I made a post some time ago (LINK) about how trolls are more nuanced creatures in Scandinavian folklore than in modern English speaking pop culture and are often used as sympathetic allegories for people who just can’t fit in with mainstream society, be it because of their disability, gender or sexuality.
I realized I forgot about the Danish 1856 ballet A Folk Tale (you can watch it on YouTube here LINK) despite it being an excellent example because in modern times it has been reinterpreted to fit this new view of trolls. (Because it’s an older ballet it has less dancing and more miming and acting than you’re probably expecting)
The story to help you better understand the ballet: The human girl Hilda and the troll girl Birthe are swapped as infants.
Many years later during a picnic Birthe is flirting with the nobleman Sir Mogens even though her fiancé Junker Ove is present. She enjoys toying with both of them, much to Ove’s dismay and Mogens’ delight. It all ends in Ove and Birthe having a fight resulting in Birthe leaving with Mogens and Ove staying in the forest past sundown to collect his thoughts.
Suddenly a nearby hill opens and reveals the troll sorceress Muri and her adopted daughter Hilda. Muri tells Hilda to lure Ove closer and get him to drink from an enchanted cup but he refuses, spills the drink and won’t give the cup back. As revenge Muri summons the elves who dance him into madness and leave him scared, confused and half naked in the dark forest (if you only know fantasy elves this is a perfect example of what the original elves are like in Scandinavian folklore)
In the underworld we learn that Hilda has been told she’s an elf girl but she senses something is off. Both of Muri’s sons, Diderik and Viderik, are in love with her but Muri has decided that Diderik should marry her because he’s the oldest. During the engagement party Hilda and Viderik get the guests drunk and run away.
They end up near a sacred spring where they see a priest feed the healing water to sick people. They try to cheer the sick and poor people up with music and dance but suddenly Ove shows up. He still has the elf madness and scares everyone. Mogens happens to walk by and thinks Ove is attacking people so he runs to get help, secretly plotting to get Ove out of the way so he can marry Birthe. Meanwhile Hilda feeds some of the sacred spring water to Ove and dance him back to sanity. Mogens returns with soldiers, hunters and farmers and trap Ove. Viderik helps him escape using his magic music and sends Mogens and his men on a wild goose chase.
Back at the mansion Birthe is terrorizing her servants and even goes as far as to threaten to throw her mother out of the house. Hilda who had been running from Mogens’ men makes her way into the mansion where she is recognized as the true heir to the estate. Because of her horrible treatment of the household Birthe is immediately thrown out onto the street and runs to Mogens for help only to find him under a troll spell. Instead of being horrified she’s delighted. Viderik realize she’s his real sister and while they talk it out other supernatural creatures come out and trap Mogens. Muri and Diderik have been looking for Hilda and Viderik and arrive just as Birthe is starting to come around to the idea that she might be a troll. Muri sees an opportunity and asks Mogens if he wants to marry her daughter Birthe. He’s too terrified and refuses until Muri offer him treasure. When Birthe realizes her troll family is even richer than her human family she immediately accepts that she’s a troll and together Birthe and Mogens follow the trolls into the underworld.
Back at the mansion Hilda and Ove have been reunited and are celebrating their wedding. Mogens and Birthe arrives which at first scares people but they’ve come in peace and to show their good will they’ve bought a dance troupe and preform for the newly weds. The ballet ends on a freeze frame of Hilda and Ove standing in the light, looking towards the human world, and Birthe and Mogens in the dark, raising their arms towards the supernatural world, both couples getting their happiest possible ending.
Now, the original version took place during the renaissance and had a strong Christian theme. Hilda wanted to return to the human world because she longed for Christian values and Ove was like a beacon of purity for her to follow. At the end all trolls left Denmark, symbolizing Christianity finally taking hold of the country.
The updated version takes place in the time it was written and the Christian themes have been severely downplayed. Trolls and all supernatural creatures are still very much present, even watching the wedding from a distance. It is now a personal story about people feeling misplaced and longing for a community that understands and accepts them.
Birthe is aggressive, even cruel at times, but this version also implies her behavior is part nature and part nurture. She is described as spoiled meaning her parents had a huge hand in how she turned out, unable or perhaps unwilling to handle her condition and now her mother despise what she has become. This is evident in how Birthe behaves around her mother. She LOVES her wet nurse who took on the emotional parenting role but recoils at her mother’s touch. She also directs most of her abuse at the housekeeper because she most openly mocks Birthe’s clumsiness and inability to act refined. There’s a heartbreaking scene where Birthe gets so frustrated with her inability to dance and fit in that she screams at her own reflection until the wet nurse calms her down.
Only two people are able to calm Birthe down, her wet nurse who cuddles her when she gets upset and Mogens who is seen directing Birthe’s attention to himself which softens her demeanor because she likes him and doesn’t want to cause him more harm than he can handle.
Both her and Mogens are also more queer coded in this version. Birthe wants to be a dancer and gets very up and close with the female dancers. In the first scene Mogens can be seen flirting with the female staff and in the last scene he feels comfortable openly flirting with the male dancers. It’s worth noting neither acts jealous when they see their partner flirt, again shining a light on their alternative relationship.
And who could forget when Birthe tricks Mogens into kissing Ove. In the taped version he kiss Ove’s hand but in the version I watched live they kissed on the mouth which better explained why Mogens grabs Ove’s face later as if to mockingly say “You think I’m disgusting? Look at what you’ve become”
And you’d think Mogens had more reason to be mad than Ove but no, he’s flustered but gets over it almost immediately while Ove is so angry he rips his jacket off like the good pure boy he is.
And something that really stands out is Mogens’ worship of Birthe. The first time Birthe appears all the other characters run to the opposite end of the stage but Mogens doesn’t even flinch. He just bathes in her presence. When she asks him to push her on the swing he unprompted gets her whip.
In a later scene she’s seen using a bell to bully her servants and the final thing that makes her realize she has lost all power is when they ignore it, which makes it very symbolic that Mogens gives her the bell back in the final scene and holds her up high while she rings it. Boy loves his Dom GF so very very much.
It also says something about Mogens that he randomly appears in the bad part of town. He’s very good at playing the upper class game and seems to be quite respected but also seeks escape in the outskirts of society. When Birthe really gets going you can see Mogens acting shocked followed by pure joy at such a free and wild woman. The Danish translation of Shakespeare’s Taming of The Shrew is Troll can be Tamed and this ballet almost feels like a response to that. Trolls/wild women should not be tamed! They should be free around people who love them for their wildness!
Their behavior is perfectly in line with what we see in the underworld. Muri is played by a male dancer to give her the proper imposing height and it’s left up for interpretation if older female trolls are just bigger than the males or if she’s a trans mommy. The engagement party is risqué from the start and quickly turns into a drunken sex orgy (Good luck to Mogens when he is engaged to Birthe. All I’m saying is as a human he’s going to be very popular with the other creatures) It might seem like an evil world but this version of the ballet really tries to make it clear that this is normal and expected behavior in the underworld. They act like that because they like it and are all happy with the way their society works. Even the more gentle troll Viderik prefer the underworld to the human world. It’s not bad just different.
Birthe and Mongens almost come of as lower level money-happy Disney villains, deserving of a fitting punishment for their treatment of the people around them, but certainly not death and the story is overall sympathetic to them as people who have been mangled by a society that mistreated and punished them for something that was out of their control which is why they get a happy ending. Definitely worth a watch.