The Genre of Trolls - Doria

de lör a vari en trollprins, som fria til on ti först, o so to on int an, o so trolla an on ti
rotta o vagnen ti et silvärfat o hestar o altsammans, va on hadd, ti rottór. (SLS 202
Sagor II, 15: 462)
It is said that it was a troll prince that courted her first, and she did not accept him, and
then he transformed her to a rat and her carriage to a silver plate, and her horses and
everything she owned to rats.
Yet the troll does not always succeed in its stratagems. Trying to abduct
the fiancée of a boy endowed with thrice the strength of a bear, swiftness of
a dog and minuscule frame of an ant, the troll finds itself beaten at its own
game, lying defeated on the floor (R II 11). Even more luckless is an old
troll living in a cairn in the village of Panike in the Ostrobothnian archipelago:
it commissioned one of those “strange things” called women by the
other trolls, as it desired to have such an object for its pleasure, but the
bride would ever remain a virgin until it managed to find a priest able to
reverse her inaccessible condition. The troll was willing to do this, and left
its bride in the care of a fellow troll which had undertaken to search for
such a priest, but the woman was turned into a fox by a jealous female troll,
and was lost to the old troll, although she still visits it in the shape of a fox
(Hembygden 1917–18: 122–123).
In the village of Mäkipää in the parish of Vörå a troll abducted a girl
herding her cows close to its dwelling (SLS 28, 3; SLS 213, 184). The troll
in the Troll Hill, situated in the village of Koskeby in the same parish, did
the same (SLS 280: 635). An old woman looking for her cows on Midsummer’s
Eve was detained by revelling trolls until the church bells tolled; she
was bereft of her sense, continually talking of her experience, but she was
incapable of articulating it clearly and coherently (R I 86). On Midsummer’s
Eve the supernatural creatures were abroad, and it was dangerous for
humans to encounter them (Stattin 1992: 53). To be drawn into their
dance—the motif is best-known in connection with the fairies—often
resulted in madness (cf. Klintberg 2002: 178–179).
Trolls may also exhibit considerable long-term planning in their politics
of abduction. In Peter Ragvalls’ story, recorded by Jakob Edvard Wefvar,
some trolls stole a one-year-old girl in order to be able to marry her off to
one of their own fourteen years later; their superb planning failed them,
however, as the girl’s father, prompted by an old beggar woman, managed
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