The Genre of Trolls - Doria

discourse she is an equally enthralling supernatural being. The lady’s possession
of a carriage, horses adorned with the most splendid driving tackle
and maid-servants of her own further bespeaks her human wealth in one
discourse, while it in the other exposes her otherworldly origin (cf. SLS 31,
146; SLS 137 Sagor I, 1; SLS 280: 132). In descriptions of the troll’s demesne
and person, precisely these features are often emphasized; in the following,
I will examine this theme in some detail, as it has bearing on the subsequent
discussion.
The opulence of otherworldly dwellings is occasionally hinted at in a
single phrase, which functions as a sêma, a traditional sign of the kind
pointing to an emergent reality (Foley 2000: 341) (John Miles Foley considers
sêmata on two levels: on the level of the story-pattern on the one
hand, and on the level of individual motifs on the other. The item quoted
is of course a form of the latter):
236
4) He va’ ejngang in pojk, som ha rík fyeldrar, o so fåor ’an ti’ skåojin o kom ti’ in vaker
byggning, som va’ in trullstugu. (R II 46)
4) Once there was a boy, who had rich parents, and he went to the forest and came to a
splendid building, which was a troll cottage.
Here the supernatural nature of the building is specified, but this is not
always the case. The motif will also recur in some of the texts soon to be
cited. Alén, however, did not explicitly utilize this sêma, but he employs a
similar setting, a building in the forest. It is possible that the sêma would
have disclosed too much at this early point in the narrative. Another strand
in the web of associations is furnished by one of Jacob Tegengren’s contributions
to Budkavlen, in which he provides a brief, but vivid depiction of
the troll’s abode:
5) Omkring 100 meter söderom den nämnda backen [Taipalbacken] finns på östra sidan
av landvägen ett mindre berg – Högklint – som mot vägen stupar brant ned bildar en
vägg, i vilken man säges kunna se spår av en tillsluten dörr. Detta är ingången till trollets
eller rådarens bostad. En och annan, som i mörkret passerat stället, har sett dörren stå
öppen och berget invändigt stråla av ljus och dyrbarheter. För några har trollets bostad tett
sig snarlik en handelsbod med prunkande varor uppradade på hyllor. (Budkavlen 1924: 85)
5) About 100 metres south of the aforesaid hill [the Taipal Hill] lies on the eastern side
of the main road a minor hill—the High Cliff—which slants steeply toward the road
creating a wall, in which it is said one may see traces of a closed door. This is the ent-
Genre, Parody, Chronotopes and Novelization: the Wonder Tales of Johan Alén