My name is Spencer Pearman, I’m currently based in Longmont Colorado. I started studying Trolldom in 2022 under Johannes Gårdbäck, a former practitioner and current teacher in Sweden. Trolldom is one name used for the Scandinavian practice of what we today, call folk magic.
‘Troll’ references what is unseen or other, making this the art of Trolls. This term has been used interchangeably with many other terms throughout time and geography, and the use of these terms in English can be found even today in rural areas of America. For instance, practitioners in the Appalachia and Ozark mountains get referred to as ‘someone who can do a little of this and a little of that’, ‘praying grannies’, ‘one with the gift’ and the term ‘cunning’ which has a wide use in folk traditions, and gets applied to Trolldom as ‘Trollcunning’, one who has knowledge and ability to navigate the unseen. The practice of Trolldom will look familiar to those engaged with other folk traditions, as the specifics of each arise from the particular landscape and history of a culture, but the relationship with the natural world and it’s use to address the needs of people living on it, is something shared among the variations of folk magic.
Today, we are more familiar with terms such as magic, spell craft, witchcraft, and our contemporary developments of energy healing, neo shamanism, spiritual herbalism, quantum healing, and the myriad of terms popping up every day. Regardless of the framework, something always seems to rise within us to meet our needs in whatever way we can. The aim of Trolldom has always been to address the real needs of people using whatever is available.
Today Trolldom practitioners have a wide range of tools and perspectives available that people wouldn’t have had a couple hundred years ago. This puts the practitioner of Trolldom, and maybe any folk magic practitioner, in a unique place. In one hand is a love and reverence for the tradition and a desire for its continuation. In the other, is the need to do what works for the client. In this is the always sifting complexities of a living tradition.
Approaching Folk Magic and Spell Work
This work can be powerful and lead to a lot of change and growth in ones life. As such, respect for the work becomes important in how a spell or ritual will plant itself.
Some useful ways to orient oneself to this is to think about the direction one wants to move towards. A spell or ritual will create a shift in that direction and over time, however small that shift is, the movement will be huge.
Another way to think about spell work is making something more available in your life. Taking something that has been good, that has worked for you, and bringing it more fully into your life.
These are just a couple approaches that one may find useful, and ultimately what a ‘spell’ or ‘magic’ is cannot be pinned down and defined, only chewed on in different ways to see if something useful comes from it.