The "Troll-Girl Revelation" Motif: Female Infantile Sexuality and Pedophilia in Hálfdanar saga Brönufóstra and Jökuls þáttr Búasonar

Abstract

This article considers the sexual, gendered, and age-based ramifications of a recurrent motif in medieval Icelandic saga literature that I call the “troll-girl revelation.”1 Despite its popularity, appearing formulaically in four sagas attested from the late medieval and early modern periods, as well as more obliquely elsewhere, this trope has received remarkably little scholarly attention. In this story pattern, the male protagonist encounters a group of hostile troll-women, who display varying—including extreme—degrees of sexual boldness. Saga heroes are not infrequently confronted by such libidinous, supernatural females and, as a default response, the protagonist summarily dispatches these foes. As is also common in such altercations, the protagonist participates to varying extents in the troll-women’s eroticization, including via his symbolically sexual use and abuse of these figures as he conquers them. The sexual aggression of these women is thus