The Genre of Trolls - Doria

pronounces the benediction. In this respect the intertext agrees with the
troll text. We may assume that a breach of this taboo would result in her
finery falling apart into mere rags, as in the troll text, or something far
worse. She is fortunately spared that ignominy—thereby negating the catastrophe
of the troll text—and she enjoys great admiration, “for such a fine
lady they had never seen in church”, and no-one recognizes her, as is the
case with the girl in the folk narrative. Later in the story a prince sees her
in church and falls in love with her, and eventually they marry.
In the stories church-going is an occasion for flaunting one’s Sunday best.
Unlike her equivalents in other tale types however, the girl in the first text
is not allowed to keep her finery, as it has been bestowed on her due to the
abduction, a negatively charged event. Other heroines may also acquire
their apparel from supernatural beings, but the circumstances of their
reception are characterized by a less intimate relationship between donor
and recipient—the heroines are not integrated into the supranormal world
like the abducted girl is, and the encounter of the women and their supernatural
helpers is brief. The trolls in the first text, the adversaries, fill a
function (not to be understood in the Proppian sense as “l’action d’un personnage,
définie du point de vue de sa portée significative dans le déroulement
du récit” (Propp 1970: 36)) appropriate to their structural opposites,
the helpers. This inversion of roles, enacted on the level of conventions,
might help to partly explain the sorry outcome of the girl’s elevation; it
comes from the wrong quarter. The structural rules of the folk narrative are
subverted as the adversary assumes the place of the helper; in a way the two
categories meld in the image of the troll, but the effect is not eternal. The
invocation of the divine realm in the uttering of the benediction and the
prayer effectively disrupts the power of the troll and annuls its encroachment
on tasks proper to other characters. All troll texts of this type
have such a reversal and conflation of roles in common.
The second of Jacob Tegengren’s records was made in 1921 and reads as
follows:
146
3) En flicka från Rökiö by i Vörå vallade kor i närheten av Boberget. Hon blev tagen av
trollen och förd in i berget där hon kläddes i fina kläder. Trollen gåvo henne tillåtelse att alla
söndagar besöka kyrkan, blott hon lovade att avlägsna sig härifrån innan prästen läst Herrans
bön. En gång tyckte flickan att hon gärna kunde dröja i kyrkan tills gudstjänsten var slut.
När prästen läste välsignelsen föllo de fina kläderna av henne och hon satt i samma trasiga
dräkt, som hon haft den gången hon vallade kor. (SLS 324: 299)
Intertextuality as Ideological Critique