Trolberg Digest is a magazine in the city of Trolberg. It plays a prominent role in "Chapter 8: The Fifty Year Night".
Trolberg Digest has been around for at least 50 years. Upon seeing the magazine in "The Fifty Year Night"", Alfur remarkts that it's an oldie. It is unknown if he was just talking about this particular issue, which was 50 years old, or if this means the magazine as a whole is out of print in the present day.
50 Years ago, after Matilda Pilqvist met Peter Ostenfeld in the nightclub Mirage and fell in love with him, she tried to find him again later that night but found out he already left. Only his edition of Trolberg Digest, which he was reading when they met, was still there. Without thinking about possible consequences, Tilda enchanted this magazine so that any copy of it would grant the reader the ability to make a single trip back to the night she and Peter first met.
At some point before the events of "The Fifty Year Night", Peter, who was also in love with Tildy and regretted he never saw her again, bought a copy of the magazine, and thus accidentally discovered the time travel. He ordered more copies and used them to revisit the night with Tildy over and over.
When Hilda discovers the enchanted magazines, she uses one to change the past and get Peter and Tildy together. This results in a new timeline in which the two are happily married, but also attracks a Time Worm that tries to kill the old versions of Tildy, Ostenfeld and Hilda. Tildy is able to hold the time worm at bay long enough to inform Hilda that she has come to regret her actions, and that the past is best left unaltered. The alternate Tildy and Peter agree and destroy the original magazine, thus breaking the spell and undoing all the changes caused by the time travel.
Trivia[]
- The time-travel plot is also adapted into the book "Hilda and the Time Worm", but in that story the name of the magazine is changed to Elan Magazine.