Trolls. Just trolls.
May. 14th, 2010 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regndoftGirlfriend wanted to hear this story; I thought I could just as well make a complete post about it here.
In the 1670s, in Småland, the south of Sweden, the mistress of the Röckla estate died while giving birth to her first child. This doesn't seem like a particularly special event, but for some reason there would be many stories and rumours to circle around her death, even when her widowed husband was still alive.
The priest of Virestad parish back then was called "Master Nils" by the local population. There were lots of stories told about him too; that he knew magic both of the good and bad kind. Maybe this was what originally spurred the legend around Röckla.
The forests of Småland are old and big. The trees are tall and the rocks are big and covered with moss; in some parts the light may come trickling down through the crowns of pines and aspen. They are real troll forests, and trolls are in my experience more usual in Småland than anywhere else in southern Sweden.
The story of Per and Kersti of Röckla is no exception. The first time I heard about it, was in a folk song from the 1800s that I decided to upload and translate.
Röcklavisan - Sågskära.
In Virestad parish in Kronoberg county
The home called Röckla lays
There Per and Kersti lived, and they lived well
A Paradise on earth it may have been like
In the name of love she grew fertile
And time strode to delivery’s moment
The day that she would give birth.
Late one evening when the people slept sweetly
And the birds were no longer singing
When Kersti laid lonely on the childbed
And watched over the little one
In came the trolls, they took Kersti away
They had made an image in Kersti’s likeness
They put it down in the bed of birth.
When Per woke up and looked upon Kersti
He thought that her cheeks seemed pale
He thought she was dead in childbirth’s pain
Thus he calmly spoke these words:
“Oh hear my dear friend, it is hard for me
Who wasn’t awake and spoke to thee
The moment you took leave of this world.”
Per goes to the priest and says that she’s dead
And wanted to let the bells ring for her
But Master Nils answered “I’m sorry for your loss
And I’ll tell you more if you can keep silent.
She’s not dead at all, that was your own fault
For when you fell asleep the mountain trolls came
And exchanged an image for Kersti.”
When the coffin was put down and the priest had thrown soil
Clearly he speaks these words:
“Oh Lord God Almighty, we bury here
An image beneath the ground now.”
Per spent his widower’s year, a fiancée he got
From Örkene parish and home to his farm
And relatives gather for wedding.
In the evening the guests sat at the table
The music he lets himself enjoy
Outside the door, he hears Kersti’s voice
She said: “Dear Per take me back!
Pass me your garter from your noble hand
And I’ll be freed from the trolls’ hard bond
I no longer ask for marriage.”
That help was available three times straight
Then she had no more power to speak
Per stepped up from the bride over his table
But the people grabbed his clothes;
“Oh hear now dear Per, you see that it is night
The trolls can take you the very same way
That they took your last wife.”
On Käringekullen you could see her often
At least every Christmas Eve
With crying eyes she combed her hair
And the rags of childbirth was her clothing
But when they considered bringing her home
She disappeared so swiftly from their sight
Like the shooting stars in the sky.
A hundred and seventy years ago this shall have happened
So says the family in Röckla
Per’s children have lived on that farm line to line
I want to count them all
Those who live there, back to their great-grandfather
Who lost his Kersti all those years from this
1840.
(It should be pointed out, that the name of the band is misspelled in the file. It's Sågskära, not SåNgskära.)
The song is a broadside ballad, written in 1840. There are older songs retelling the event, but this is by far the most famous, and influential.
And there you have it. The legend of the abducted wife returning and not being let inside by the remarried husband is spread in all parts of southern Sweden, but this is the by far most told version in Småland. It is also a bit noteworthy in that it is unusually easy to see what spurred the story to begin with, and that several of the persons involved are traceable. Nils, Per and Kersti are all to be found in church records from the late 1600s: as priest, as a married couple and as a record of her death and burial.
The story also might've reached some notoriety while the event was still new, as Per is supposed to have completely rejected the rumours, and also have been quite hurt by them. I wish I could make a real statement, but I don't have the source for it anymore since I don't own the CD the song comes from.
I looked through my book, and found the legend in a story format told by a woman born in 1833 (can't find the year it was recorded per se). Very little differs from what the song tells, except for two presumably later additions:
On a farm on the other side of Femlingen, called Röckla, the trolls took a woman in childbed. And they shaped a log of alder so well, that they thought it was her who laid dead in bed. And they prepared a funeral and were about to bury her, but then the priest asked if they knew what they were going to bury. And he told them, that it was nothing more than a log of alder.
But then the husband remarried, and at the wedding his old wife came back and showed herself to him, and said: "Give me your garter and free me from the trolls' hard bond": And he jumped over the table to go out to her, but the others held him back, because they were afraid the trolls would take him as well, if he was let outside.
After that she appeared each Christmas Eve by a slope, they called Käringabacken. And when she died, that priest, who had buried the graven image got a feeling of it, so he prayed over her. That priest was called Nilsson and and was the priest of Virestad, Röckla lays in Virestad.
Yes, that was a terrible event! And can you imagine, someone heard how the trolls were in the forest cutting the alder log. There was one of them, that shouted to the others: "Cut big tits, 'cause Tora has those!" (Tora is a pretty trollish name, but I honestly don't know who it is supposed to refer to. The storyteller doesn't seem to have known the names of the involved parties.)
Google Maps tells me, that Röckla still stands down in southern Småland, Virestad parish. But if Per's family lives there to this day, I do not know.
