The Genre of Trolls - Doria

A boy who was picking berries in the woods was taken by a troll which
looked like a woman. The troll brought him over fields and meadows, and
made him jump over the ditches with the aid of its stick. For three days he
had to stay with the troll before he was released (SLS 319: 31–32).
Children being lost in the wilderness were not always saved, though. A
tragic occurrence is described in a record of a story told by Johan Grönholm,
made by the collector V. E. V. Wessman in 1917:
För sex år sedan kom en fyra års gosse en sommar bort i Töjby. Hela socknen var uppbådad
att söka, men man hittade an inte. Till slut hade man ringaren att ringa i kyrkklockorna,
emedan man trodde att barnet var bergtaget. Prästen sa nog att det inte
finns bergtroll, men lät nu dem ringa ändå, när de så ville. Först året efteråt hittade
man det vid en buske vid en ängslada. Och där låg det dött, och man hade inte sett det
förut, fast man flera gånger hade gått förbi. (SLS 280:295)
Six years ago a four-year-old boy disappeared in [the village of] Töjby one summer.
The whole parish was mobilized to search [for him], but they did not find him. Finally
they made the bell-ringer ring the church bells, since they thought the child was abducted.
The parson did say that hill trolls do not exist, but let them ring [the bells]
anyway, when they so wished. Not until the next year did they find it by a bush close to
a barn in the meadows. And there it lay dead, and they had not seen it before, even
though they had passed by several times.
A young man was likewise detained by two young female trolls, and no
matter how much he howled and shrieked and pleaded and scratched, they
refused to let him free. Not until the hour of midnight had passed was he
able to get away, and he was sweating profusely, and felt limp and tired
(SLS 80: 46–47). The witching hour between midnight and one o’clock
was especially dangerous, and anyone walking about at that time of night
could encounter all sorts of horrors. Another man was returning home
from courting early in the morning, and as he was tired he lay down to
sleep on the road. He slept for three days, and it was generally believed
that some local trolls had taken him, but that they had to let him go when
he did not want to eat their food. The man himself thought he had been
sleeping only for a few hours, and had noticed nothing of the villagers’
search for him (Hembygden 1912: 120). The motif of a three-day sojourn in
the otherworld recurs here. Adult men could thus be abducted as well; one
man who was taken by a female troll was forced to marry it, and he also
sired many children. Nevertheless, he yearned for his human wife, and
Interaction between the Realms 101