Macaques huddle together for warmth at a hot spring in Nagano, Japan in the last decade of December 2023. Known as snow monkeys, the animals soak in the 40°C water every day during cold weather, spending their bathtime grooming, snoozing and playing on visitors’ camera tripods. (Photo by David Lazar/Animal News Agency)

Two young women jump into a pool on the beach on June 20, 2025 in Margate, United Kingdom. Yellow heat health alerts have been issued by the Met Office with temperatures set to climb as high as 33°C by the weekend. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Some people think of trolls as nothing but savage beast, yet others realize that beneath their rock-hard skin hides a gentle kind heart. Ivar Rodningem is one of the people who knows the true nature of trolls. Though these creatures look unruly, it is just the way they were born. Trolls come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small, some are large, and some are simply enormous. They help each other out, though elders tend to be loners, preferring the company of their own thoughts to anybody else. You shouldn’t run for your life if you ever meet a troll, though we wouldn’t recommend pestering them, as they are mighty strong, even the little ones.

Nepalese Hindu women pray to worship Lord Shiva during the first day of the Sarwan Brata festival, the month of fasting, at the premises of Pashupati Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, 18 July 2016. Thousands of married and single Nepalese Hindu women will gather in temples for each Monday of the Sawan month (spanning from 16 July to 16 August) to pray for a long and prosperous life of their husbands or for a chance to find a good one. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA)

A visitor jumps for a photograph on the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge above a valley in Zhangjiajie in China's Hunan Province on August 21, 2016. The bridge, which opened to the public on a trial basis on Saturday, spans 430 meters (1,410 feet) and rises about 300 meters (984 feet) above a valley in a scenic zone, making it the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge according to Chinese state media. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

A spectator shows off her green, white and gold eyelashes as the annual Saint Patrick's day parade takes place on March 17, 2018 in Dublin, Ireland. Dublin hosts the largest Saint Patrick's day parade in the world with a route spanning 2.5 km. The Irish annals for the fifth century date Patrick's arrival in Ireland in the year 432 with the patron saint of Ireland's remains believed to be buried at Down Cathedral in County Down. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

BASE jumper Luke Denniss of Australia gestures as he dives in the air from the Kuala Lumpur Tower during the KL Tower International Jump in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Saturday, September 27, 2014. BASE stands for the places such jumpers usually jump from: buildings, antennas, spans (bridges) and earth (cliffs). (Photo by Lai Seng Sin/AP Photo)

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.