if frost troll loki is this petit now, how small was he as a child?
I’m so glad you asked this because it’s something I’ve always wanted to talk about in the story but could never seem to find a way to do it without using a flashback or an awkward narrative device. Please allow me to bombard you with way more information than you ever asked for 😂
Baby frost trolls are born very small and in litters. For the first several months of their lives, they subsist entirely on milk and don’t grow very much. However, their senses develop rapidly and they learn to communicate with their littermates and their parents. When their baby teeth begin to come in, usually around 10 months of age, they are weaned and begin to eat solid food. At this point, they begin to grow at a faster rate and reach full adulthood around 350 years old (which is about 10 by Jötunheim reckoning and 14 ½ on Asgard).
Sidenote:
Loki is 396 years old in this story, which is 12 on Jötunheim and 16 ½ on Asgard. Thor is 496 years old, meaning he’s 15 on Jötunheim and just over 20 on Asgard. But these are just numbers, really. Thor is not actually 20 human years old, but is more like 25ish because the Æsir age much differently than humans. Likewise, Loki is not actually 16 ½, but more like 19 or 20.
At one time, 2 to 4 jötlings was an acceptable number of babies. However, with recent attitudes changing under Fárbauti’s rule, it has become shameful to have so few offspring. (I’ll explain more about this in later chapters.)
Trolls have long life spans—3,000 to 6,000 years, a little longer than the Æsir, who live to 2,000 to 3,000 years (for this story)—but their fertility (number of eggs) declines steadily after reaching adulthood. The ideal age for having jötlings is usually between 550 and 1,500. Technically, frost trolls can begin breeding once they reach full sexual maturity at 350 years, but they’re considered very young for motherhood, rather like human girls in their late teens. They may be physically capable of having babies, but that doesn’t mean that they should. They still have some growing up to do before they’re ready for that responsibility.
Frost trolls mate often for pleasure and love, but pregnancies are few and seldom accidental. (Again, this will be explained in later chapters.) After the first litter is born, troll parents must typically wait 300 years before trying for a second litter. This allows the mother’s body to heal fully and is also nature’s way of keeping the troll population at a healthy, sustainable level since they have so many offspring and live for so long.
This means there are only about 1,000 years of fertility for a single frost troll, which isn’t much in a lifespan of up to 6,000 years. (For reference, a human woman’s fertile years make up about half of her lifespan; with trolls, they are only fertile for 17% of their lives.) There are ways around this small window of opportunity, though. Some troll couples double-breed, which means that both partners sire and bear litters. For example, a troll mother who is pregnant or has just given birth may not be capable of being impregnated for another 300 years, but he is fully capable of impregnating his mate. As it is with humans, sperm quality outlasts egg quality, so older trolls will still be able to impregnate younger mates, but they will not be able double-breed like couples who are a similar age.
Another sidenote:
There is no shame or taboo as far as the “dominant” or “passive” roles of partners since trolls are all one sex. Both the mother and father lactate to provide nourishment to their numerous offspring (trolls only have two nipples, after all), and childrearing is a shared responsibility. Many a troll mother with a nestful of newborn babies has marched off to war while the father remained at home to care for their young. It all depends on who the better warrior is in the relationship, and it isn’t always the father. Trolls are one of the few races in Yggdrasil who live in a truly equal society.
I hope you can forgive me for that lengthy preamble, anon. Here’s the real answer to your question, at long last:
Loki was born small, as you already know, the runt of a litter of eight and one of only three survivors. His brothers, Helblindi and Býleist, were the other two. But while Helblindi and Býleist eventually grew and hit all of their developmental milestones at the proper time, Loki didn’t. His growth was stunted. (As a child of 200 years, equivalent to a ten-year-old human, he was probably only three and a half feet tall, just half the height and weight of his brothers.)
Loki developed just fine intellectually, but his body was small and weak, beset with all sorts of problems—such as hair on his head—and he was constantly sick. This was probably due to his small stomach being unable to process adult food and extract nutrition from it, and with his immune system already compromised from a lack of his parents’ milk when he was a jötling*, this just set him back even further. Loki would have likely benefited from staying on milk a little longer than his brothers, but his father, Fárbauti, who cannot stand weakness in any form and is basically the embodiment of toxic masculinity in this story, was already angry and ashamed of his ugly runt of a child. Loki would receive no special care from him; he would either grow and learn to keep up with his brothers, or die—and his faulty genetics would die with him.
*Laufey, the mother of Loki and Helblindi and Býleist, died during childbirth and a surrogate was brought in to nurse them. Normally the father would take over the feeding of his children, but Fárbauti refused to nurse his litter because of his disgust at their small number and especially the ugliness of the runt. He isn’t called the Cruel Striker because of his bowling record, that’s for certain.
Well, I hope that answered your question, anon. Thank you for the ask!
