No one is quite sure where the word ‘troll’ originates. We know that the word has its roots in the old Norse and German languages, and means variously ‘fiend’, ‘demon’ or ‘monster’. The first official mention comes in the Skáldskaparmál, an early book of Viking poetry (if you can imagine such a thing) in the 9th Century. In it, Bragi Boddason, a skald or story-teller, meets a strange woman in a forest. She tells him of all the terrible things she has done, such as stealing a giant’s wealth and the fact that she guards over the ‘corpse fjord’. At the end, she asks: “What else could I be, but a troll?”
In later stories, the trolls become less human in appearance and more like the monsters we know them as now. The villains of Beowulf, Grendel and his mother, could very easily be described as trolls. By the time Norse settlers came to the Scottish islands of Orkney and Shetland, ‘troll’ was a word that described a strange, otherworldly creature that existed on the edge of things, something to be respected and avoided rather than fought.
Nowadays, our image of trolls comes mostly from JRR Tolkien and his Lord Of The Rings saga. In that story, trolls are monstrous beasts, incredibly strong and cruel, but not terribly bright. Certainly, anyone who has seen the movie won’t quickly forget the first time a troll is seen on screen. They can be seen again in The Hobbit, this time arguing over whether burglar-hobbits have enough meat on them to make a pie. For some reason, trolls almost always sound like they were born and bred in East London.
Fortunately, there’s significantly less peril in the game. In fact, the trolls are pretty generous, they will do quite a bit to help you out. For example, there are a couple of bonus symbols that can really make a difference to your game. The first is a cauldron of what we presume to be food of an unknown provenance. This can appear out of nowhere and will produce bubbles with bonus coins or even some extra Free Spins. Then there is the lucky rock, which similarly turns up with no warning. The lucky rock adds multipliers to your win if you have one, and if not, will give you up to 1,000 coins.
They’re also pretty helpful when it comes to the bonus round. For starters, they lower the drawbridge, allowing you access to the golden castle on the hill. But before you go, the trolls want you to pick a few cards. These will give you extra Free Spins, sticky wilds, multipliers or even random wilds. How many cards you get to pick depends on a couple of factors. The first of these is how many Free Spins symbols have hit. Three symbols will give you at least 6 Free Spins and the choice of three cards. Four gives you 8 Free Spins and four picks, and five gives you 10 Spins and five picks. Of course, you could add to the number of card picks you get by activating the Golden Bet button. This adds a little extra to your original stake, but gives you an extra card when it comes to Free Spins time, and so is well worth doing.