The Genre of Trolls - Doria

made his first advance for the cause by joining Illegala nyländska afdelningen
(‘The Illegal Division of Nyland’) at the Imperial Alexander University,
legalized in 1868. Later he was one of the founders of the Swedish
Literature Society. He was also active in the Svenska landsmåls-föreningen i
Finland (‘The Swedish Society for the Vernaculars in Finland’) from 1874
onwards (Bergman 1981: 8; Steinby 1985: 13; Wolf-Knuts 1991: 19). He
donated some records made between 1860 and c. 1900 to the Swedish
Literature Society, and the collection was filed as SLS 213. I have utilized
one transcript taken down in the vernacular, but still lacking any attribution
to a narrator, and it ends in mid-sentence (SLS 213, 184).
Gabriel Nikander (1884–1959) was professor of Nordic Cultural History
and Ethnology at Åbo Akademi University. Prior to his appointment he
had worked as a teacher at a folk high school, among other things, and he
was a highly esteemed collector for the Literature Society (Steinby 1985: 161–
162). In 1911 he collected folklore in Nagu, and an item attributed to an
H. I. in the record has been included in my material (SLS 192a: 141). Unfortunately
this person was accidentally left out of the list of informants, as
far as I can tell. In 1912–1913 he collected folklore in Kyrkslätt, and one text
has been used in my analysis (SLS 217: 542). In the summer of 1913 he was
doing fieldwork in Kimito when he recorded a narrative from Stava
Söderström, born in 1855 and living in the village of Påvalsby at the time of
collection (SLS 226: 150–151), and he also documented an item collected
from Mathilda Gustafsson, born in 1875 and living in Iniö (SLS 226: 462).
On the same field trip he visited Pargas, where he collected one story (SLS
226: 171–172). His contemplations in the field report recall those of Torsten
Stjernschantz:
Arbetet här var svårt. Redan på 1870-talet trodde Fagerlund sig samma konstatera, att
vidskepelsen nära nog utrotats i Korpo och Houtskär, och på 1890-talet sade Elmgren
detsamma om Pargas. 12 Deras ord böra tydas så, att folkseden i dessa sjöfartsidkande
socknar sedan länge befunnit sig i upplösning och att endast fragment av folktron kvarleva.
Då härtill kommer att folkbildningen har endast kommit halvvägs mot i Nyland,
12 L. W. Fagerlund published his “Anteckningar om Korpo och Houtskärs socknar”
(‘Notes on the Parishes of Korpo and Houtskär’) in the 1870s, a work characterized by
Otto Andersson as “a very significant contribution to the knowledge of the Swedish
people and Swedish folklife in Finland”. Sven Gabriel Elmgren wrote a “Beskrivning öfver
Pargas socken” (‘A Description of the Parish of Pargas’), by Andersson considered important,
but unfortunately marred by serious factual errors (Andersson 1967:171, 133–134).
The Sources 63