Chapter 1: The Troll Circle

General
**Gallery**

This article is about one of the episodes from the Netflix-exclusive television series.
You may be looking for the graphic novel series of the same name.

## Credits

### Head Writer

Stephanie Simpson

***The Troll Circle*** is the first episode of the second season, and the fourteenth episode of the Hilda TV series. It was released on December 14th, 2020 on **Netflix**.

## Synopsis

Hilda's essay about her close encounter with a troll wins her the chance to tag along with Trolberg's new head of the safety patrol, Erik Ahlberg.

## Plot

 This section contains spoilers of an episode, movie, or book.

The episode opens with Hilda and Twig chasing a weird creature that looks like a patch of earth with legs, which has run off with an elf house on its back. Hilda and Twig attempt to rescue the elf. While chasing the creature, Hilda discovers a circle of petrified Trolls, which surprises her since normally they don’t come this close to the city. They eventually manage to get the house back from the creature, but by then they have unintentionally run out of the city, to a farm house just outside the wall. They are caught by the farmer, who explains to Hilda that some Trolls cleared his field and took his goat the night before, hence why he is on his guard.

When Hilda realizes where she is, she and Twig hurry home for dinner, dropping off the house with the elf in the village of the Bragga Family along the way. Once home, she lies to her mom that she spend the day at David’s house. Dinner is interrupted when Erik Ahlberg, the new head of the Trolberg Safety Patrol, and his second in command, associate deputy officer Gerda Gustav, drop by at the house. It turns out that an essay Hilda wrote about her encounter with a troll has won the first Annual Safety Patrol student essay contest. Her price is being allowed to go on patrol with Erik and Gerda the following day. Johanna is quite surprised to hear about Hilda’s adventure with the troll, but is nevertheless happy that she won.

The following day, Hilda is picked up at her school with a zeppelin from the Safety Patrol. Alfur secretly comes along for the ride. Erik first gives the children of the Ahlberg School a speech. Then. Hilda and Gerda depart in the zeppelin. However, the patrol does not turn out as Hilda hoped. First, the zeppelin almost crashes when Erik and Gerda foolishly fly it through a group of arguing weather spirits, who retaliate with lightning. When they continue the patrol by car, they encounter nothing dangerous, which bores Hilda. That is until they inspect one of the bell stations at the wall. The bell keeper there admits he saw a troll last night that stole his sandwich. Hilda remembers the circle of trolls, and leads Erik and Gerda to it. Erik stops to pose for some photos, but fails to realize the sun is setting. Soon, the trolls awaken.

At first, they only fight each other, but when Erik tries to scare them off with his bell, they turn their attention on the humans. Gerda attempts to fight the trolls off with the cars’ build in weapons, but one of the trolls, a two-headed one, wrecks the car. Erik and Hilda flee to the farm, but the farmer is taking a bath and when he finally opens the door, Hilda and Erik have already hidden themselves underneath the building. When one of the trolls tries to steal the farmer’s pig, the farmer rings the bell on his house to chase them off. This gives Hilda and Erik the chance to run into a nearby Vittra tunnel.

Once in the tunnel, Hilda calls Erik out for using his bell, stating it only enrages the trolls. To her surprise, Erik admits that this is exactly what he wanted. Hilda is angered by this. The two run into Gerda, who also escaped the Trolls by using the tunnels. Together, they make it back to Trolberg. Later, a disillusioned Hilda sees a news report in which Erik Ahlberg again reassures Trolberg that the safety patrol will protect them. Alfur assures Hilda that, while Erik will hide the truth about how he almost got killed, his report will contain the whole story.

## Featured Characters

### Humans

* Hilda
* Johanna
* David
* Frida
* Raven Leader
* Trevor (cameo)
* Trolberg Safety Patrol
	+ Erik Ahlberg
	+ Gerda Gustav
	+ Keeper of the Bell
* Farmer
* Ms. Hallgrim
* Principal Magnusson
* Peg legged sailor
* White haired sailor
* Unnamed captain
* Linn Jacobsen

### Creatures

* Woff
* Weather Spirits
* Vittra
* Walking Land Creature

### Trolls

* Two-Headed Troll
* Camera-wearing troll

#### Elves

* Alfur
* Bragga Family
* Unnamed elf

## Trivia

* This was one of two episodes screened at NCYIFF 2020, the other being "The Witch".
* In an early draft for the episode, The Great Raven was going to have a guest role during Hilda's ride on board the airship. In the scene, he crashes into the airship, with only Hilda noticing, and when Hilda checks if he's okay, he explains to her that he can't stick around, as Trolberg isn't the only place he's famous, and that he will see her at the next Bird Parade. The scene was meant to explain Great Raven's absence in season 2, but was ultimately cut for 'not moving the story forward'.
* Back in Season 1, Alfur claimed he was the only elf in Trolberg (aside from the Bragga Family, but at the time nobody knew they where there), yet this episode shows at least one other Elf living there; the elf whose house Hilda had to rescue from the Walking Land Creature.
* The episode's writers clearly do not understood well how exactly airship fly; having the engines and controls knocked out by lighting would do nothing with the lifting power of the gas inside. So the airship would merely start to drift with the wind, not immediately falling to crash.

## References

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/kindofandycoyle/status/1340004936495591425?s=20