In the 1670s, in Småland, the south of Sweden, the mistress of the Röckla estate died while giving birth to her first child. This doesn't seem like a particularly special event, but for some reason there would be many stories and rumours to circle around her death, even when her widowed husband was still alive.
The priest of Virestad parish back then was called "Master Nils" by the local population. There were lots of stories told about him too; that he knew magic both of the good and bad kind. Maybe this was what originally spurred the legend around Röckla.
The forests of Småland are old and big. The trees are tall and the rocks are big and covered with moss; in some parts the light may come trickling down through the crowns of pines and aspen. They are real troll forests, and trolls are in my experience more usual in Småland than anywhere else in southern Sweden.
The story of Per and Kersti of Röckla is no exception. The first time I heard about it, was in a folk song from the 1800s that I decided to upload and translate.
Röcklavisan - Sågskära.
In Virestad parish in Kronoberg county
The home called Röckla lays
There Per and Kersti lived, and they lived well
A Paradise on earth it may have been like
In the name of love she grew fertile
And time strode to delivery’s moment
The day that she would give birth.
Late one evening when the people slept sweetly
And the birds were no longer singing
When Kersti laid lonely on the childbed
And watched over the little one
In came the trolls, they took Kersti away
They had made an image in Kersti’s likeness
They put it down in the bed of birth.
When Per woke up and looked upon Kersti
He thought that her cheeks seemed pale
He thought she was dead in childbirth’s pain
Thus he calmly spoke these words:
“Oh hear my dear friend, it is hard for me
Who wasn’t awake and spoke to thee
The moment you took leave of this world.”
Per goes to the priest and says that she’s dead
And wanted to let the bells ring for her
But Master Nils answered “I’m sorry for your loss
And I’ll tell you more if you can keep silent.
She’s not dead at all, that was your own fault
For when you fell asleep the mountain trolls came
And exchanged an image for Kersti.”
When the coffin was put down and the priest had thrown soil
Clearly he speaks these words:
“Oh Lord God Almighty, we bury here
An image beneath the ground now.”
Per spent his widower’s year, a fiancée he got
From Örkene parish and home to his farm
And relatives gather for wedding.
In the evening the guests sat at the table
The music he lets himself enjoy
Outside the door, he hears Kersti’s voice
She said: “Dear Per take me back!
Pass me your garter from your noble hand
And I’ll be freed from the trolls’ hard bond
I no longer ask for marriage.”
That help was available three times straight
Then she had no more power to speak
Per stepped up from the bride over his table
But the people grabbed his clothes;
“Oh hear now dear Per, you see that it is night
The trolls can take you the very same way
That they took your last wife.”
On Käringekullen you could see her often
At least every Christmas Eve
With crying eyes she combed her hair
And the rags of childbirth was her clothing
But when they considered bringing her home
She disappeared so swiftly from their sight
Like the shooting stars in the sky.
A hundred and seventy years ago this shall have happened
So says the family in Röckla
Per’s children have lived on that farm line to line
I want to count them all
Those who live there, back to their great-grandfather
Who lost his Kersti all those years from this
1840.
(It should be pointed out, that the name of the band is misspelled in the file. It's Sågskära, not SåNgskära.)
The song is a broadside ballad, written in 1840. There are older songs retelling the event, but this is by far the most famous, and influential.
And there you have it. The legend of the abducted wife returning and not being let inside by the remarried husband is spread in all parts of southern Sweden, but this is the by far most told version in Småland. It is also a bit noteworthy in that it is unusually easy to see what spurred the story to begin with, and that several of the persons involved are traceable. Nils, Per and Kersti are all to be found in church records from the late 1600s: as priest, as a married couple and as a record of her death and burial.
The story also might've reached some notoriety while the event was still new, as Per is supposed to have completely rejected the rumours, and also have been quite hurt by them. I wish I could make a real statement, but I don't have the source for it anymore since I don't own the CD the song comes from.
I looked through my book, and found the legend in a story format told by a woman born in 1833 (can't find the year it was recorded per se). Very little differs from what the song tells, except for two presumably later additions:
On a farm on the other side of Femlingen, called Röckla, the trolls took a woman in childbed. And they shaped a log of alder so well, that they thought it was her who laid dead in bed. And they prepared a funeral and were about to bury her, but then the priest asked if they knew what they were going to bury. And he told them, that it was nothing more than a log of alder.
But then the husband remarried, and at the wedding his old wife came back and showed herself to him, and said: "Give me your garter and free me from the trolls' hard bond": And he jumped over the table to go out to her, but the others held him back, because they were afraid the trolls would take him as well, if he was let outside.
After that she appeared each Christmas Eve by a slope, they called Käringabacken. And when she died, that priest, who had buried the graven image got a feeling of it, so he prayed over her. That priest was called Nilsson and and was the priest of Virestad, Röckla lays in Virestad.
Yes, that was a terrible event! And can you imagine, someone heard how the trolls were in the forest cutting the alder log. There was one of them, that shouted to the others: "Cut big tits, 'cause Tora has those!" (Tora is a pretty trollish name, but I honestly don't know who it is supposed to refer to. The storyteller doesn't seem to have known the names of the involved parties.)
Google Maps tells me, that Röckla still stands down in southern Småland, Virestad parish. But if Per's family lives there to this day, I do not know.
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RE:
Date: 2012-09-23 12:17 pm (UTC)