The Genre of Trolls - Doria

ing a five-year period from 1892 to 1896 to the Literature Society (SLS 56).
His records, ordered thematically according to the supernatural beings
appearing in them, are written in standard Swedish and provide no information
on informants or details of provenance. The form of the records
indicates a method of compilation of material from various oral sources,
which have been woven into a whole by the collector himself, and it is probably
Norrback’s voice we hear in the text included here (SLS 56: 151–153).
In 1895 J. Torckell was granted a scholarship for carrying out fieldwork
on the Åland Islands, and in the field he also encountered narratives of
trolls. The text used here is in normalized language lacking references to
any narrators. Torckell gives vent to a slightly deprecating attitude to folk
belief in his summaries and comments (SLS 59: 48–49).
According to Ann-Mari Häggman, Johannes Dahlbo (1850–1923) from
Pörtom in Ostrobothnia was one of the first contributors to the folklore
collections housed in the archives of the Swedish Literature Society. An
elementary school teacher by profession, he lived and taught in the parish
of Korsholm from 1894 onwards (Häggman 1992: 88). His collection from
1898 (SLS 65), here represented by eight records, is intriguing particularly
because of his brackets at the end of the texts, where he might ponder the
lines of transmission, sketch the linguistic context (the co-texts) etc. The
fisherman Johan Berg from Sundom narrated two stories of trolls (SLS
65: 45; SLS 65: 47), one of them a retelling of a personal experience he had
heard narrated by Bata Svarfvar (SLS 65: 45). Arstu Jucka from Solf was
another of Dahlbo’s more communicative interviewees, and here I have
utilized one of his narratives (SLS 65: 49). His wife and son, Anna Maja
Nordbäck and Isak Johansson Nordbäck, jointly contributed the sole explicitly
racy story found in my material (SLS 65: 44). Pörtom informants supplied
several small items; one was conveyed by Dahlbo’s grandmother (SLS
65: 48), who is not named, one is attributed to the elementary school teacher
Hagman (SLS 65: 48). Dahlbo’s uncle, Gabriel Norrback who earned his
livelihood as a farmer, posthumously got one of his stories immortalized in
his nephew’s collection (SLS 65: 43–44). A story narrated by Beata Eriksdotter
Norrback has also been included (SLS 65: 8–9). All texts are in standard
Swedish.
Erik Finne submitted a collection from the parishes of Pedersöre and
Purmo, Ostrobothnia, in 1899 (SLS 71). Regarding his personal fieldwork
principles he states:
The Sources 57