This essay examines how trolls are represented in modern Swedish literature and how these representations relate to traditional Nordic folklore. The study focuses on how troll figures are connected to nature, liminality, identity, otherness and the uncanny. The primary material consists of Stallo by Stefan Spjut and Gräns by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which are analyzed in relation to folkloric and theoretical sources, including works by Ann-Charlotte Ekensten, Johan Egerkrans and Sofia Wijkmark.

The analysis demonstrates that modern representations of trolls retain several central features from traditional folklore, such as their connection to nature, their unstable bodies and their position outside human society. At the same time, these folkloric motifs are reinterpreted in ways that reflect contemporary concerns surrounding identity, belonging and the boundaries of humanity. In Stallo, trolls primarily function as threatening and uncanny beings associated with violence, nature and the breakdown of rational explanations. In contrast, Gräns presents the troll figure through questions of bodily identity, alienation and belonging, where the boundary between human and non-human becomes increasingly unstable.

The study further shows that trolls in modern literature function as liminal figures that challenge distinctions between human and non-human, nature and culture, normal and abnormal. Rather than merely functioning as remnants of older belief systems, troll figures become literary tools through which contemporary literature explores existential uncertainty, identity and the fear of the unfamiliar within the human self.