63 pages • 2-hour read
The Sea of Trolls
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of ableism, child abuse, suicidal ideation, animal cruelty and death, graphic violence, illness, and death.
Compassion as the True Measure of Heroism
Jack’s adventure depicts compassion as the true measure of heroism. Farmer’s narrative argues that brawn is overrated from the moment the Bard passes over physically stronger candidates to make Jack his apprentice because the boy is aware of the world around him. The author emphasizes that Jack’s empathy for all living creatures is what makes him remarkable and powerful. In the novel’s magic system, bards’ ability to draw strength from the life force is fundamentally rooted in compassion: “[Jack] understood that if he killed the spider without need, he would lose his power and his music would go from him” (390). An essential moment for the theme and Jack’s coming-of-age story occurs when his brush with the Bard’s life force in Chapter 3 makes his empathy rapidly increase: “Everything, from the plight of a chick fallen from its nest to the terrible beauty of the hawk swooping down to kill it, will shake your very soul” (32). The mentor’s words foreshadow that the compassion Jack develops for the berserkers who abduct him, a quality that helps him make allies of his erstwhile enemies, will be the key to his success.
Farmer also challenges conventional attitudes about what makes someone a hero through frequent allusions to epic poems and myths about the Norse gods’ bloody feuds. For example, the Bard’s dismissive summary of Beowulf’s climactic clash with Grendel’s mother challenges the importance stories often place on combat: “I won’t bore you with the details. It went on as such battles do, with slashes and curses and bones crunching and blood everywhere” (51). Allusions like this purposefully juxtapose the 11-year-old protagonist with mythic figures like Beowulf and Thor and critique many cultures’ tendencies to depict violence as heroic.
Farmer also centers compassion as a crucial character of the hero by employing the traditional hero’s journey plot structure but giving the mythopoeic quest to a protagonist whose primary trait is empathy, rather than the warrior type often at the helm of fantasy and adventure stories. Compassion is regarded as a vulnerability in some texts, but Jack’s quest succeeds because of his kindness, not in spite of it. Golden Bristles and the owls aid Jack after he spares their lives, and he’s only permitted to drink from Mimir’s Well after he saves Thorgil by giving her the rune of protection, which is “the one thing he valued most in this world” (368). Jack’s powerful sense of empathy helps him to forge alliances, achieve his goals, and remain true to his convictions when they are tested, establishing him as a true hero.
The Power of Belief
Farmer explores the power of belief through the ways that the characters’ worldviews and personal beliefs shape their actions. Her characters espouse a wide range of beliefs, underscoring the novel’s message that it is belief itself, rather than the focus of those beliefs, that offers guidance and support.
Jack’s father and sister cling to stories for meaning and comfort, but the contrast between their cherished fantasies and their grim realities sometimes leads to problems. This is most clearly seen when Lucy’s adamant belief in Giles’s claim that she is a lost princess causes her to mistake the berserkers who kidnap her and Jack for “knights come to take [her] to [her] castle” (91). However, adding nuance to this idea, the stories the characters tell themselves about their lives sometimes sustain them through times of trial; for instance, Lucy’s imagination gives her a necessary refuge during the children’s captivity:
Lucy was like Father. Father was so miserable about his twisted leg, he had to make up stories. Lucy was devastated at being torn from all she had ever known. So was Jack, but he was older. He could stand it. All that stood between Lucy and madness was a thin enchantment of belief (108).
Although Jack has a different relationship with belief than Lucy, he sometimes uses its power to work magic, such as when he melts the ice bridge: “It’s only cold if you think it is, said the Bard from somewhere. It’s supposed to be warm. It is warm, Jack thought as he reached for the life force burning at the heart of the frost giants’ world” (331). The author uses Jack and his family members to show how belief empowers individuals to survive or reshape their realities.
Religion plays a vital role in the novel’s exploration of the power of belief. The cast’s diverse worldviews include the Saxons’ Christianity, the Northmen’s belief in Norse mythology, and the Bard’s Druidic beliefs. This multiplicity of belief empowers the protagonist by giving him a sense of control over his fate. The Vikings believe that he’s doomed to Hel because he’s a thrall, but the boy maintains, “Dragon Tongue said you get to choose your afterlife” (368). Jack transforms Thorgil’s life by sharing this sense of agency with her. For much of her character arc, her single-minded, self-destructive focus is to reach Valhalla by dying in battle. However, Jack’s insistence that there are more afterlives than the ones she was taught about gradually offers her solace about the deaths of her mother, the dog who saved her life, and, ultimately, herself. The power and diversity of belief give Jack and Thorgil the strength to chart their own courses in life, demonstrating how belief, including the adoption of a new belief, can effect real change and growth.
The Relentless Struggle for Survival
Farmer investigates how differences of climate, geography, and culture contribute to the specific clashes between the novel’s peoples. At the same time, she shows how the theme’s timelessness extends beyond the story’s historical setting by examining the unpredictability of life, the universality of suffering, and the deeply human battle to retain hope in an adverse world.
The historical fantasy novel draws upon the cultural clashes of eighth-century Europe and Norse mythology to examine the relentless struggle for survival. Even though Jack is still a child when the story begins, he is already acquainted with the endless battle between life and death. He “rarely got enough [food] to feel satisfied” because his parents are impoverished subsistence farmers (12), and there is no social safety net for peasants like Jack’s family. Despite the precarity of the Saxons’ lives, the Northmen view England as a plentiful paradise compared to their own homeland: “We have barely enough decent land to feed ourselves in a good year. Most of our years are bad” (428). The universality of the struggle for survival leads to competition as well as compassion. Rune explains that the Northmen “live by trade and plunder” because “[n]eed drives [them]” (429). Although part of Jack wants to condemn the raiders as “murderous scum,” he empathizes with them due to their shared struggle for survival.
The novel’s supernatural elements echo this struggle and the conflict it breeds. For all the kindness that Queen Glamdis and her people show to the protagonist and his companions, the trolls remain determined to conquer Middle Earth and are “capable of slaughtering whole villages down to the youngest child” (429). At the end of the story, Jack still doesn’t have a way to reconcile his admiration for his Viking and Jotun friends with the violence they wreak. Farmer’s refusal to offer tidy answers to the novel’s cultural conflicts underlines the complexity of the battle for survival.
The novel also develops this theme through the protagonist’s struggle to retain hope amidst life’s hardships. Jack’s battle for survival is not only a matter of weathering his external conflicts with vengeful queens and ravenous dragons but also an internal conflict against despair. Early in the novel, the Bard teaches Jack that “[d]eath must be fought with life, and that means courage and that means joy” (45). This lesson becomes increasingly important as the boy’s suffering threatens his will to live. Jack almost drowns himself when he first awakens on Olaf’s ship, and again after he witnesses the destruction of Gizur’s village, but factors like the rune of protection, his mentor’s teachings, and his love for his sister help him endure. Jack emerges from these inner battles with a wiser but more somber understanding of the world: “Nobody told me life would be harder than death” (161). His growth shows that although suffering is an inevitable part of life, recognizing that everyone shares this experience can lead to greater compassion and endurance. Farmer’s treatment of the relentless struggle for survival on the individual and societal levels urges readers to cherish life and practice empathy.
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