Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. He is the author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), Dragons: A Natural History (1995), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Hidden Powers of Animals (2001), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), The Menagerie of Marvels (2014), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is widely considered to be his cryptozoological magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016) - plus, very excitingly, his four long-awaited, much-requested ShukerNature blog books (2019-2024).

Dr Karl Shuker's Official Website - http://www.karlshuker.com/index.htm

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my ShukerNature blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my published books (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Eclectarium blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Starsteeds blog's poetry and other lyrical writings (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's articles (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

IMPORTANT: To view a complete, regularly-updated listing of my RebelBikerDude's AI Biker Art blog's thematic text & picture galleries (each one instantly clickable), please click HERE!

Search This Blog


PLEASE COME IN, I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU...

PLEASE COME IN, I'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU...
WELCOME TO SHUKERNATURE - ENJOY YOUR VISIT - BEWARE OF THE RAPTOR!


Showing posts with label neanderthal man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neanderthal man. Show all posts

Friday, 14 December 2012

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE? IN SEARCH OF THE WOODWOSE, EUROPE'S ELUSIVE MAN-BEAST

Captive wild man being tamed by virtuous woman - Swiss tapestry, late 1400s

Homo sapiens was not the only species of human named and recognised by Linnaeus when publishing Systema Naturae, his revolutionary binomial system of zoological classification, in 1735. Among several others was Homo ferus, the wild man, which according to Linnaeus was covered in hair, moved on all fours, was mute, and lived apart from H. sapiens in forests, hills, and mountains. Today, none of Linnaeus’s ‘other’ species of human is recognised by mainstream science.

Bestiary depiction of European wild man

Nevertheless, his European wild man, also known as the woodwose or wudewasa, has such a richly intertwined history of folklore, depictions in medieval art and architecture, and reported true-life encounters, including certain very recent ones, that some cryptozoologists and primatologists wonder whether such beings might indeed have existed in the not-too-distant past, and may even still linger on today in some of Europe’s more remote, secluded localities. But what could they be? As will be seen from the following selection of cases, several very different identities could be involved, collectively yielding a composite, polyphyletic woodwose entity rather than any single-origin, monophyletic being.

Woodwoses (Albrecht Dürer, 1499)


WILD MEN, OR FERAL CHILDREN?

Linnaeus himself delineated various subcategories of Homo ferus, of which the most significant was Juvenis lupinus hessensis – ‘wolf boys’, or feral children. That is, children believed to have been abandoned or lost by their parents in the wild but subsequently raised there by wolves or other animals. According to legend, moreover, Romulus (alleged founder of Rome) and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. There is little doubt that such children were indeed responsible for certain reports of alleged woodwose.

Depiction of Mowgli, the wolf boy from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books, by Kipling's father, J Lockwood Kipling (1895)

As recently as 1934, for example, a supposed woodwose was briefly spied running through some trees by a party of hunters in the forests near Uzitza in Serbia. Pursuing it, they fired and the entity dropped to the ground, shocked but unharmed. When the hunters approached, they discovered to their great surprise that their quarry was a completely naked and somewhat hairy but otherwise normal-looking human youth, approximately 15 years old, terrified, and covered in mud. Taken back by the hunters to their home village, he was unable to speak any language, but was found to be remarkably fast-moving, could run naturally on all fours, and was able to imitate with startling accuracy the sounds and songs of the various beasts and birds sharing his woodland home, where he had apparently lived for much of his life, feeding upon berries and roots.

Famous statue of Romulus and Remus suckling a she-wolf

Another such case was the Wild Girl of Champagne, France, cited by Linnaeus himself (dubbing her Puella campanica) as support for his Homo ferus species. She had been confirmed to have survived 10 years (November 1721-September 1731) in this region’s forests before being captured at the age of 19. Unusually for feral children, she then learnt to read and write, and became totally rehabilitated intellectually and socially.


RETURNING TO THE WILD?

A number of so-called wild men have proven to be ordinary humans that for a variety of different reasons – from poverty, mental health issues, or escape from persecution or criminal retribution to a simple desire to shake off the burdens of modern life – had abandoned their normal life and dropped out of human society, seeking solace and solitude in the wild and regressing to an almost bestial existence.

