The Genre of Trolls - Doria

28) Öppna mig förståndets öga,
Att jag må din kärlek se,
Som du wille mig bete,
När uppå ditt kors, det höga,
Som Guds Lamm du offrad war
Och all werldens synder bar.
(Haquin Spegel)
178
Open my reason’s eye,
So that I may see the love
That you wished to show me
When you, on your cross so tall
As the Lamb of God was sacrificed
And carried the sins of all the world.
Reason is an instrument for perceiving the grace of God; thus it is not
wholly evil, but if it were not for the Fall, reason would be an unnecessary
accessory.
More generally, reason is an absolute prerequisite for coping with the
dangers of a life outside the safe haven of Paradise, as Ulrika Wolf-Knuts
has observed (Wolf-Knuts 2000: 99). The hazards associated with the lack
of it are amply demonstrated in the records of jocular tales (Finlands 1920)
in which daftness can lead to disaster. Similarly, any knowledge obtained
in other ways than the purely conventional might be useful, thence the recurrence
of the motif of second sight, permanent or temporary. Nevertheless,
the attitude to second sight and to the persons possessing it was ambivalent;
it could be used for social as well as antisocial purposes (cf. Mathisen
1993: 19). In the texts cited, the stress is, on the whole, on social utilization
of this power: the people listening or looking in on the supranormal sphere
act in the interests of the community, while the witches they are spying on
represent antisocial forces (texts 17–18, 20). The woman smearing a magical
ointment on her eye is an ambiguous case—her behaviour could potentially
be destructive (Lövkrona 1989: 113–114), but the danger is averted before
she gets a chance to do any mischief (text 16).
The related themes of vanity, shame and paradisical existence are closely
interconnected as they function as each other’s opposites. Little Maja’s
vanity (texts 4–5) is preceded by a state of innocence reminiscent of that in
the Garden of Eden (texts 7–8), and the shame experienced by the abducted
girls is contrasted with a blissful, carefree life in the world of the troll
(texts 1, 3, 6). The narrative of the proud girl from Sordavala situates this
thematic complex in a context of spiritual reform, a major motif in the
cluster examined (text 9). It is also present in the story of the conversion of
St. Paul (text 12), and it is the intended effect in the texts about the boy
trying to stone the damsels (text 13) and the drunkard imbibing soul water
(text 14), even though the success of the latter attempts is somewhat dubi-
Intertextuality as Ideological Critique