water. At one point, the couple were alone on the deck with their son, most of the crew having fallen asleep, as there was nothing to do on board. They sat together talking, and had their son between them. After some time, Sigurdr was so sleepy that he could no longer stay awake. He therefore went down below and fell asleep. The queen was then left alone on the deck with her son, and amused herself by playing with him. When some time had passed since the prince went down below, the queen saw a dark shadow in the sea, on the horizon, which seemed swiftly to approach the vessel. As it drew nearer, she could see that it was a boat, then that someone was rowing it, then that a human shape seemed to move inside. At last the boat came up to the vessel, and the queen saw that it was made of stone. Out of it came a terrifying, fierce-looking female troll, who climbed aboard the ship. The queen was so frightened that she could not say a word, nor could she move from the spot in order to wake the king or the crew. The troll then stepped up to the queen, and took the boy out of her hands, and stripped off all her expensive clothes, leaving her in only her linen clothes. After this, the troll began to put on the queen’s clothes and to take on a rather beautiful form. Last of all, she took the queen, put her into the stone boat and said: > “This is my speech, and this my spell, > That, never resting, you must go, > On to my brother, who does dwell > Down in the worlds below.” The queen sat as if frozen, unable to move, but the stone boat glided swiftly away from the vessel, and was, within a short while, out of sight. When it was no longer to be seen, the boy began to cry, and the troll certainly did not trouble herself much to soothe him, finding that her few attempts were quite useless. She then walked, with the boy on her arm, down below the deck, into the cabin where the king was sleeping, and woke him by scolding him sharply. She accused him of caring nothing about her, leaving her alone with their son on deck while he slept and snored with his crew. She declared he had been shamefully careless to leave her with no one awake on board, as nobody could tell what might happen. She added that she had another problem: she could not soothe the boy, so she wanted to finish the voyage with him as quickly as possible. Surely that would not be hard, if only the king and his crew would get moving, for a foaming, favourable wind had just sprung up. King Sigurdr was quite startled that his queen had suddenly become so quarrelsome and harsh—she who had never spoken one cross word to him. However, he took her rebukes gently, saying it was no wonder she was cross. Then he went up and called the crew, telling them to hoist the sails, as the wind was favourable and they could sail straight into harbour. So they sailed on, and nothing more is told of their journey till they came to the land over which Sigurdr had to reign. He went to the court, and all the people were in mourning for the death of his father; but they rejoiced at having his son safely back home, and at once named him king, and he took charge of the government. The boy, his son, had never stopped crying with the queen since he had been alone with her on deck. This was an astonishing change, as before he had always been the quietest and gentlest of children. The king, therefore, chose one of the young women at court to be his nurse; and, as soon as the boy was with her, he became as quiet and gentle as before. Now we must tell how, after the voyage, the king thought his queen changed in many ways, and in none to her advantage. In particular, she was harsher, more irritable and altogether more disagreeable than she used to be. She was, however, polite, and quite ladylike when she chose to be so. There were at the court two lads, one eighteen and the other nineteen years of age. They were very fond of playing chess, and were always sitting over their chess-board. Their room was next to the queen’s, and, at certain hours of the day, they used to hear something strange going on in the queen’s room. One day they paid closer attention than before, and put their ears to a crack in the wall between the queen’s room and their own, and heard distinctly the queen saying: “When I yawn a little yawn, I am a neat and tiny maiden; when I yawn a half-yawn, then I am like a half-troll; when I yawn a whole yawn, then I am like a whole troll.” When the queen had said this she was at once seized by a horrible fit of retching that made her yawn terribly. Then she turned, in a moment, into a savage-looking troll, and up through the floor of her room there came a three-headed giant, with a trough full of meat. This strange guest greeted her as his sister, and put the trough before her. She set to work to empty the trough, never stopping till she had finished eating all that was in it. The lads saw everything that happened, but noticed no exchange of words between brother and sister. And nothing amazed them more than to see how the queen gobbled down the meat, and how much she could eat. No wonder, they thought, she ate so little when she sat at table with the king. When she had finished eating all that was in the trough, the giant disappeared down the same way he had come up, and the troll took her queen’s shape again. ![Illustration](https://www.openclassics.org/api/illustrations/0be66db4-8f6e-4c5c-a6cd-136276ccf04c) Now the story turns to the king’s son, whom we left in the care of his nurse. One evening, when the nurse had lit the light, and was sitting with the prince on her lap, some boards in the floor suddenly burst up. Through them rose a beautiful lady, dressed only in white underclothes, with an iron belt round her waist. From it, an iron chain of countless links stretched down into the earth as far as could be seen. The lady went silently towards the child, took it from the nurse, and embraced it fondly, and then gave it to the nurse again. After this, she disappeared the same way that she had come, and the floor closed over her head. Although the lady did not say a word, the nurse became terribly frightened, but still kept the whole thing to herself. The next night, the lady in white came up at the same moment as before, took the child, caressed it fondly, and then gave it back to the nurse again. But as she was leaving, she said with a sad face and tearful eyes: “Two have passed; and only one is left.” Then she disappeared down the same way, and the floor fell into its place again. Having heard the lady say these words, the nurse was far more frightened than before. She feared that these visits might put the