The Genre of Trolls - Doria

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2) Little Matt
Once a workingman, who was called Matt, went to the forest to chop [wood], and then
a big woman, dressed like a damsel, came and wanted that man to start wooing her. He
didn’t want to agree to that, but when he didn’t get rid of her, he did as she wished.
When he was to go home, she took his axe and drove it into the rock and said: “you
won’t get it until your son comes and brings it to you”. Thus he had to go home without
the axe. When the time had come, that woman gave birth to a boy, whom she, in
contrast to his father, who was also called Matt, called Little Matt. As fifteen years had
passed, the mother said to her boy to pull up his father’s axe from the rock and go with
it to his father, and he would recognize him when he got to see his axe, for she thought
he would surely have time to feed him now, when she had fed him for fifteen years.
The boy did as she asked and pulled up the axe and went to his father. As he got to see
the axe, he recognized it, and then he recognized his son as well. He received him, but
he ate so much that no-one could manage to feed him. When he had spent some time
with his father, he said to him: “I can’t manage to feed you, here is a royal estate, I’ll go
and ask if the king doesn’t have some work for you”. He did as he said [he would] and
went to the royal estate. When he arrived and stated his business, the king said: “I
don’t really need any men, but I have an ox that no-one can drive, he’ll be allowed to
drive it”. When Little Matt came to the royal estate he got to sit at the table with the
other farm-hands and eat before they went into the forest for some firewood. As he sat
down to eat, he ate for so long that the other farm-hands had time to go to the forest
and come back with the firewood, while he was still sitting and eating. When he
looked out the window and perceived the other farm-hands were home from the forest,
he got angry, went yoking the ox and left for the forest. As he arrived, he chopped
[down] the largest tree he could find. While he was just in the midst of chopping, a
bear came and tore his ox to pieces. As Little Matt saw that, he rushed thither and
killed the bear and threw it onto the sleigh and put the ox on top too, and pulled the
whole load home. When he came home, he went to the king and said that a forest cat
had come and torn his ox to pieces. “Well, it’s no big deal, since you have a bear as payment”,
the king thought. When some time had passed, the king started to go around
grieving and [he] looked sad and sorrowful. Eventually Little Matt asked what was the
matter with him, when he was so sorrowful. “Why should you be able to give me advice
if I were to tell [you] why I’m sorrowful”, the king answered him. Little Matt
thought he might as well tell [him], who knows if he wouldn’t be able to help him.
Then the king said he had strife with an enemy, who was stronger than he. “I’ll certainly
go against him”, Little Matt thought. The king agreed to the matter. Then they
prepared food for him for the journey: a storehouse of bread, and another of butter.
Then Little Matt took one on each shoulder, and that branch he fetched from the forest
in his hand, and he was off to war. When he arrived and the warriors saw him, they
didn’t know what it was. They saw two storehouses gliding forward, but nothing more.
Eventually Little Matt sat down, and laid the storehouses on the road and started eating.
While he was eating, they began shooting at him, but he just ate and shouted that
they shouldn’t throw refuse into his butter. When they didn’t stop shooting, Little Matt
gripped his staff and went there and killed a great multitude of them, and the others
fled. Then he put the storehouses on his back and wandered off home with the branch
Genre, Parody, Chronotopes and Novelization: the Wonder Tales of Johan Alén