Nils Knudsen brings the troll to Queens

Nils Knudsen’s move from Norway to Queens brought a creature of the natural world into a changing American landscape—and bound his family to a bargain paid for with a child. In Jorgen Knudsen’s account, the troll’s arrival begins as a desperate form of insurance and ends with Nils carrying out the creature’s demand for Agnes.

Causes and the Crossing

Nils needed to leave Norway with his wife, Anna Sofie, and did not want to begin a new life without her. But when he saw the small sloop that the Quakers planned to sail, he doubted it could safely carry his family. He brought the troll as insurance against that uncertainty, though the protection came at a price.

The Sloopers reached New York and went upstate; Nils, Anna Sofie, and Petra Mikkelsdatter remained in Queens. The move therefore split the Knudsens’ course from that of the other passengers and placed the family in a landscape where the creature could remain close at hand.

A Creature in Queens

In Norway, Jorgen explains, such beings belonged to the natural world, making their lairs in forests and mountains. Queens, before the park existed, offered a comparable expanse: farmland and thousands of acres of forest and green land. Jorgen names the creature Jotunn and Trolde in Norwegian, situating it within the family’s homeland rather than treating its presence as an unfamiliar intrusion into nature.

The landscape changed around it. By 1898, land for the park had been purchased and its design was beginning, with golf courses and hiking paths planned across hilly country. The development did not eliminate the terrain’s hidden spaces: pockets and caves remained places where something large could conceal itself. The account thus connects the troll’s survival not to a static wilderness but to pockets of older terrain persisting within a designed park.

The Bargain and Agnes

Nils’s responsibility did not end with bringing the troll across the ocean. Under the deal he had struck in Norway, he became its caretaker, charged with keeping it appeased. Its demand was a child. When he could no longer delay, Nils took his daughter Agnes into the woods and delivered her to the creature’s cave.

The arrival therefore established a continuing obligation rather than a single act of protection. The family’s passage to a new life was secured, in Jorgen’s telling, through a bargain that made a child the price of appeasement. Nils’s decision to carry the troll to Queens and his later delivery of Agnes are linked stages of the same pact.