make them comic and even quite likeable. Emerging from the earliest annals of Scandinavian mythology, trolls are contradictory creatures. They can be monstrous and large as mountains, or humble and humanoid in appearance. The accounts written in Scandinavia and Iceland in the 19th century paint trolls as creatures who kidnap, overrun farms, lurk in the dark corners of landscapes, demand human marriages, eat unsuspecting travelers, and occasionally help the people who encounter them. Carolyne Larrington collects these stories into a delightful directory of trolls, from the medieval to the modern, and encountering kindly trolls, dangerous trolls, and stupid trolls along the way. Thoroughly researched and entertainingly written, The Little Book of Trolls is essential reading for the fantasy fan and a perfect introduction to the charmingly charmless world of trolls