Murktrolls

Murktrolls are shaggy twilight creatures of the forest, part of the community of living beings whose presence challenges any human claim to own or control the wilderness. They emerge among the rocks and trees after dusk, appear in an ancient spring dance, and remain active through the seasonal changes that shape Ronia and Birk’s life outside the fort.

Habitat and Place in the Forest

When Birk rebukes Ronia for calling the fox cubs hers and the woods hers, he describes the forest as shared among foxes, wolves, bears, elk, wild horses, birds, insects, and other creatures. He includes murktrolls alongside wild harpies, gray dwarfs, and rumphobs: they belong to the same woodland world, rather than to either human faction’s territory.

Their presence is especially associated with twilight. As spring dusk settles, the daytime birds fall silent and the cubs and other young animals return to their shelters. The forest then awakens into another rhythm: rumphobs snuffle among the trees, gray dwarfs crawl out in troops, wild harpies descend from the mountains, and shaggy murktrolls creep behind boulders. The account places them within a wider cycle of activity rather than presenting them as isolated monsters.

The Spring Song and Moonlit Dance

During Ronia’s first spring in the forest with Birk, the murktrolls appear dancing on a rocky outcrop in the moonlight. Ronia pauses unseen to watch. Their movement is quiet and clumsy, and they hum as they sway together, giving the scene a stillness distinct from the bustle of the daytime glade.

Noddle-Pete had told Ronia that the murktrolls danced only on moonlit nights and had described their dance as a spring song. He had even tried to hum it for her, but the sound she hears is unlike his imitation: ancient and sorrowful. The scene gives the creatures a culture and a seasonal expression of their own, glimpsed briefly by a human observer who cannot fully reproduce or explain it.

Relations with People and Other Creatures

Murktrolls are among the beings Ronia and Birk encounter while making a home in the forest. After harpies have discovered their cave, the pair decide not to live in fear of what has not yet happened. They arrange their supplies, draw water from a spring, set a fishing net in the river, and gather materials for a hearth and bow. The murktrolls remain part of the surrounding forest life as the children make these practical preparations.

The shadow folk also affect the behavior of larger animals. When Ronia and Birk treat an injured wild mare, a rumphob appears and observes them. His presence reassures them that the bear has gone: bears and wolves avoid the shadow folk, and even the first smell of them is enough to send a bear silently deeper into the forest. Murktrolls are not singled out as the cause of this particular encounter, but they are named among the shadow folk whom predators need not fear.

Seasonal Presence and Significance

The murktrolls recur as part of the forest’s life across the seasons. In summer, Ronia and Birk notice rumphobs, murktrolls, and gray dwarfs peeping curiously from behind trunks and boulders. When Ronia wonders about the coming winter, she recognizes that these beings continue cheerfully through the cold season too. Their lives are not organized around the children’s comfort or timetable.

Later, as summer fades and autumn rains keep Ronia and Birk in the cave for days, Noddle-Pete’s seasonal observation returns to mind: the singing of the Unearthly Ones in the forest means autumn has arrived and winter is near. The murktrolls’ moonlit spring song and their appearances among the forest’s twilight creatures help establish a world with rhythms and inhabitants beyond the human plot. Their brief, distinct appearances deepen the story’s insistence that the woods are shared, and that human beings enter a living place rather than inherit it as their own.