The Genre of Trolls - Doria

and animals, but she did not find the right one. On the morning of the day of the wedding
she heard the troll, which thought she was sleeping, say:
My wife can guess both birds and animals,
but cannot say Mr Vippumbur.
Then she asked to be allowed to guess once more, and the troll agreed. She mentioned
its name, and the troll had to give her her freedom.
In this variant of AT 500 The Name of the Helper, narrated by Lena
Stenlund and recorded by Else Tegengren, the troll makes the mistake of
disclosing its name, thus furnishing the girl with the means of her salvation.
This motif is otherwise most prevalent in legends of the construction of
churches, in which supernatural creatures undertake to build them in exchange
for the heart of the commissioner of the building, unless he succeeds
in guessing their name (Klintberg 2002: 135–136).
The enchantment suffered by twelve brothers metamorphosed into wild
ducks could only be broken by a somewhat peculiar method. Their sister
had to take fragments of old stone walls in the forest, spin them and knit
them into shirts, while refraining from speaking, laughing and crying; this
is an international fairy tale motif (SLS 202 Sagor II, 66). Less exacting
conditions are stipulated for the disenchantment of three princesses, who
merely have to find someone willing to be spanked by the trolls three nights
in a row (SLS 202 Sagor II, 8).
In order to retrieve a child stolen by the trolls, you should get a good fire
burning in the oven, and taking the changeling into your arms, standing in
front of the naked flame, you swing the child from side to side and say that
you intend to hurl it into the fire. At this threat the troll mother will take
pity on the changeling and reclaim it, leaving the human baby in its place;
the exchange may be made unawares to the person holding the child (SLS
65: 44). In narratives of other supranormal creatures, the otherworldly parent
is not always so discrete. Some, like the Devil in the following quotation,
reproach humans for the harsh treatment of their babes, saying:
“When have I mistreated your child thus that you mistreat mine in this way”
(SLS 166: 687, published in Nyland 1896, 148; cf. Skjelbred 1998: 61, 70;
Swahn & Lundwall 1984: 37). If a child was branded as a changeling, all its
rights to good treatment were forfeit, as Ann Helene Bolstad Skjelbred and
Carl-Herman Tillhagen have pointed out (Skjelbred 1998: 68; Tillhagen
1983: 221). The supernatural status of the changeling has been emphasized
Breaking the Contact 131