The Genre of Trolls - Doria

Finland and Ostrobothnia, as well as the Åland Islands, in other words, on
those areas in Finland with Swedish-speaking inhabitants. 3 This is because
it is the Swedish-language tradition of trolls in Finland I am examining. In
terms of time the investigation spans some seventy years, from the 1850s to
1925 (for the methodological implications of this fact, see chapter 1.5).
So how is a troll to be defined? The best answer to that question might
be that it cannot be defined (cf. Stattin 1992: 18–19), but this has not stopped
scholars from trying. Elisabeth Hartmann makes a distinction between the
Eastern Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) and the Western Scandinavian
(Norwegian) conceptions of trolls. She characterizes the Norwegian trolls
as solitary and fictitious beings, basically synonymous with the riese (she
uses the German spelling and not the Norwegian rise), which she regards
as a purely aetiological being. The Scandinavian forms of riesen—the
Norwegian jutul (sing.), jötnar (plural), gygr (fem.), the Swedish jättar
(plural) and the Danish kjæmper (plural) sharply distinguish themselves
from empirical beings, according to Hartmann. She divides the conception
of the riese into two parts, one based on faith, the other entirely fictive, and
these intermingle in actual practice (Hartmann 1936: 47–49, 51). The
Norwegian legend troll is generally of great stature and grotesquely ugly
(Hartmann 1936: 52). The Eastern Scandinavian trolls, on the other hand,
are social, empirical beings corresponding to the huldrefolk in Norwegian
folk belief. This is especially true of the Danish and South Swedish conception
of trolls. In the former case, the term trold is rarely utilized, since
bjærgfolk is preferred to indicate a group of beings taking an intermediate
position between Swedish trolls on the one hand, and Norwegian huldrefolk
and Swedish vättar on the other. Hartmann likens the trolls of Southern
Sweden to those of Danish tradition, and identifies them with vättar. In
the north of Sweden, from Dalecarlia and Hälsingland northward, the
Eastern Scandinavian tradition reigns, and the limits of this tradition area
3 Swedish-speakers have been living in modern-day Finland at least since the 12th–14th
centuries when the land was incorporated into the kingdom of Sweden (for the latest discussion
of this issue, see Ivars & Huldén 2002). In the following I will be using Swedish
place-names when referring to areas inhabited by Swedish-speaking people, or to places
with a Finnish-speaking population but having Swedish names as well. It may also be
noted that the extent to which Finland-Swedish narrators were fluent in, or even knew,
Finnish should not be overestimated. Therefore a concentration on Swedish-language traditions
is in order.
Delimitations and Definitions 7