The Genre of Trolls - Doria

331; Åkerblom 1963: 301); as mentioned earlier (chapter 2.2.3), its pupils
donated a collection of folklore to the Swedish Literature Society in 1922.
Apart from the schools, the parishioners’ desire for learning could be satisfied
by the libraries and papers as well, and various non-profit organizations.
The first library was housed in the vestry of the parish church following
a petition by the dean in 1852. The collection consisted of religious
and other useful and educational writings. Children were frequent users of
the facilities, but their enthusiasm was not entirely appreciated, since they
failed to keep the books whole and clean. The library was later split in two
and moved to the elementary schools in the villages of Koskeby and Kovik.
Donations of books were received in 1882 and 1892, and in 1888 a large purchase
of works by Zacharias Topelius was made. From the 1880s onwards,
six libraries were created in other parts of the parish with the financial aid
of Svenska folkskolans vänner (‘Friends of the Swedish elementary school’).
By the turn of the century some 900 tomes were available in the libraries of
the parish.
Newpaper subscriptions became increasingly common in the 1880s: in
1882 the parishioners of Vörå had taken out 50 subscriptions, two years later
the number had doubled to 117. The Ostrobothnian student nation in
Helsingfors promoted public reading cottages in the beginning of the 1890s,
and Vörå received its own reading cottage in 1891. Being a large parish, the
situation was different in various parts of Vörå. In 1892, reading was said to
be quite common a pastime in the southern and middle parts, but in the
north no such intellectual interests could be discerned. In the villages of
Tuckur, Kovik and Karvsor the act of subscribing to a newspaper was
thought to be such an enterprise that it required collective action, and the
inhabitants founded an association, constituted by half of the population,
for the purpose. No papers other than a religious one were read in Lotlax
and Palvis, but in Bertby and Kaitsor not even that was available. Data
from 1893 state that the most popular papers were Weckobladet (80 subscriptions),
Wasa tidning (30 subscriptions) and Wasabladet (14 subscriptions).
Twenty other journals and papers were in circulation as well, in one to four
copies per issue. In 1900 Wasa Posten had 301 subscribers, and 444 in 1910,
when Wasabladet was ordered in 58 copies (Lönnqvist 1972: 64; Dahlbacka
1987: 137–138, n. 22; Åkerblom 1963: 308–310).
The promotion of decency and enlightenment among the youth was a
prime motive in the establishment of an association for young men in 1881.
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Material and Context