The Genre of Trolls - Doria

3) A girl from the village of Rökiö in Vörå was herding the cows in the vicinity of the
Dwelling Hill. She was taken by the trolls and conducted into the hill where she was dressed
in fine clothes. The trolls gave her permission to go to church every Sunday, as long as she promised
to leave it before the parson had said the Lord’s Prayer. Once the girl thought she could
well linger in church until mass was over. When the parson pronounced the benediction the
fine clothes fell off and she was sitting in the same tattered dress she had worn that time she
was herding the cows.
This text is more precise in the indication of time and place. The girl has
been given a definite birth place and she is herding her cows in a specified
area of Vörå’s topography. Contrary to the first example, which takes the
narrative a step further by focusing on the advantages of the liberation from
the trolls, this girl does not experience any redress of her humiliation in
losing her splendid attire; on this point Tegengren’s second record negates
the first. The story ends on a note of disgrace, perhaps not only a coincidence:
it might be intended as a rebuke of her extravagance. Vörå, like
many other parishes, was touched by the religious revivals of the period,
which naturally influenced the conceptions of morals current in the parish
(Wolf-Knuts 1991: 49–52). Vanity was not encouraged, and it was an object
of censure in the narrative tradition as well. Greta Mårtens of the village of
Rejpelt depicted the hazards of vanity thus in her story of “Muster Maja
och Lill Maja” (‘Aunt Maja and Little Maja’). Aunt Maja forbids Little
Maja to enter a specific room of the house while she attends a wedding:
4) So snast Muster Maja ha gá, o Lill Maja lemna emsend hejm, so jig un o sí i all
riumin, som fanns i gålin. To un kom i he di fybudi riume, so va tär in ståor spejl på
veddjin. Lill Maja så se i han di spejlin, o to tykt un se va håolöst vaker, so un int ha sitt
najn, som va so vaker som hun. To un sidan vendis okring, so så un in tiddjargubb, som
ståo bákom in o grét. Vídari so merkt un he e va in luku på golve; hun tåo opp en, o to
slåo bara blå eldin undan golve, so un brend fingre sett. He di såre vast aldri beter, so
un motta bind in lapp på e, so int Muster Maja sku få sí e, to un kom hejm. (R II 32)
4) As soon as Aunt Maja had gone, and Little Maja was left alone at home, she went
looking in all the rooms of the house. When she came into the forbidden room, there
was a large mirror on the wall. Little Maja looked into the mirror, and then she thought she
was so incredibly beautiful that she hadn’t seen anyone as beautiful as she. Then, when she
turned around, she saw an old beggar standing behind her crying. Moreover, she noticed
there was an opening in the floor; she opened it, and nothing but blue flames rose
from the floor, so that she burned her finger. That wound never got better, and she had
to bind a patch onto it, so that Aunt Maja wouldn’t get to see it when she came home.
Blindness and Illumination 147