The Trow

It is tempting to treat the trow as simply "the Shetland and Orkney word for troll," a straightforward Scandinavian import left behind by Norse settlement, or alternatively to lump it in with the Highland fairy ("sìth") tradition as though all Scottish supernatural small-folk were variations on one theme. Neither shortcut holds up. The trow is its own regional type, shaped by Norn language and Norse-period settlement but developed in the Northern Isles into something distinctly its own — smaller, greyer, more nocturnal, and more tightly bound to taboo and silence than either a Scandinavian troll of the mountains or a Highland sìth of the fairy hill. This card treats the trow on its own terms.

This article relies on linguistic scholarship on the Norn language (the now-extinct North Germanic language of Orkney and Shetland) for the trow/troll/drow etymology, on the independent nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklore collections of Walter Traill Dennison (Orkney) and Jessie M. E. Saxby (Shetland) for the bulk of the recorded custom and belief, and on Jo Ben's 1529 description for the earliest textual trace. Speculative theories about the belief's ultimate historical origin (such as Joan Dey's 1991 suggestion of pre-Norse folk memory) are identified as interpretation rather than established fact.

The core tradition

Trows are described in Orkney and Shetland tradition as small, grey-clad, nocturnal beings who dwell inside earthen mounds known as trowie knowes, emerging only after sunset; a trow caught above ground after sunrise is said to be trapped there, unable to return underground until nightfall. They have a particular, well-documented fondness for music, especially fiddle music, and a persistent motif across both island groups describes trows luring or abducting fiddlers into their mounds, where a single night's playing can correspond to years passing in the outside world — a captive fiddler who finally escapes may return to find his instrument rotted, his cottage gone, and everyone he knew long dead. A strong taboo traditionally surrounded even discussing trows aloud, and seeing one was considered to bring ill fortune, while, by contrast, overhearing trow speech was sometimes held to be lucky.

Hill-trows and sea-trows

Tradition distinguishes two broad trow types, described as mutual enemies: hill-trows, the land-dwelling mound folk described above, and sea-trows, grotesque, seaweed-draped, monkey-faced beings with disproportionate limbs and webbed, disc-shaped feet, recorded in detail by Dennison for Orkney. Shetland tradition adds the mokkl sea-trow, said to be capable of taking female human form and of raising storms or interfering with fishing — a maritime danger quite distinct from the land-bound hill-trow's fondness for music and mischief. A further named local variant, the kunal-trow of Unst in Shetland, is described as an exclusively male population that required human wives and wet-nurses, a specific and locally bounded piece of tradition rather than a trait of trows generally.

Why the trow is not a Scandinavian troll

Although "trow" almost certainly descends in part from the same root as "troll," reflecting the centuries of Norse settlement and the Norn language once spoken across Orkney and Shetland, the developed Northern Isles tradition is not simply a surviving Scandinavian troll belief relocated to Scottish islands. Scandinavian trolls are typically larger, associated with mountains and remote wilderness, and often framed as a single monstrous threat; trows are consistently described as small, grey, mound-dwelling, music-obsessed, and governed by a specific body of local taboo (the silence requirement, the sunrise deadline, the trowie knowe as dwelling) that developed within the Northern Isles themselves over the centuries since Norse settlement, rather than being inherited unchanged. The linguistic link to "troll" explains where the word came from; it does not mean the belief is interchangeable with mainland Scandinavian troll-lore.

Why the trow is not a Highland fairy

Equally, the trow should not be treated as simply the Orkney-Shetland name for the Highland sìth or "good neighbours." The Highland fairy tradition is a Gaelic-speaking mainland and Hebridean phenomenon with its own vocabulary, customs (offerings, the sìthean as dwelling, the fairy rade), and moral ambiguity, developed independently in a different linguistic and cultural context from the historically Norse-settled, Norn- and later Scots-speaking Northern Isles. Shetland tradition itself draws this contrast explicitly, describing trows as smaller and greyer than the larger Highland fairy figures reported in mainland and Hebridean belief. Treating the two as the same tradition under different regional names obscures the genuinely separate linguistic and settlement history — Norse in the Northern Isles, Gaelic in the Highlands and Hebrides — that shaped each.

Scholarly significance

The trow is valuable to folklorists as a documented case of a supernatural tradition visibly shaped by a specific, datable linguistic and settlement history: Norn-language roots, Norse-period settlement, and centuries of relative geographic and cultural separation from both mainland Scandinavia and mainland Gaelic Scotland, producing a type that is neither. The independent nineteenth- and twentieth-century collection of consistent core material in both Orkney (Dennison) and Shetland (Saxby) — two separate island groups collected by two separate recorders — gives scholars unusually solid cross-corroboration for a regional folk belief.

• "Trow" is linguistically related to "troll," reflecting the centuries of Norse settlement and the now-extinct Norn language once spoken in Orkney and Shetland.
• Trows are traditionally said to be trapped above ground if caught out after sunrise, unable to return to their mound dwelling until nightfall.
• A famous motif describes fiddlers lured into a trow mound for what feels like one night, only to emerge to find decades have passed outside.
• A body of genuine Shetland fiddle tunes, called "trowie tunes," are traditionally said to have been learned from the trows themselves.
• Orkney tradition records a distinct sea-trow, a grotesque, seaweed-covered, monkey-faced sea creature, quite different from the land-dwelling hill-trow.
• There was traditionally a strong taboo against even talking about trows; seeing one was thought to bring bad luck, while overhearing trow speech was sometimes considered lucky.
• The earliest written trace of Northern Isles supernatural sea-belief consistent with trow tradition dates to 1529, in Jo Ben's Description of the Orkney Islands.
• A specific local variant, the kunal-trow of Unst in Shetland, was said to be an all-male population requiring human wives — a detail particular to that one locality, not trows generally.

The exact linguistic derivation of "trow" — how much comes from "troll" versus the Norn "drau"/"draugr" line via "drow" — remains a specialist disagreement in Norn and Scots historical linguistics, not a settled fact; this article presents both strands as live possibilities rather than choosing one. Joan Dey's 1991 suggestion that trow belief partly preserves memory of pre-Norse indigenous islanders is an interesting historical theory, not a demonstrated origin, and should not be repeated as established fact. Popular shorthand that calls the trow "the Shetland troll" or "basically a Scottish fairy" flattens exactly the regional and linguistic distinctiveness that makes the trow worth treating as its own tradition.