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SPIRITS AND MONSTERS OF SCANDINAVIAN FOLKLORE COLLECTED AND ILLUSTRATED BY

JOHAN EGERKRANS

VAE SEN

SPIRITS AND MONSTERS OF SCANDINAVIAN FOLKLORE COLLECTED AND ILLUSTRATED BY

JOHAN EGERKRANS

Translated by Susan Beard

‘I saw what seemed like evil eyes in the thicket’s tangled net, and now and then behind me heard the rustle of sly footsteps.’

From I skogen (In the Forest) by Gustav Fröding

The

NATURE SPIRITS

Trolls, goblins, fae, the little people, the underworldly: included in this group are all kinds of nature spirits with more or less human features who live in close proximity to humans. Some spend their days alone, while others live in large family groups. Some are mostly benign and others decidedly malicious, but they are always temperamental, unpredictable and easily offended. They have an odd sense of humour and delight in playing tricks on humans.

The classic image of fairies is one of tiny, white, luminous women with wings on their backs. This is partly correct, because this is often how they choose to reveal themselves, but if nature spirits are shapeshifters in general, then fairies are especially so. They can take a range of different forms depending on their mood, the time of year, their environment and who is watching them. Sometimes they appear as a white mist over a damp meadow, sometimes as small frogs or buzzing insects on a summer night, and sometimes they are completely invisible. What is less known is that there are male fairies, alvar or elves. They mostly appear as little wizened old men and perform the music during the fairy dances.

They live in communities in hills, in meadows or bogs, and are ruled over by a fairy queen and/or a fairy king. They love to travel in grand processions led by the royal couple, along fairy tracks that often follow underground streams.

A king seeks advice from the forest fairy queens. Illustration from ‘History of the Northern Peoples’ by Olaus Magnus

Fairy speech is like the trill of melodious birdsong.

They love to travel in grand processions led by the royal couple, along fairy tracks that often follow underground streams.

Fairies are unpredictable and only too happy to make a person fall ill if they have taken a dislike to them for some reason, perhaps following a real or imagined injustice, but occasionally out of pure malice. Little children are especially at risk because fairies like to nibble their fingers. Placing steel, such as a pair of scissors, in a cradle can help prevent such attacks.

A person who has ‘got the fairies’ was often believed to have had an illness blown on them by the fairies, and since like cures like, a powerful antiblowing – with a pair of bellows, for example – was assumed to have a healing effect. Another possibility was to rub fat into a fairy mill or perhaps leave a little gold shaved from a ring or some similar object. A fairy mill is the common name for a round indentation or hollow in a rock, a simple form of stone engraving made in prehistoric times, mainly during the bronze age.

Nature spirits dancing in a fairy ring. Illustration from ‘History of the Northern Peoples’

by Olaus Magnus

Fairies can be seen dancing at dusk or dawn, the most magical times of day when the borders between the worlds are blurred, light becomes dark and black becomes white. They have been known to lure passers-by into joining them in the dance.

The victims lose all sense of time and space and can discover that several years, even centuries, have passed by the time the dance finally comes to an end. Time moves differently in the fairies’ world. Other dancers can become very ill or lose their minds completely. The fairy music stays in their ears and drives them insane.

Sometimes you can see mushrooms growing in a ring on the ground. This is a sign that fairies have been dancing there, which is why they are called fairy rings. An ignorant person who pees in a fairy ring can count on falling fatally ill that very evening.

THEY MAY LOOK LIKE US, BUT THEY ARE NOT OF THIS WORLD. THEY HAVE MANY NAMES AND MANY GUISES. THEY ARE ELUSIVE, BEWITCHING AND DANGEROUS.

VAESEN WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN SWEDISH IN 2013. THIS ANNIVERSARY EDITION INCLUDES TWELVE INTRIGUING NEW BEINGS.