How a Troll Becomes a Troll: Reflections on Ibsen’s Play “Peer Gynt”

When I was a little girl—even before I could read—the music of Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt Suite” delighted me. My parents had the 33-vinyl record, and I would play it over and over again. If no one were watching, I would dance to “Morning Mood” and “Anitra’s Dance.” Of course, the haunting “The Hall of the Mountain King” totally captured my imagination. I had a story in my mind for each of the songs, but I had no idea that that symphony had a story that connected each piece of music.

A few years ago, I decided to read the source material, a five-act play by Henrik Ibsen, written in 1867. I bought a used copy on Amazon, read it, and was mesmerized. What surprised me about this play was how relevant the story is right now. The central character is a self-absorbed man who lives completely for his own wants, desires, and lusts—and in doing so, he leaves behind a wake of broken hearts and destroyed lives. In living selfishly, Peer Gynt literally loses his humanity and becomes a troll.

In 2024, we live in a world of trolls. What is the name for cowardly people who leave hateful comments on the internet? Trolls. Our family’s word for road-ragers? Road trolls. Peer Gynt is a story for today. Set in nineteenth-century Norway and North Africa, much of Peer Gynt is realism: Ibsen’s modern-day world, which includes references to America’s Southern industry of slavery. But woven throughout the story are creatures of Norse mythology, such as trolls and the great Boyg, a giant slimy troll-serpent. Theatre is, as Shakespeare expressed, a mirror to be held up to society.

The story follows the man Peer Gynt from his youth to his old age. Peer is a completely self-centered youth when we meet him. He is a liar and he is lazy, and because of these sins, he causes his mother grief and shame, breaking the commandment to honor his (father and) mother. Much of acts one and two reveal another aspect of his selfishness; Peer takes the virginity of several innocent girls and then leaves them.

In Peer Gynt, Ibsen explores two major philosophical questions: “What is man?” and “How should we live?” A line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is woven throughout the play in answer to the first question: “To thine own self be true.” Peer insists that he is true to himself in all that he does: “His duty is to himself . . . I am myself . . . I’ll prove to you that I was myself all through my life!” Peer believes that by pursuing what pleases him in his youth and what exalts him in middle age he is true to himself.

Acts three and four deal with the span of Peer’s life up to his old age. He has left Norway and has lived all over the world. We see brief scenes of his middle age and witness a life wasted in selfish pursuit, including the buying and selling of slaves, as well as in his wanting to be worshiped: “to be emperor of the world . . . me as God . . . to dance around my golden calf . . . I shall build the chief city, Peeropolis . . . enthroned on self.”

But what he learns at the end of the play is something that he heard at the beginning from the troll king: If man’s creed is “To thine own self be true,” the troll creed is “To thine own self be selfish.” The troll king, called the Dovre-Master, tells him, “You’ve lived as a troll without admitting it.” And he sees it. He is not a man; he has become a troll. Peer realizes with horror that he has sacrificed love for “the sake of remaining my own true self . . . a mountain troll! An egotist!”

It is here, too late really, that Peer even begins to ask the question, “What, exactly, is being one’s self?” This is a question that he might have raised earlier, if he hadn’t been so self-absorbed. He does have remorse for a life wasted in selfishness. In a scene filled with symbolism, the elderly Peer walks down a path and encounters balls of yarn (which symbolize thoughts), dried, dead leaves (which symbolize the “good fruit” that he could have produced), an empty sighing in the air (which represent songs that he could have sung), dewdrops (tears), and broken straws (good deeds undone). He realizes too late that his life—his heart and soul—is dried and withered; he bore no good fruit. He also comes across many people who have heard the legend of Peer Gynt, who shamed his mother and ruined the life of many young women.

As Peer considers these things, he comes face to face with all the things that could have brought joy and meaning to his life. And so, what Peer has learned at the end of his life is that because he has lived selfishly, he is no longer a man: he is a troll.

In Ibsen’s play, the creed of man is, “To thine own self be true. ” In Christian theology, man is made in God’s image; in other words, to be true to oneself means to seek to acquire God’s character, to be an image-bearer, as some have said. To bear the image of God means to be, among other things, loving, just, kind and self-sacrificial, the opposite of the troll, who lives to be selfish and self-sufficient.

To answer the other philosophic question, “How should we live?” Ibsen shows us in the character of Peer how should we not live: in trollish selfishness. What is the proper answer to the question? We find it in Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
    and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

 Peer lived as a troll and scorned and rejected goodness, justice, kindness, and humility; he especially disregarded the feelings of others. He came close to being sorry for his “mistakes” (he never calls them “sins”) in the course of the play, but even in his old age, when clinging to a life raft that can only hold one, Peer pushes a young husband and father out of the raft, leaving him to drown, even while the dying man pleads with him, “You are old! You have already lived your life! I have a young wife and small children!”

Interestingly, as Peer travels along the path of his life, he encounters a character called Buttonmoulder, who tells him, “To be oneself is to kill oneself.” What do we make of this? In his fallen state, man, though made in the image of God, bears the sinful stamp of Adam. It is this sinful, selfish self that must be “killed” as the Buttonmoulder says. Jesus put it like this: “For whoever would save his life[g] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Buttonmoulder is not advocating suicide but telling Peer to kill the troll within.

Peer Gynt as a teenage boy wrongly interpreted “to thine own self be true” by feeding his selfish impulses and ego. But Buttonmoulder wisely adjusts the adage and tells him, “You must kill the self.” A Christian perspective on Shakespeare’s quote, “To thine own self be true,” is that you are made in the image of God—reflect that image. And how should you live? Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God.

Ibsen takes the self-centeredness of sinful man to its reasonable end and explores it using extremes. Very few of us have been to the extremes of Peer Gynt in our selfishness, but that doesn’t mean we have no family resemblance. We have inherited his same trajectory and apart from the saving grace of Christ and the ongoing sanctification of the Holy Spirit, we will be true to our monstrous self as well.

We can turn “to thine own self be true” into a prayer. That we may be true to him whose image we bear.