A possible woodwose statue inside St Mary's Church at Woolpit, Suffolk, where the famous Green Children allegedly appeared many centuries ago - could they have been abandoned children, left to fend for themselves in the wild? (Dr Karl Shuker)

In autumn 1936, for instance, a team of foresters inspecting one of the great forests near Riga, Latvia, unexpectedly encountered an extraordinary apeman-like entity crouching at the base of a tree. When it saw the men, it fled rapidly, swinging itself onto an overhanging branch and climbing upwards with remarkable speed and agility to the very top. When shot at by one of the foresters, the entity shrieked and crashed down onto the ground, where it was seized by the men, who discovered that it was covered in hair and bereft of any clothing. When it was taken back to a village close by, however, the being was recognised there as a farm labourer who had disappeared many years earlier, but he was now no longer able to speak or understand speech, and was capable only of yelling gleefully when meat or fruit was placed before him.

Wild man of Orford sculpture on font in Church of St Bartolomew, Orford (Simon K/Flickr)

A similar, more famous entity was Suffolk’s “wild man of Orford”, who, during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), was captured in the nets of some sailors while he was swimming in the sea. According to a description penned by chronicler-monk Ralph of Coggeshall in his Chronicon Anglicanum, the being was completely naked but resembled a man in every way, with a profuse and pointed beard, hair that seemed torn and rubbed on his head, and very hirsute breasts. Brought back to the local castle and guarded day and night, he was unable to speak, did not display any sign of reverence when taken into the local church, and preferred eating fish raw rather than cooked. He escaped into the sea once, but eventually returned of his own accord; when he escaped a second time, however, he did not return and was never seen again.

William Blake's famous depiction of Nebuchadnezzar in the wilderness (1795)

During the Middle Ages, insane people or simpletons were sometimes released into the wilderness to fend for themselves, so that they became little more than wild beasts. According to the Holy Bible’s Book of Daniel, moreover, the once-mighty Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II underwent a seven-year period of madness during which time he lived alone in the wild, crawling on all fours eating grass, and allowing his hair and nails to grow unchecked until he resembled a man-beast instead of a man.

AT THE SIGN OF THE WILD MAN

There is no doubt that an appreciable component of the woodwose composite is the wild man as a symbol rather than a corporeal entity, personifying Nature or various aspects of it. In traditional rural folklore, the wild man most commonly represents strength, fertility, rebirth, and the ‘noble savage’ uncorrupted by modern civilisation. Very popular in medieval times but still occurring in certain rural areas of the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe even today are countryside pageants and festivals that feature dancers dressed in elaborate, ostentatiously hairy wild man costumes and taking part in symbolic wild man hunts, in which the latter is the quarry, to be captured and killed but afterwards resurrected.

The wild man and his family (De Negker David, Renaissance Period)

Moreover, the symbolic wild man is often closely allied to the green man, in which the former’s hair is replaced by a leafy profusion of foliage but its symbolic significance remains much the same.

Green man sculpture (Dr Karl Shuker)


CORPOREAL HUMANOID OR PARANORMAL PRESENCE?

In modern times, there have been reports of man-beasts in regions of Britain where it is simply not possible for such a species to exist without having been discovered by science long ago.

Visiting Cannock Chase (Dr Karl Shuker)

Persistent sightings of troll-like entities in the forests of Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, for instance, and even a 6.5-m-tall hairy bipedal giant allegedly encountered on Ben MacDhui, Scotland’s haunted mountain where the panic-inducing Big Grey Man is said to roam, cannot be readily explained (if accepted as genuine and not hoaxes) by normal cryptozoological theories.

Does a huge hairy man-beast entity exist on Ben MacDhui?

Consequently, it has been suggested that beings like these are not corporeal man-beasts at all, but instead are zooform entities – preternatural creatures assuming visible, humanoid form but of occult, paranormal nature and origin.


WAS GRENDEL A WOODWOSE?

The eponymous hero’s deadly foe, Grendel, in the famous Anglo-Saxon epic poem ‘Beowulf’, is generally thought of as a totally imaginary monster, and has been depicted and classified in many different ways. Intriguingly, however, some cryptozoological researchers, including American chronicler Thomas J. Mooney, have speculated that perhaps Grendel was actually a man-beast - because he is described in the poem as bipedal, clawed, larger and stronger than humans but somewhat humanoid in shape, very ugly, and residing in gloomy seclusion with his mother inside a cave hidden deep within a forest in Sweden.