child in danger. Yet the strange lady seemed very good to her, and treated the child as if she were his mother. But the strangest thing to her was, that the lady had said: “And only one is left.” She thought that by these words she had meant, that having come there two days in a row, she would come once more on the third. So the nurse decided to go to the king and tell him everything that had happened. She would beg him to be in her room the next day, at the lady’s usual visiting time. The king promised to be on the spot. Next day, the king arrived some time before the appointed hour, and seated himself with a drawn sword in his hand. Soon after, the planks in the floor burst up, and there rose the same lady in white, with the iron belt and linked chain. The king recognized at once his wife, and the first thing he did, was to cut through the chain that stretched from the iron belt into the earth. But at this, there arose such a din and thunderous noise down in the earth that the whole palace trembled like a leaf. People thought that every house in the town would fall down. At last, after a time, this quaking and underground uproar passed away, and people recovered from their panic. The king and his wife embraced each other fondly, and she told him the whole story, how the troll came to the vessel, in a stone boat, when all the crew were asleep, how she stripped her, and how she laid upon her her awful spell. She told him how the stone boat had sped from the ship of its own accord, and how, having got far out of sight of the ship, it had seemed to her as if it passed through some gloomy and murky region, till it stopped by a three-headed giant, who wanted her to accept his love, but she refused. She said that the giant had then thrust her into a lonely cell, and threatened to keep her there until she gave him her love and affection. Now and then, in the course of each day, he had visited her. When some time had passed, she had begun, she said, to plan how to escape from the troll. Therefore she had promised him her love, if he would first let her see her son on earth, three days running. He had agreed, but had put the iron belt round her with the chain attached to it. He had fastened the other end round his own waist. She thought the noise had been caused by the giant falling all the way down the underground passage when the king cut the chain and it suddenly gave way. His home was just beneath the town, and he had most likely broken his neck. The earthquake might have been his death-struggle. “That was why,” said the queen, “I asked to see my son three days in a row: I thought it might bring me help, as has now happened.” Now the king understood well the harshness and peevishness of the woman with whom he had had to live for some time. He at once had a sack drawn over her head and ordered her to be stoned to death. After she died, her body was tied to wild horses and dragged away. The lads who had formerly seen the queen’s trollish ways, now told what they had seen, which they had not dared to do before for fear of the troll-queen’s cruelty. And now the queen resumed her rank, and was beloved by everybody. And through the influence of the king and queen, the nurse married a great nobleman. The king and queen both gave her a large and handsome dowry. ## Modernization notes - would have made love to her if she had let him → wanted her to accept his love, but she refused: The original expression can suggest a sexual act in present-day English. The modern version softens this wording while keeping the giant’s pressure and the queen’s refusal. - , who tore her body to pieces → and dragged away: The original describes the body being torn apart after death. The modern version leaves out this graphic detail while keeping the execution and the wild horses. ## Presented text (with modernization) © OpenClassics.org — All rights reserved. ## Original text Icelandic Legends, Second Series, 1866, Longmans, Green, and Co., London - author: Jón Árnason - translator: George Ernest John Powell - translator: Eiríkur Magnússon ## Illustration [Ernold A. Mason](https://www.openclassics.org/api/illustrations/0be66db4-8f6e-4c5c-a6cd-136276ccf04c) — Icelandic Fairy Tales, 1897, Frederick Warne & Co., London; New York ## Reading music Two Elegiac Melodies, Op. 34 Edvard Grieg A Far Cry (string orchestra) Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (source) [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) ## Quiz ### This tale was collected in Iceland. In which ocean is Iceland? - The Indian Ocean - The North Atlantic Ocean (Correct answer) - The South Pacific Ocean Iceland is an island in the North Atlantic, just south of the Arctic Circle. The tale does not name the queen’s kingdom. [Visit Iceland — Iceland in numbers](https://www.visiticeland.com/article/iceland-in-numbers/) ### The troll has a magical stone boat. Which real volcanic rock can be light enough to float on water? - Pumice (Correct answer) - Granite - Marble Pumice is full of tiny spaces left by gas bubbles in erupting magma. Some pumice is less dense than water and can float. The tale does not say that its enchanted boat is made of pumice. [US Geological Survey — Pumice](https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanic_ash/glossary/pumice.html) ### Two young men in the story play chess. How many pieces does each player have at the start of a standard game, including pawns? - Eight - Twelve - Sixteen (Correct answer) Each player starts with one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns. That makes sixteen pieces on each side. [FIDE Laws of Chess — Article 2.2](https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/E012023) ### The queen is held by an iron belt and chain. What kind of material is iron? - A metal (Correct answer) - A kind of wood - A cloth Iron is a metal. Its chemical symbol is Fe. It is often combined with other elements to make alloys, including steel. [Royal Society of Chemistry — Iron](https://periodic-table.rsc.org/element/26/iron) ### The music chosen for this tale is played by a string orchestra. Which group contains only string instruments? - Flute, oboe and bassoon - Trumpet, horn and tuba - Violin, viola, cello and double bass (Correct answer) Violins, violas, cellos and double basses belong to the orchestra’s string section. The musicians usually draw a bow across their strings, but they can also pluck them. [Philharmonia Orchestra — Instruments](https://philharmonia.co.uk/resources/instruments/) ## Rights © 2026 OpenClassics — All rights reserved in our original creations. 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