The Genre of Trolls - Doria

so fåur dem et tsjuru pråustin tå dem så an sa dem: “tu komber tu tin lurjus, såm ha stuli
in salmbåuk.” “he ha ja fått fölåtelsi föri.” Han pikka i hål i fönsterblyi å tär måsta dem ut
men nåu lär he slamra å dåna, tå dem fåur. (SLS 28, 19: 88–89)
18) There were two devils, who transformed themselves into two fine gentlemen and
went to the mayor of Nykarleby in a glass carriage. They stepped out and went in to
the mayor. They started eating and drinking with him. The maid was in the byre when
they arrived. As she came out, she saw the glass carriage and a dog, out of whose mouth
fire and blue flame emerged. Then she asked who the guests were, but no-one knew,
though everyone surely guessed it was something from the nether regions.
Eventually they had to go for the priest. First for the parson of Vörå, but he dared
not come close at all, for they said that if he comes, they will rip out his entrails.
Then they went for the parson of Kyro. When they saw him, they said: “[So] you’re coming,
you rascal, who’s stolen a hymnal.” “That I have received forgiveness for.” He made a
hole in the window-ledge, and through it they had to exit. But to be sure it is said to have
clattered and roared when they left.
The parson from Vörå is effectively deterred from intervening by the prospect
of getting his entrails ripped out of his body, an unusually grisly detail
in the context of folk narratives of banishments. The dean of Kyro fares
better, in spite of having stolen a hymnal, and he can even invoke the absolution
of his transgression in a pretty nonchalant fashion. He is thus
saved from having to make several attempts at expulsion, like Dean Hartman
is obliged to do, and at the exorcism he follows the same procedure as
the third parson in R II 19 (text 4), puncturing the window-ledge and compelling
the devils to leave that way.
The humiliating exposure of Dean Hartman’s sins courtesy of the troll
(text 10) also bears an intertextual relation to a category of texts dealing
with an analogous unmasking; the comparison is not flattering for the dean,
considering the status of his counterpart, but definitely for the troll, who
occupies the same position as Jesus. It is the song of Mary Magdalene,
where Christ divulges all of Mary’s secret transgressions, including some
that would nowadays count as obvious rape and incest (see Nenola 1998,
Häggman 1992). The element of exposure is the same, and both Dean
Hartman and Mary Magdalene are reproached for sins no mortal knows
anything about. The person doing the unmasking must therefore have some
kind of supernatural knowledge of their transgressions, which appears to be
the case in both texts.
The songbook of Jakob Lassus from the village of Kärklax in the parish
of Maxmo includes a variant of the song of Mary Magdalene:
The Sins of an Exorcist 201