Grendel, portrayed as a man-beast by J.R. Skelton (early 1900s)

If we assume (though it is obviously a very big, unsubstantiated assumption) that Grendel was based upon a real creature, a woodwose or similar man-beast would correspond more closely than any known animal species, including bears.


LAST OF THE NEANDERTHALS?

By far the most exciting suggestion on offer is that at least some woodwose reports are based upon relict Neanderthals. Variously deemed a subspecies of Homo sapiens or a separate species in its own right, Neanderthal Man first appeared in Europe as a distinct hominid with a complete set of recognisable characteristics approximately 130,000 years ago and officially became extinct here 24,000-30,000 years ago.
Reconstructions of Neanderthal man and woman at the Neanderthal Museum (UNiesert/Wikipedia)

Co-existing alongside our ancestor, Cro-Magnon Man, for around 10,000 years, Neanderthals are widely believed to have interbred with Cro-Magnons, and such interbreeding may even have brought about the Neanderthals’ extinction, via absorption into the Cro-Magnon population.

Neanderthal skull (Dr Karl Shuker)

It was veteran American cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson who first widely popularised the notion that perhaps the reports and legends of wild men in Europe arose from encounters with late-surviving Neanderthals, quietly persisting reclusively in various scarcely-traversed localities across Europe long after their official extinction date. This was subsequently championed by none other than the ‘Father of Cryptozoology’ himself, Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, who believed that the satyrs of Greek mythology also belonged to this category, and included the following paragraph in his comprehensive annotated checklist of cryptozoological creatures, published in 1986:

"[In Europe:] Wild hairy men, most probably Neanderthals having survived into historical times. Known as satyrs in classical antiquity – a name borrowed from the Hebrew se’ir (“the hairy one”) – and as wudewása (“wood being”) in the Middle Ages, they were reported until the 13th century in Ireland, until the 16th century in Saxony and Norway, until the 18th century on the Swedish island of Öland and in Estonia, in the Pyrénées ([known there as] iretges, basajaun) up to 1774 at least, and in the Carpathians (“wild man” of Kronstadt) up to 1784 at least."

Satyr statue by Frank 'Guy' Lynch, Sydney Botanic Gardens (Dr Karl Shuker)

In fact, it is possible that such beings have survived far beyond even those times in certain mountainous regions of Spain, with sightings there having being reported as recently as the 1990s, and which have since been researched by several cryptozoologists, including Sergio de la Rubia-Muñoz, who documented the following reports.

Neanderthal reconstruction (Dr Karl Shuker)

On 4 May 1993 at around 3.45 pm, in a sparsely-populated area known as Peña Montañesa (in Huesca) in the Spanish Pyrenees, woodsman Manuel Cazcarra was working with five others when, after they had all heard a scream and some squeals nearby, he went off to investigate and encountered a hairy man-beast, standing 1.7 m tall. It immediately clambered swiftly up a pine tree, where it remained, clutching a branch with its arms and legs, and screaming loudly. When Cazcarra called the other men, they came running up and one of them, Ramiro López, was just in time to see the entity climb back down to the ground and hide itself behind a dense thicket before hurling a hefty tree branch in their direction. Not surprisingly, they chose not to pursue it further!

'The Fight in the Forest' - a woodwose-featuring engraving (Hans Burgkmair, early 1500s)

These eyewitnesses were woodsmen, they were used to working in forests and were very familiar with bears, but they stated categorically that what they had seen was no bear. Mysterious footprints that could not be identified with any known species in the area were found there later that same week by a patrol of the Guardia Civil, accompanied by one of the woodsmen. And soon afterwards, an ape-like figure was seen crossing a road near the French border by a family travelling in their car towards Prats de Molló.

Wild man design for a stained glass window, generally (though not universally) believed to be by Hans Holbein the Younger

During the late spring of 1994, another putative woodwose sighting was made in this same region. While hiking from Peña Montañesa to the village of Bielsa close by, Juan Ramó Ferrer, a mountain climber from Andalusia, encountered a very hirsute but distinctly humanoid entity jumping from tree to tree and giving voice to ape-like squeals. According to the description later given by Ferrer, who had duly fled, terrified, to a campsite near Peña Montañesa, the entity was shortish, was covered with reddish hair, had very long ape-like arms, and exuded a musky odour.

