The Genre of Trolls - Doria

have been able to discern them; some texts are rather difficult to read.
Records in phonetic script have been simplified by converting phonetic
notation into conventional letters, as all readers might not be familiar with
this specific script. Vowels in the zone between “e” and “ä” have generally
been transcribed as “ä”, and sounds between “u” and “o” as “o”, unless this
procedure would impede a reasonably fluent reading of the text. “Ng” is
written “ng”, except in front of a “g”. In the phonetic script “i” stands for
both “i” and “j”, and here I have normalized the transcription according
to the rules of standard Swedish. Double letters, notated as a single vowel
or consonant underlined in the manuscript, have been reproduced in line
with standard orthography. Again, diacritics, though quite rare, have been
supplied in accordance with the source. Letters in the beginning of a
sentence are not capitalized in the phonetic script, and I have retained this
feature.
As for the English translations, all are mine unless otherwise stated. In
general I have tried to preserve the expressions and the grammar of the original,
and sometimes the English rendition will suffer for it. Nevertheless,
I believe this is the best way to preserve at least part of the colour of the original,
which would otherwise be lost to the English-speaking reader. Unfortunately
my command of English-language dialects is not such that I
would have been able to translate texts in the vernacular into English ones.
Instead I have had to content myself with translating them into standard
English, employing contractions and other more informal features to indicate
the vernacular status of the texts.
2.3 Context
In this section I will give an account of the historical, social and religious
context in which the texts analyzed in three of the main chapters were
narrated. The focus lies on the South Ostrobothnian parish of Vörå where
these narratives were collected.
2.3.1 Historical and Social Context
Vörå borders on the parish of Oravais in the north, Härmä in the east,
Isokyrö (Storkyro) in the south, Vähäkyrö (Lillkyro) in the southwest,
Kvevlax in the west and Maxmo in the northwest (Lönnqvist 1972: 53). The
settlement is concentrated to the Vörå river valley and consists of seventeen
Context 71