The Forest Is Watching: Theodor Kittelsen’s Dark Nordic World

At first, it looks like a wooded hill beneath the moon. A few thin trees break the skyline. Then a pale patch becomes an eye, the slope becomes a nose, and the whole hillside seems to turn towards you. Nothing has moved. Your understanding of the picture has.

That delayed recognition is one of the great pleasures of Theodor Kittelsen’s art. The Norwegian artist, who lived from 1857 to 1914, could make a forest seem watchful, a quiet lake feel occupied and an ordinary staircase become a place you would hesitate to enter. His creatures often belong so completely to their surroundings that discovering them changes the surroundings too.

For listeners who found Kittelsen through black metal artwork, that atmosphere may already feel familiar. Looking closely at the original drawings opens a larger world: Norwegian fairy tales, the personification of plague, rough humour and landscapes that refuse to stay in the background.

Theodor Kittelsen, Skogtroll / Forest Troll, probably 1906. Photo: Ina Wesenberg / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0. Outer paper margin cropped.

When the landscape looks back

In this later Skogtroll, the trees help the deception. Their familiar scale persuades us that we are looking at a hill, while the huge profile beneath them persuades us that the hill is alive. The eye repeats the pale light of the moon above it. Once you notice that echo, the scene starts to feel like an exchange of looks.

Kittelsen had already explored the subject in an earlier Forest Troll, made in 1891 or 1892 for Troldskab. Here the head is broader, the face more openly creature-like. Its outline dissolves into scrub and trees, but the staring eye pulls it back into focus. Compare the two and you can watch him adjusting the balance between a visible monster and a shape the viewer has to discover.

Theodor Kittelsen, Skogtroll / The Forest Troll, 1891 or 1892, illustration for Troldskab (1892). Photo: Jacques Lathion / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0.

The National Museum places Kittelsen within the Norwegian fairy-tale illustration tradition, including his work with stories collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe. It also describes a wider career that included satire and humour. That range matters here. A troll can be frightening and faintly ridiculous at the same time; a great bulbous nose can give a mountain personality without making it friendly.

The unsettling part is how little distance remains between creature and place. There is no safe patch of scenery behind the monster. The scenery is what you have just learned to distrust.

Nøkken: two eyes in still water

The 1887 Nøkken works at a smaller scale. Trees and their reflections enclose a pool. Water lilies sit near the surface. A dark, root-like head barely rises above it, marked by two points of light. Much of the drawing could pass for a quiet woodland study until you meet those eyes.

Theodor Kittelsen, Nøkken / The Water Sprite, 1887, later used in Troldskab (1892). Photo: Andreas Harvik / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0.

This is the 1887 drawing, which the museum identifies as Kittelsen’s first known depiction of the water sprite. He returned to the subject, including a different version in 1904. Keeping those dates straight helps us see an idea developing across his career, rather than treating every image called Nøkken as the same picture.

The ripples are small. There is no splash to announce the encounter and no visible struggle. We are left to wonder how long the creature has been there. The surface hides almost everything, and that is enough to give the whole pool a different character.

Kittelsen could also show a water creature with very little restraint. In Vasstrollet, painted in 1881, a red face, a huge mouth and an unruly mass of hair or weed break into the pale seascape. Seen after Nøkken, its theatrical ugliness is almost a release: at least this creature makes itself obvious.

Theodor Kittelsen, Vasstrollet / The Sea Monster, 1881. Photo: Børre Høstland / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0.

These are different kinds of unease. One gives us a face we cannot overlook. The other leaves us searching the water for something we might have missed.

Pesta reaches the house

With Pesta, the threat acquires a human outline. Kittelsen’s plague figure is an old woman, a presence that can travel through a settlement and arrive where people live. His Svartedauen, published in 1900, brought the Black Death into a world of recognisable paths, buildings and rural surroundings. The museum dates the staircase drawing shown here to between 1894 and 1896.

Pair it with the later Pesta farer landet rundt, from 1904. In the outdoor scene, mountains rise beyond wooden buildings and water. Pesta stands low in the foreground with a rake, close to our own position. The broad view offers plenty to look at, but the figure waiting at its edge unsettles the whole settlement.

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  Pesta farer landet rundt (1904)

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  Pesta on the Stairs (1894–1896)

First: Theodor Kittelsen, Pesta farer landet rundt / She covers the whole country, 1904. Photo: Ina Wesenberg / The National Museum. Second: Pesta i trappen / Pesta on the Stairs, between 1894 and 1896, for Svartedauen (1900). Photo: Børre Høstland / The National Museum. Both CC BY 4.0.

