Twelve years ago I wrote a piece on David Drake’s The Barrow Troll for the late, lamented The Cimmerian website. My own interest re-piqued in this tale after mentioning it among ten recommended sword-and-sorcery tales for the haunting season, I have taken the opportunity to unearth that piece, and update and revise with the latest news on it and its author.
“You Northerners believe in trolls, so my brother tells me,” said the priest.
“Aye, long before the gold I’d heard of the Parma troll,” the berserker agreed. “Ox broad and stronger than ten men, shaggy as a denned bear.”
–David Drake, “The Barrow Troll”
David Drake’s “The Barrow Troll” was originally published in December 1975 in Whispers magazine, a former periodical specializing in dark fantasy and horror. Beginning in 1977 editor Stuart David Schiff released the first of six best-of anthologies in a series also entitled Whispers. “The Barrow Troll” appeared in the first of these, which is where I first discovered this wonderful fusion of horror and sword-and-sorcery.
LINK: https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
Blurb from Brian Murphy:
Twelve years ago I wrote a piece on David Drake’s The Barrow Troll for the late, lamented The Cimmerian website. My own interest re-piqued in this tale after mentioning it among ten recommended sword-and-sorcery tales for the haunting season, I have taken the opportunity to unearth that piece, and update and revise with the latest news on it and its author.
“You Northerners believe in trolls, so my brother tells me,” said the priest.
“Aye, long before the gold I’d heard of the Parma troll,” the berserker agreed. “Ox broad and stronger than ten men, shaggy as a denned bear.”
–David Drake, “The Barrow Troll”
David Drake’s “The Barrow Troll” was originally published in December 1975 in Whispers magazine, a former periodical specializing in dark fantasy and horror. Beginning in 1977 editor Stuart David Schiff released the first of six best-of anthologies in a series also entitled Whispers. “The Barrow Troll” appeared in the first of these, which is where I first discovered this wonderful fusion of horror and sword-and-sorcery.