Humorous set of figurines depicting a woodwose family (Dr Karl Shuker)

It would be easy to shrug off the woodwose as merely a medieval legend, but reports such as those documented here suggest that there is much more than that to this mystery.

Woodwose (Albrecht Dürer, 1520s)

Reports of hairy man-beasts in Europe and the Middle East (not to mention the Himalayan yeti, Mongolian almas, Chinese yeren, North American bigfoot, and numerous other similar beings reported elsewhere around the globe) date back to antiquity, and some of these definitely bear comparison with Neanderthal Man.

Wild man depiction in Omnium Fere Gentiumr - Jean Sluperji, Antwerp, 1572


EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE?

But perhaps we should not be too surprised that a second species of human, a hairy wild man far removed from our own naked ‘civilised’ species, may well have existed alongside us since the earliest days and even into the present day.

Wild man with shield (Martin Schongauer, 1490)

We have only to turn to the Holy Bible (Genesis 25: 21-27, referring to the brothers Esau and Jacob) for a highly unexpected yet remarkably precise corroboration of this dramatic cryptozoological prospect:

  "And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife...and Rebekah his wife conceived.
   And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord.
   And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
   And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
   And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
   And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob...
   And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents."

Esau portrayed as a hairy wild man, alongside an ape (left) for comparison (Johann Scheuchzer, 1731)

What better way of describing to non-scientific laymen, back in the ancient days when this Old Testament passage was written, the existence and development of two separate species (nations) of human, one of which is modern man and the other the wild man? Perhaps Linnaeus was right after all.

'Wild Women with Unicorn', c.1500-1510, Basel Historical Museum


AND FINALLY:

Woodwose riding a unicorn - one fabulous beast, or two?
   

Thursday, 9 August 2012

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE SINGLE SATYR

Replica of Greek satyr bust from c.400 BC (Dr Karl Shuker)

A few months ago, I spotted in a charity shop the very unusual artefact depicted above at the beginning of this ShukerNature blog post; and after recognising what it was, I lost no time in purchasing it for the princely sum of just £5. It is a replica of a Greek stone bust dating from c.400 BC, which portrays the head of a satyr.

Today, the popular image of a satyr is that of a semi-human semi-goat entity, with hairy goat-legs and hoofed feet, a pair of short curly horns, and a very inconspicuous goat-tail.

'Satyr Among Roses' (Jade Bengco)

In classical Greek mythology, conversely, the satyr was originally represented with the long, profusely-haired tail of a horse, with pointed donkey-like ears rather than horns, a flattened nose, and the legs and feet of a normal human.

Lovers of wine, nymphs, and playing music with their panpipes, satyrs were disciples of a minor demi-god of fertility called Silenus, and, just like him, they were also enthusiastic followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. As Silenus was commonly portrayed as an elderly man of typically inebriated aspect, old satyrs were duly referred to as sileni (young ones were known as satyrisci).

'Drunken Silenus', a 2nd-Century-AD Roman marble statue in the Louvre, Paris (public domain)

During Roman times, however, the image of the satyr became conflated and ultimately synonymised with that of a rustic Roman nature deity called Faunus. He was half-human, half-goat, as were his followers, known as fauns (though originally they were described as half-human, half-deer).

Statue of Faunus at the Fountain of Neptune in Florence, Italy, sculpted by Bartolomeo Ammanati (public domain)

Since then, satyrs and fauns have generally been treated as one and the same type of mythical entity. But just how mythical – or otherwise – are satyrs?

As described time and again in mythology and folklore, satyrs were infamously lewd and lustful, never happier than when, fuelled by copious quantities of wine, they were in lecherous pursuit of some hapless nymph to ravish.
Satyr statue by Frank (Guy) Lynch in Sydney Botanic Gardens, Australia, visited by me during autumn 2006 (Dr Karl Shuker)

In my book The Unexplained (1996), I documented a remarkable cryptozoologically-relevant link between these priapic satyrs of classical legend and certain forms of elusive man-beast being reported today – with the emphasis very definitely upon priapic. Here is what I wrote:

"In Greek mythology, satyrs were semi-humans with the hairy legs, hooves, tail, and short horns of goats - but did they have a basis in reality? This unexpected prospect was raised in a stimulating paper published in the scientific journal Human Evolution in 1994 by Dr Helmut Loofs-Wissowa from the Australian National University's Faculty of Asian Studies.

