Lord Andrew J. Andrews II wrote an essay on the troll as an archetypal trickster:
The troll comes to the door of a new forum and sets down his bag of tricks. If he has a grudge against the people inside discussing and debating their passions with a certain degree of amicability, peacability and decorum, he does not show them. He has the cracked, stoic smile of Robin Goodfellow, a Puck with the simple desire to disrupt peace itself. He loves chaos; his bag is full of golden apples he can lob to set the masses squabbling. He has also many masks, smoke bombs, straw men, cloaks, puppets, matches, ethanol, knives, dust, sand, and magicks of the most arcane sort. He knows what he is about — causing trouble. Why? This is the troll’s darkest mystery — if any one knew his secret, he would die. For all trolls, their motive power is this: without contraries, they cannot progress…