Called jätte (yett-uh) in Swedish, troll or jutul (yoo-tool) in Norwegian, trolls and giants are prominent in fables and in etiological legends explaining the origin of many huge rock formations, lakes and the so-called giants potholes. The Norwegian word ‘jutul’ stems from the Old Norse Jotunn, which denotes a race of giants in opposition to man and gods. Trolls and giants are disruptive and destructive beings, though occasionally they can be helpful. Massive, self-centred and able to gouge and shape hardy landscapes, they are not without a powerful nemesis: the sun. In much folklore, many a troll meets the fate of a strange sort of petrification: contact with the sun immediately turns them to stone. So from the pine-laden mountains and prosperous farms of the Vågå region in Norway to imperial Copenhagen, from the jagged-peaks and moss-laden cliffs of Iceland’s West-fjords to the immense vertical sea cliffs of the Faroe Islands, we will hear tales of earth-sculpting colossal beings.