Troll Children in Moonlight

Guðmundur Thorsteinsson—known as Muggur—holds a distinctive position in Icelandic art history. One of eleven siblings, he grew up in an affluent family; his father was among Iceland’s most successful shipowners and merchants. His parents placed strong emphasis on education and employed a storyteller for their children, an influence that likely shaped Muggur’s lifelong delight in narrative. At the age of twelve, he moved with his family from Bíldudalur to Copenhagen, where he attended Danish schools and travelled widely. Despite his short life, Muggur left behind an exceptionally varied body of work and is often described as Iceland’s first multidisciplinary artist. His talents extended beyond the visual arts: he played the violin and, in 1919, starred in The Story of the Borg Family, the first feature-length film produced in Iceland.

Muggur was an outstanding draughtsman and a skilled painter. He wrote and illustrated children’s stories, and his book Dimmalimm was for many years a fixture in Icelandic households. He also organised children’s entertainments throughout the country—an unusual undertaking at the time. Notably, Muggur was unafraid to work with materials and techniques then considered feminine, including embroidery, patchwork, and doll-making. Alongside drawings, textiles, and paintings, he worked in watercolour and collage. This experimental breadth unfortunately contributed to his work being undervalued in his own time. His art was also seen as unusually playful, yet sensitivity, narrative imagination, and humour are now recognised as defining qualities of his practice. In many respects, Muggur can be seen as ahead of his time in both outlook and method.

It is said that Muggur carried the folktales collected by Jón Árnason wherever he went. They were an inexhaustible source of inspiration, and he illustrated several of them. His folktale imagery is characterised by warmth and humanity, as exemplified by the watercolour Troll Children in Moonlight. The work depicts two troll-like figures reminiscent of Nordic folklore—one wearing a dress, the other with a tail—standing face to face at the centre of the composition, meeting one another’s gaze like human beings. The title suggests that the figures are troll children at play, surrounded by enchanted trees. The moon glows in the distance, and the watercolour medium lends the scene a sense of softness and warmth. The image may have served as an illustration for one of Muggur’s many stories that have not survived. Muggur died of tuberculosis at the age of just thirty-three.