"In ancient classical art, satyrs were frequently portrayed with a prominently erect penis - even when engaging in non-sexual activity. Indeed, it was this characteristic that earned them their reputation for sexual licentiousness. However, Dr Loofs-Wissowa believes that this is all fallacious - that in reality, the satyrs were displaying a physiological condition known as the penis rectus, in which the penis assumes a horizontal position even when flaccid. Among modern humans, this condition is only recorded from the bushmen of South Africa, but it is often portrayed in prehistoric cave art, including some Upper Palaeolithic examples from Europe, in which the figures exhibiting the penis rectus condition are hairy humanoids."


"There are two very intriguing aspects concerning this. One is that anthropologists have argued that these hirsute figures are representations of Neanderthal Man Homo neanderthalensis, which is believed to have died out at least 30,000 years ago. The other is that sightings of hairy troll-like humanoids are often reported in many parts of Asia, and these are believed by some scientists to be relict, modern-day Neanderthals, eluding formal scientific discovery. Of particular note here is that eyewitness descriptions of these mystifying entities have often alluded to the odd fact that they seem to have permanently erect penises, apparent even when spied indulging in non-sexual activity such as eating or walking. This suggests that they are in reality displaying the penis rectus condition.

"Combining all of this information, Loofs-Wissowa suggests that the penis rectus condition is clearly a marker in human palaeontology, i.e. indicating the identity of Neanderthals. And, as a direct consequence, he boldly proposes that satyrs might actually have been latter-day Neanderthals. He notes that many features attributed to satyrs in artistic representations differentiate them from modern humans but ally them to Neanderthals. These include their hairy body, upturned nose, prominent eye ridges, round head, strong neck - and, most noticeable of all, their exhibition of the penis rectus condition, hitherto wrongly identified as an overtly visual indication that satyrs possessed a hyperactive sex drive.

"A very novel idea, but it still leaves unexplained the small matter of the satyrs' hooves and tail, not to mention their horns..."

Statue of a satyr unearthed at Pompeii, Italy (Dr Karl Shuker)

Not all cryptozoologists, however, agree that satyrs may represent relict Neanderthals. In their book The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (Avon Books: New York, 1999), Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe propose an alternative but equally thought-provoking option. They suggest that man-beasts exhibiting this distinctive penile condition represent a category of man-beast entirely separate from Neanderthals. They term it the Erectus Hominid, as they believe this man-beast may constitute a surviving representative of one of our own species' ancestors, Homo erectus:

"The Erectus Hominid is probably the least known of the world's mystery hominids. The reason for this is simple: most of the beings in this class have in the past been misidentified as Neanderthal. The Erectus Hominid is human-sized to about six feet tall. Its body is also within the standard human range with a slight barrelling of the chest. They are partially to fully hairy, with head hair longer than their body hair. The males of the class normally display a semi-erect penis."

Whatever the identity of satyrs in European mythology may be, however, there is an intriguing yet generally overlooked reason for their unbridled libido and debauched passion for seducing nymphs – the same reason why I entitled this ShukerNature blog post 'Sex and the Single Satyr'. Remarkably, there is no reference anywhere in the annals of classical mythology to female satyrs!

'Nymphs and Satyr', painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)

By definition, therefore, all satyrs were doomed to remain single, celibate, and sexually frustrated – unless they could achieve some lascivious success with the local dryads (wood nymphs) and oreads (mountain nymphs). Equally, such illicit liaisons offered the only opportunity for satyrs to procreate, producing new generations of satyrs, albeit ones that were increasingly diluted by the nymphs' genetic input.

Statue of an infant faun at Glastonbury, Somerset (Dr Karl Shuker)

Eventually, satyrs simply vanished from folklore and traditions, but, faced with such an uncertain, unpredictable pathway to reproductive success, it is hardly surprising really that they became extinct!

Satyr frolicking with nymphs, painted by Claude Lorrain (public domain)



Saturday, 15 January 2011

FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS!


Painting of trolls by Swedish artist John Bauer (1882-1918) (Wikipedia)

Trolls are famously frightened of sunlight and the tolling of church bells, but did you know that they are also scared of thunder and sometimes transform into ball lightning? No? Well you do now, and so do I – thanks to an extremely interesting email that was kindly sent to me just a few days ago by a ShukerNature reader.

