The Genre of Trolls - Doria

unaware of the hardships constituting normal human reality. Up to that
point, they know no misery, and desire entered their life only through the
Temptation of Eve. They did not “pine”, nor did they remember any previous
existence, for rather obvious reasons—they had no previous existence.
As God expels them from the Garden of Eden, he says to Adam:
150
8) … förbannad ware marken för din skull, med bekymmer skalt du nära dig på henne i
alla dina lifsdagar. Törne och tistlar skall hon bära dig, och du skalt äta örter på markene.
Du skalt äta ditt bröd i dins anletes swett, till dess du warder åter till jord igen, der
du af tagen äst. (1 Mos. 3: 17–19)
8) … cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the
field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of
it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
(Genesis 3: 17–19)
The herd girl is intimately acquainted with the world depicted in this passage;
it is her everyday existence, eating her bread in the sweat of her face,
in sorrow, from all of which she finds relief in the realm of the troll during
her abduction. Food is supplied without any service in return and she enjoys
a life free of concern. She merely has to take care not to bless the food,
since it breaks the illusion of good fare. In one respect the first part of the
folklore text is a reversal of the Fall: the girl goes from want to luxury, from
awareness to oblivion. The second part represents a fall from grace in line
with the story of the Fall in Genesis, a reversion to the state before the reversal,
so to speak, ending in agreement. Yet the connotations of the girl’s
paradisical existence and those of the Garden of Eden are highly divergent;
the former depends on illusion and is located in a sphere normally construed
as excluded from the blessings of Christianity. As the parson releases
the girl from the enchantment by reciting the benediction, she attains
knowledge: “Then she saw she was wearing nothing but rags”, in parallel with
the apple from the Tree of Knowledge conferring illumination on Adam
and Eve: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked”. The fundamental significance of illumination is a common feature
of both Thors’ record and Genesis, implying agreement, yet another reversal
is at work here. Illumination in Genesis was of evil, a step away from
Intertextuality as Ideological Critique