Part-time Ghost

Do any of you remember the good old days when I used to post stories and other tidbits of trivia related to the folklore of my beloved Scandinavia?

I'm asking because it's seven in the morning, I've stayed up all night and I feel like killing some time.

So earlier... Yesterday, following exchange was had on MSN:

taiyou_to_tsuki: But I was reminded of this (... by the Thor fandom), and now I've wanted to find material and write something about it on LJ for a long time.
nevermore_1106: About what?
taiyou_to_tsuki: Eventual connections between hammers and fertility rites in Norse religion and Scandinavian folklore. >3>
nevermore_1106: Haha! That was a very nice way of saying "I HAVE MJOLNIR IN MY PANTS".

( A summary of the conversation/explanation that followed behind cut )

... I've often seen people who are a bit more well-acquainted with Norse mythology state that Thor was not only a thunder god and slayer of giants, but a fertility god as well and a sort of "patron" of peasants. However, I have never once seen anyone elaborate on what that fertility aspect means. Above is a possible explanation.

Þrymskviða is btw indubitably one of the most popular myths in Northern Europe, and has been for about a millennium. Several medieval ballads based on it from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland survived to the 19th century, resulting in some edits and changes. Some day, I might compile and translate them if anyone is interested.

Another fun trivia about hammers: they were, as stated above, mainly protective symbols against evil. While not as prevalent as crosses (obviously), they still sometimes appeared in everyday rituals. The by far most recent example was recounted by an informant whose 92-year-old grandmother still carved hammers into the dough before baking bread in the early 1990s (!!!).

(Bread in itself was considered protection against evil, so the process of baking it was very delicate and required safety measures. Bread = Srs business in rural Scandinavia).

... "A particularly cruel method was to catch a snake, stick a needle and a thread through both of its eyes and then let it go. The man murmured during this despicable ritual a verse, for example:

"Like the snake longs for its sight,
So you shall always long for me".

He then fastened the needle to the woman's clothes, in the hope that a strong, burning love would soon light up in her heart."

- Ebbe Schön, "Folktro om Ödet och Lyckan" (2002).

... Love magic. It is kind of terrifying.

Poor snakes.

Girlfriend 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.

( Sent om en afton... )

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.

Found this interesting little record of south-Swedish folklore in the ethnological study on Näcken and thought I'd share it with you. It was recorded in Skåne in 1881, and is relating to how women who haven't yet been to church after childbirth are extra vulnerable to the menacing watersprite:

"Some wives are, when they have yet to be taken to church, so vulnerable to the Stream man's intrusiveness that they, for protection, when there is nothing between them and the sky, wear one of their husband's clothes; for if they wear as much as his hat, the rascal doesn't have any power over them. In Rebbelberga parish, Bjäre county, the village of Skörpinge, there served a farm maid many years ago now, I knew her very well, who was always so exposed to the Stream man's impudence, that she always walked around dressed in men's clothing and couldn't stand anyone calling her by her real name."

Now, I'm not going to draw any conclusions here. These beliefs are spread by oral tradition; it's impossible to tell if the person who told this snippet on information is really recalling something s/he had personal experience from.

I'm just saying, that from a queer historical point of view, that last sentence is quite intriguing though.

Guy, guys. I was bored. And I've been meaning to look into this for... A long time. Out of morbid curiousity.

And now I've done it.

My task: compiling a list as long as possible of different words for ghosts in the Swedish language and folklore.

I found 46. Plus two extras.

So behind the cut is a colourful mix of different ghosts and other dead things; the creatures, the different names for them, the majority of them dialectal. Some of them only differ in like, one letter, but they've been USED, and that was the point of this investigation. I have not included modern, spiritual terms, or ghostly phenomenons and places with connections to death in folklore; if I had, the list would probably be double as long.

Actually, I think the list could be a LOT longer; I know very little of Swedish dialects and I am sure there could be more words locally spread.

I'm putting these in alphabetical order, but since there are variations of different creatures, you might have to look through it all to understand. xD

( This is actually a bit frightening. )

Also, have two extra words for creatures that I'm quite sure don't count as ghosts, but are still kind of spooky. xD

Gastonge: When a woman met a dagståndare and was subjected to it, ("gastkramad") it is said that she could become pregnant. The child born was called gastonge. "Onge" is a dialectal form of "unge", meaning child. (From "ung"; young.)

Glyx: A special word and creature from Älvdalen that basically just... Walked around slamming doors and causing a lot of ruckus. Huh.

... Oh God, what the Hell have I done? .__.; If I find more I'm sure as hell updating this. XDDD