Once upon a time, there was a troll who lived under a bridge.
He was a short, ugly fellow, but very strong. He had no hair on his head, and his skin was extremely wrinkled and felt like sandpaper. His clothes always smelled. His name was “Lump.”
One day, Lump was sleeping, but something woke him up.
Someone was coming! It was a young boy and girl in a cart.
Every time someone tried to cross the bridge, Lump would jump out in front, cross his arms, and demand 100 kroner. “You can’t cross my bridge without giving me my 100 kroner first,” Lump said with a scowl on his face.
“If you don’t pay, you can’t cross.”
The boy and the girl in the cart were so scared that they could hardly speak. “Okay, we’ll pay,” the boy said to Lump.
“We need to get home before the storm,” he told the girl.
The troll let the boy and girl cross, waving at them as they reached the other side. The troll wasn’t evil; he just wanted to see if people would actually pay.
The troll went back under the bridge, and suddenly Lump could hear the wind starting to blow harder, and it began to rain. The rain kept coming, harder and harder. Lump started to worry as the water in the creek began to rise. He was a strong troll, but he couldn’t swim.
Higher and higher the creek rose. Lump started sweating.
He had to do something quickly, or he would be washed away by the river.
He left his spot under the bridge and went over to the tall tree by the creek. He figured if he climbed high enough, he wouldn’t have to worry about the water.
Just as he began to climb, he heard a voice: “Stop, you can’t climb this tree without paying me 200 kroner.”
It was George the gorilla. George was a kind gorilla, but he was very tired of seeing Lump cause so much trouble for the people crossing the bridge.
“I only have 100 kroner,” Lump said.
“Then I guess you’ll have to swim,” George replied.
“I don’t know how to swim,” Lump said. “I’ll definitely drown!”
“That’s too bad. You should’ve saved your money,” said George.
“I’ll tell you what,” George said. “If you agree to stop charging people to cross the bridge, I won’t just let you climb my tree, but you can come into my house and have dinner with me, since I was just getting ready to sit down and eat.”
“Deal,” said Lump.
They sat down, had dinner, and became very good friends.
From that day on, Lump became known as the friendly troll who lived under the bridge. When people came to cross the bridge, Lump would come up and chat with them as they passed. Sometimes he even sold drinks and snacks to them from the little shop he started next to the bridge.
