No One: “Do You Have Any Headcanons About The Gumm-Gumms?” Me: “Why Yes, As A Matter Of Fact

No one: “Do you have any headcanons about the Gumm-Gumms?” Me: “Why yes, as a matter of fact I do.”

Sure, their primary reputation is as warriors/raiders/murderers, but they’ve also got some really top-notch smiths. Somebody’s got to craft and maintain the armour and weapons. 

(Yes, we see one troll get their armour conjured when mind-controlled, but we also later saw mind-controlled trolls being given helmets, so presumably the armour isn’t all conjured by the Decimaar Blade.) 

Non-Gumm-Gumm trolls are seen wielding Parlok spears, too, but Parlok was the name of the Gumm-Gumm smith who first designed that style of spear. It’s designed to be used against a sword (like when Jim used a fork to catch Strickler’s butterknife in Recipe For Disaster). The dual-pronged head also allows extra damage when stabbed into a target and twisted, without the risk of getting stuck that a serrated spearhead would present.

Gumm-Gumm craftsworkers are also amazing at imbuing artifacts with magical power. Looking at the properties of the Grit-Shaka and the Decimaar Blade, Gumm-Gumm sorcerers appear to have an aptitude for mind-influencing magic. 

Speaking of the Grit-Shaka, the saying that “the brave are often the first to die” was originally a Gumm-Gumm saying, “the fearless are often the first to die.” 

It was meant as strategic advice that the use of Grit-Shakas should be a last resort, not an opening tactic. It has since evolved to mean something more like “don’t try to be a hero,” and spread among non-Gumm-Gumms who heard it used as a taunt - the audience first hears the line from Angor Rot.

The Decimaar Blade is passed down from one warlord to the next, and enchanted so only a Gumm-Gumm can wield it. An acceptable means of claiming power in their society is to steal the Decimaar Blade and use it to kill the previous warlord. If the warlord is killed by a non-Gumm-Gumm, whichever troll can summon Decimaar next is accepted as the new warlord. 

Merlin based part of the enchantment woven into the sword of Daylight, which can only be wielded by the Trollhunter, on this established structure of spellwork. Trolls as a whole were pretty freaked out by the first Trollhunter because the conjurable sword and armour were so Gumm-Gumm-esque.

Decimaar is an archaic trollish word meaning ‘control’ or ‘authority’, referring to how the sword belongs to the tribe leader and to its mind-control powers. In English it would translate as something like ‘the sword of power’. Its similarity to ‘decimate’ (killing every tenth individual) is a false cognate. Due to association with the Gumm-Gumms, trolls don’t tend to say decimaar in conversation anymore, but the word still comes up in formal and/or legal contexts.

According to the spinoff novel of the same name, The Book Of Ga-Huel was written by the Dishonorable Bodus, not a scholar named Ga-Huel as I had previously assumed. Bodus says it was commissioned by Orlagk, the warlord before Gunmar, so Ga-Huel wasn’t the commissioner’s name either. If one chooses to accept this as canon, it raises the question of where the book’s title came from. 

I posit that ‘Ga-Huel’ was actually the tribe’s original name, and ‘Gumm-Gumm’ began as something their enemies called them, which they adopted out of pride at how intimidating ‘bringer of horrible, slow, painful, and thoroughly-calculated death’ sounds.