The Genre of Trolls - Doria

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pärlor, värda att hopsamlas och bevaras. De hafva visserligen under århundradenas lopp
filats af och slitits, men det oaktadt äro de för oss, såsom alla minnen från vår folkstams
barndom och ungdom, dyrbara och kära. (Thurman 1891: 104–105)
He who wishes to hear specimens of the ancient folk poetry of the peasantry and wants
to rescue what nowadays may be rescued, he must go to the outskirts of civilization, to
places where the shrill call of the steam whistle has not yet banished the mermaid and
maiden of the forest, ghosts and other spectres. In such places you are still in a position
to hear our herdsman’s songs preserved from times immemorial echo through the valley
and to see the people assembled to a learned jest of tales on Sunday afternoon. If you
manage to earn the farmer’s confidence, you can take your place in his circle and record
many an ancient legend told on such occasions. But it is hard to conquer the suspicion
of the folk. Even in the remotest districts they hesitate to give their tales, riddles and
faith to a stranger. For they believe that the literati deem these tales and songs childish,
and that they laugh at their conception of the Devil and many other phenomena in
nature. — The purpose of this essay is absolutely not to disparage the folk in whose
midst I have collected the following; far from it, I only wish to show how many genuine
treasures from the Old Norse, worthy of being collected and preserved, [still] exist
in our folk poetry. In the course of the centuries they have certainly become eroded and
hackneyed, but regardless of that they are, like all monuments of our tribe’s childhood
and youth, precious and dear to us.
This excerpt spans almost all the themes occupying the minds of the collectors
and researchers of the period; ideology and conceptions of folklore
intermingle with the practical problems facing a fieldworker. Folklore is
treasures from the Old Norse, eroded and hackneyed of course, but still
evidence of a glorious past, “our tribe’s childhood and youth”. The gaze
was turned toward times immemorial, and it is the historical dimension
that legitimizes collection, which is obstructed by the tendency of the folk
to distrust the collector’s intentions. This is not wholly astonishing, as the
upper classes did not have too high an opinion of peasant culture earlier on
(Andersson 1967: 120). Old Norse culture was important as an ideological
point of reference in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and furnished a
uniting factor in the rallying of Finland-Swedish resources (Lönnqvist
2001: 235–244).
2.2.5 On the Principles of Transcription and Translation
Concerning the transcription of the Swedish original, I have quoted passages
verbatim retaining the spelling used by the collector in cases where
the record is made in the vernacular, but not employing phonetic script.
Diacritic marks are reproduced according to the manuscript, to the extent I
Material and Context