The Genre of Trolls - Doria

folklore text (text 9) it remains on its post until it decides to leave. As a
mark of sinfulness, and of a fall from grace, it refuses to let anyone remove
it by force. Church-going and reception of the sacraments exert no power
over it, perhaps because these acts lack sincerity. They do not function as
mere instruments of exorcism; they are entirely ineffective in that capacity.
The fact that the girl has to feed the snake and give it food before she has
had some herself may be a trope for her urge to continue to nurture her
pretensions, or it may be a monstrous image for her vanity which has been
fed and fattened for so many years, and she might not escape nourishing it
a while longer.
The snake, the tormentor of mankind, is transformed into the medium
of the girl’s salvation—inverting the traditional image of it—just as it might
have been of her fall, and when she is sufficiently purified by faith and
mortification, there is no longer any reason for it to linger. It can accomplish
nothing, neither good nor evil, and it becomes superfluous. It cannot
touch her, for without sin, she has regained Paradise. The story of the Fall
is inverted, and in this case the reversal appears to be permanent.
The benediction and touch of the parson gains its efficacy from its connection
to the powers of its Biblical exemplar, Christ curing the ill and
possessed, and several Gospel texts resonate within the folklore narrative
(text 6). The most prominent is a passage from Mark, describing an event
similar to the one portrayed in Mårten Thors’ record:
11) …och han kom till Bethsaida; och de hade fram för honom en blindan, och bådo
honom, at han wille taga på honom. Och så tog han den blinda wid handena, och ledde
honom utu byn; och spottade i hans ögon, och lade händer på honom, och frågade
honom, om han något såg. Då såg han up, och sade: Jag ser folket gå, lika som det
wore trä. Sedan lade han åter händerna på hans ögon, och gjorde det så, att han fick
synen igen; och wardt så botad, at han sedan såg klarliga alla. (Mark. 8: 22–25)
11) And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought
him to touch him.
And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had
spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.
And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.
After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was
restored, and saw every man clearly.
(Mark 8: 22–25)
Blindness and Illumination 153