The Genre of Trolls - Doria

Little Maja refuses to confess her transgression to Aunt Maja, and she is
banished from the house. She marries a king and gives birth to three children;
after each delivery Aunt Maja arrives to question her about her finger,
and when she persists in her stubborn silence, Aunt Maja takes her children
from her. The king tires of the constant disappearance of his heirs and imprisons
Little Maja in a tower, where Aunt Maja visits her:
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5) To drottninjin va i tåonin, so kom Muster Maja til in o fréga va un va [sic] få i fingre
sett, o sá he un sku jälp un tedan bara un sku sej. Drottninjin sá to va un ha få i fingre
sett, o birätta he un a vari i he di fybudi riume. Hun sá to un kom tíd in, so va tär in
ståor spejl på veddjin, o to un så i han, o vend se om, so ståo in gambel gubb bákom in
o grét. Vídare sá un va in luku på golve, o to un tåo opp henn, so slåo blå eldin undan
golve o tär so brend un fingre sett. “He va föst syndin dö jåol, to dö tykt he dö va grann”,
sa Muster Maja, o fåostfåor, “han di gambel tiddjargubbin va frelsarin, som grét to dö
synda, o undi tsjellarin tedan eldin slåo opp, va helviti.” To drottninjin ha sakt hur un fi
sjiukt finger, so vast e frískt, o Muster Maja gáv in all trí bånin hennas tibák, o hun vast
åter drottning o slapp tibák ti slotte. (R II 32)
5) When the queen was in the tower, Aunt Maja came to her and asked what she had
got on her finger, and said that she would help her get away if she just said it. Then the
queen said what she had got on her finger, and said that she had been in the forbidden
room. She said that when she entered, there was a large mirror on the wall, and when
she looked into it, and turned around, an old man was standing behind her crying.
Moreover, she said there was an opening in the floor, and when she opened it, blue
flames rose up from the floor and there she burned her finger. “That was the first sin you
committed, when you thought yourself pretty”, Aunt Maja said, and continued, “that old
beggar was the Saviour crying as you sinned, and underneath the cellar where the flames
rose up, was hell.” When the queen had told her how she got an injured finger, it
healed, and Aunt Maja gave her all three children back, and she once again became
queen and was allowed back to the castle.
Vanity is explicitly labelled a sin, grave enough to make the Lord mourn
the girl’s loss of innocence. Thus, Greta Mårtens’ tale agrees with the negative
evaluation of vanity in Tegengren’s second record. This view is also
congruent with an intertext that will be discussed shortly, although its focus
has been altered, moving from vanity to shame (see text 7).
The food and the clothes surface in a record made by Mårten Thors as
well, and in this respect it agrees with Tegengren’s two texts (texts 1 and 3),
but the accent is somewhat shifted to another theme, metaphorical blindness
and invisibility:
Intertextuality as Ideological Critique