One of the delights of writing this blog has always been the receipt of additional and often very unexpected, significant information from its many readers and followers, some of whom post their thoughts and data directly here, whereas others send theirs to me privately. In this vein, after emailing me previously with valuable new data in response to my post on the night-raven (and which I duly included in full within the comments section of that post), on 8 January 2011 Swedish correspondent Håkan Lindh sent me another very informative and enlightening email, but this time on the subject of Scandinavia’s most famous folkloric entities - trolls.

If, like me, you were a child somewhere in Europe or North America during the mid-1960s, then it is very likely that your first encounter with the term ‘troll’ came via those ubiquitous toy figures originally created in 1959 by Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam but which soon became toy sensations worldwide. Of varying size and often unclothed, but invariably topped with great shocks of silky hair, ‘troll dolls’ were created in their millions and in every conceivable combination of skin and hair colour (click here for more details). Fascinated by these weird yet strangely intriguing entities (clearly my future passion for cryptozoology was already beginning to surface!), I pestered my parents into buying me a sizeable, multicoloured array of them – and, hoarder that I am, I still have some of the smaller ones standing in line along the shelf of one of my bedroom bookcases, as well as a larger, fiery-haired biker troll! (Yes, my motorbike passion was an early developer too!)


My miniature troll dolls retained from childhood (Dr Karl Shuker)


From these Westernised toy trolls, it was just the smallest of steps for me to begin reading in British and American books of fables and folklore about more traditional, Nordic trolls – or what I had at least assumed until now were traditional Nordic trolls. Here I came across all of the classic troll stereotypes – 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.

And then, in later years, along came cryptozoology, which introduced to me the exciting notion that perhaps trolls were more than just a myth. Could they instead have been inspired by misty, preserved memories from long ago of encounters between modern man’s ancestors and Neanderthal man? And could some of these latter have even survived into historical times, explaining reports of woodwose or hairy wild men allegedly spied in various of the more remote reaches of Europe? Moreover, there were even suggestions that perhaps trolls were man-beasts, comparable to the Himalayan yetis and North American bigfoot.

But how close – if indeed close at all – were any of these varied Western concepts of trolls to those prevalent in their Scandinavian homelands and traditions? Let’s just say, as you’ll now discover, that Håkan Lindh’s email to me regarding trolls was nothing if not eye-opening - revealing that the ‘real’ Nordic troll is very different indeed from what I had previously been led to believe or expect. It also contained a most interesting snippet concerning the possibility favoured by some cryptozoologists that dragons were real animals:

"I have been interested in cryptozoology for as long as I can remember, but I’m also very sceptical of the value of folklore as a source. Sure, stories may sometimes hide grains of truth, but folklore itself spins that according to its own "rules".

"The early folklorist/ethnographer Hyltén-Cavallius did a serious cryptozoological survey in the nineteenth century Sweden about dragons. His theory was that dragons really were a Scandinavian species of python, so he sent out advertisements to get in touch with witnesses. And people did contact him, but it is obvious that what they told him was of no real substance, exaggerated stories of grass-snakes and the staples from dragon-folklore mostly, so it ended in nothing. Hyltén-Cavallius sure was a pioneer, but also seen as something of an eccentric already in his own time. His theories about trolls and giants were also seen as too much.

"Besides a general knowledge of a phenomenon, I’m unsure if there are much facts to find from folklore.

"I read a few years back on the net about cryptozoologists trying to identify our trolls as some kind of bigfoot, and that is very strange indeed. Trolls are never described as giant apelike animals, they are people living in societies, wearing clothes, having laws and language etc just like humans. 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.

"After the industrialism arrived, illustrators of children’s books like John Bauer created the "modern" troll, but those were not the trolls people actually believed existed once.

"So there is nothing in the real folklore that connects trolls with bigfoot-type cryptids. No more than British fairies actually.

"But cryptozoology will continue to be a favourite interest of mine, just as folklore is, even if I’m sceptical about [whether] the two subjects will really meet very often."


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 franchise.

That gives me an idea! Hold on – what do you mean there’s already a series of films out there starring a giant green ogre who actually turns out to be quite a caring, sharing, loveable kind of guy?! You’ll be telling me next that there’s also a series of films out there starring modern-day vampires more concerned about romantic teenage angst than blood, and sporting a fetchingly wan pallor to match! What? Oh...



My biker troll doll (flanked by a pair of Biker Mice From Mars!) (Dr Karl Shuker)