In Pesta on the Stairs, the distance has collapsed. Heavy wooden beams take up much of the image. Her face emerges from below, and a hand reaches the stair edge. The angle puts us above her, looking down into a place that should belong to the household. The architecture gives the encounter its force: a passage between rooms has become a route for something that should never have entered.

That is why this drawing lingers. Its horror depends on a familiar space becoming unsafe. You do not need an elaborate account of the creature to understand the feeling of finding it on your stairs.

What remains in the silence

Kittelsen can hold that atmosphere even when there is no troll or human figure to confront us. In Høstkveld, a dark bird crosses a sky scored with diagonal strokes. The trees below are faint, almost swallowed by weather. Within the Svartedauen sequence, that emptiness feels charged by the pictures around it.

Theodor Kittelsen, Høstkveld / Autumn Night, between 1894 and 1896, for Svartedauen (1900). Photo: Andreas Harvik / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0. Outer paper margin cropped.

The drawing changes the pace of looking. After Pesta’s face, we scan the space for evidence of what has happened or what might come next. It is a useful reminder that an image can become frightening through its place in a sequence. An empty landscape carries more weight once we have seen who might be travelling through it.

Theodor Kittelsen’s afterlife in black metal

Fattigmannen makes a direct connection to the record shelf. Burzum used the drawing for the cover of Hvis lyset tar oss, released in 1994. The project returned to Kittelsen for Filosofem in 1996, whose cover uses Op under Fjeldet toner en Lur. Those are later uses of existing works: Kittelsen’s pictures were made long before the music that introduced them to many listeners.

Theodor Kittelsen, Fattigmannen / The Pauper, between 1894 and 1896, for Svartedauen (1900). Photo: Morten Thorkildsen / The National Museum. CC BY 4.0. Later used on the cover of Hvis lyset tar oss (1994).

Look at The Pauper beyond that association. A dead figure lies beside a forest path, with birds around the scene. The path continues into the trees. The composition gives us somewhere to go while leaving someone behind, and the title brings poverty into a picture that is easily reduced to a general mood of death and isolation.

Historian Christopher Thompson discusses this change of context in his study of Norwegian black metal: an artwork’s social concerns can recede when a record gives its atmosphere a new role. That makes returning to the original rewarding. We can recognise what drew musicians and listeners to the image while still seeing the human vulnerability in Kittelsen’s work.

For the later scene’s physical places, our journey through Norwegian black metal landmarks follows a different route through that history. Kittelsen takes us further back, into the illustrated landscapes that later found another audience through records.

A year inside TROLLSKAP

That movement between images is also the idea behind Niflheim Records’ TROLLSKAP 2027 calendars. The sequence brings together thirteen Kittelsen motifs across a cover and twelve monthly pages: a chance to live with the details, then see the mood change when the page turns.

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  TROLLSKAP 2027 · A4 wall calendar

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  TROLLSKAP 2027 · Narrow kitchen calendar

Digital product previews: TROLLSKAP 2027 in A4 portrait format (first) and the approximately 13 × 30 cm kitchen-calendar format (second). Calendar concept and design: Niflheim Records. Cover artwork: Theodor Kittelsen; source photography: Ina Wesenberg / The National Museum, CC BY 4.0. These are digital previews, not photographs of printed copies.

The A4 wall calendar suits a wall where the monthly artwork can have its own space. The narrow kitchen calendar, approximately 13 × 30 cm, includes space for birthdays, appointments and notes. Both use a German calendar with week numbers, matt digital printing and spiral binding with a hanging loop.

At the time of writing, both formats are available to preorder through 31 October 2026, with shipping within Germany expected from mid-November. The product pages carry the current ordering details and show the monthly designs.

Return to the forest troll after looking through these pictures. The eye is easy to find now. What changes is everything around it: the trees, the slope and the patch of darkness that initially seemed empty. Kittelsen leaves you with a habit of looking twice.

Sources and image credits

Artwork titles, dates and collection details are linked in the captions to the National Museum, Norway. Its artist biography provides the broader illustration context. Museum photographs are reproduced under CC BY 4.0, following the museum’s image-use guidance; margin crops are identified in the relevant captions.

Album credits: the official discography entries for Hvis lyset tar oss and Filosofem. Further reading: Christopher Thompson, Norges Våpen: Cultural Memory and Uses of History in Norwegian Black Metal, 2018, especially pp. 104–106.