Troll Tales: True but Tricky

[Tom Shirley]

This information comes from Dmitri Bayanov and he has allowed me to post this.

Dmitri Bayanov:

A true friend of sasquatches and mine sent me a book, Troll: A Love Story, 2000, by a Finnish author, Johanna Sinisalo, translated from the Finnish into English. It's recommended as "A wily thriller-fantasy", and doesn't interest me in that quality at all.What is interesting for me, and for us, is the Finnish folklore regarding the trolls , i.e. Scandinavian homins, referred to and cited by the author here and there in the book, plus historical records and present-day media reports about trolls, claimed by the writer. But before I come to and cite that stuff, let me tell what struck and intrigued me in the very beginning. The novel begins with the hero finding a wounded young troll whom he takes home. Quote:

"It's very weak. When I lower it onto the bed it doesn't struggle at all, just contemplates me with its reddish-orange feline eyes with vertical pupils"(!!!, p.7).

Reddish eyes, yes, much evidence on hand. How about "vertical pupils"? Recall this:

"They (the pupils - DB) are like a cat's eyes that are slit and then can get round, but the light makes the slit look like a cat's eyes"(50 Years with Bigfoot, p.43).

Dr.Henner Fahrenbach protested vehemently against inclusion of the above observation by Janice in her book. He said slit-like pupils are impossible in a primate. I find them very strange, too, being surprised to hear the claim for a third time in my life. First I heard this in the Caucasus, 44 years ago, where every local, asked about the difference between almasty and a human, would put two fingers in a vertical position to his eyes. I couldn't understand then what that gesture implied, but now think it meant "vertical pupils" (most ethnic locals there didn't know the Russian word for eye-pupils).

We know that homins, being Homo nocturnus, use night vision. So functionally and physiologically their vision is different from ours. Thus couldn't it be different morphologically as well? In principle, why not? The question is how long in evolutionary terms it takes for slit-like pupils to appear in a primate. Known apes and humans do not have such pupils, therefore, if real, it's a relatively newly acquired morphological feature in homins. Being so closely related to modern humans, could they have had enough evolutionary time to acquire this eye peculiarity?

Another question: If it's real, why is the trait not reported more often? The answer here could be that people see homins face to face very rarely and mostly at night, when their pupils are round. Frequent reports of this feature in Kabarda (Caucasus) mean that the locals used to have in the past frequent interactions with almasty in the day time.

How could the Finnish author know this peculiarity of troll eyes? Clearly from Finnish folklore. On pp.55 and 56 we read a folklore tale, mentioning an encounter between a troll and a soldier, who "pulled out his sword and scratched an upright scratch on each of the troll's eyes." So now we "know" the origin of the vertical pupils.

To make this feature more believable, I'd like to know whether other closely related species have different eye-pupils. Say, among the felines, do lions have vertical pupils, like our domestic cats? I don't recall seeing such in lions. If my memory is right, goats have "vertical pupils". Is that so, Janice?
What about other ungulates?

Dmitri

[Tom Shirley]

"Owing to the pseudo-humanoid external characteristics of the troll (the novel author's fantasy is that the troll is a humanoid-looking bipedal feline - DB), the Finnish narratives concerning the origin of the troll have acquired a Christian coloring. According to one version, the trolls came into being when Adam and Eve had given birth to so many children they began to feel shame about it, and they hid some of their children in caves, intending to keep them from God's notice. The children ended up by living so long beneath the ground they changed into trolls. Iceland harbors a similar story".
In my book, I offer a similar tale from Byelorussia.

"Another Finnish version relates that the trolls were born during the Deluge. People were lazy and could not be bothered to follow Noah's example and build arks; instead they ascended the hills in order to escape the flood. The time spent in the caves brought its own punishment: when the waters abated, the people had turned into trolls. These narratives clearly indicate that trolls were considered representatives of a degenerate species of the human race. Similar conceptions pertain to, among other creatures, anthropoid apes in many primitive cultures.

According to the Scandinavian notions above, therefore, trolls were created by God and were indeed members of the divine creation -- not supernatural beings -- but humans who, in one way or another, had acted against God's will. The priests tried to dismiss the pagan imagery associated with these creatures, but certain of the original beliefs survived even into the period when the trolls had been verified as an animal species like any other. An interesting feature of the topic is that, owing to the effect of Christian belief, many troll-narratives based on folk tradition have been transformed into tales about demons. (...) Thus, on the evidence of these narratives, our ancestors had a particular need to emphasize their own superiority and pre-eminence in comparison with this somewhat anthropomorphic animal.

Finnish tradition also hands down stories of benign and harmless trolls who have lived with human beings on such good terms of mutual understanding that they have even married into named families. There are also numerous stories of girls having given birth to children sired by trolls and of youths seeking troll brides"(Troll: A Love Story, pp.28-30).

There are similar beliefs and traditions in the folklore and demonology of the peoples of the former Soviet Union that I cite in my book.

Dmitri

[Tom Shirley]

"Wild Beasts Haunt Our Cities," Finnish Evening News (November 30, 1999)

The following is presumed to be a factual report from a real Finnish newspaper. As it is offered in a "thriller-fantasy", I'm not quite sure the author of the novel has not made it up. Wish somebody, perhaps our Norwegian colleague Erik Knatterud, could check it out (whether there is really such Finnish newspaper). DB

"The people of Kuopio and Joensuu have become anxious about large predators being seen near the towns, and they are not alone. In recent weeks there have even been sightings outside certain central and southern Finnish towns. Following many sightings of bears and wolves, urban areas are now being approached by trolls

Trolls are rarely spotted in Finland, but recently, over a short period, half-a-dozen very reliable sightings have occurred near the eastern border, some close to houses.

The troll, usually an extremely shy animal, has been extending its habitat from the uninhabited forests and fields and moving closer to towns. Some attribute this to food shortages. People living near large forests have been advised to keep their garbage cans tightly closed and their small pets indoors. Trolls rarely attack human beings, so there is no cause for alarm; and, being night creatures, they are likely to be encountered only very late at night or in the early hours of the morning.

Pets are disturbed

"My Alsatian started a terrible howling," says Risto Huttula of Kuopio. "I've never heard it howl before. I went out into the yard and tried to calm the dog down, but it wouldn't be calmed." Then Huttula noticed two coal-black, two-legged creatures running along the edge of a field. Obviously the dog had caught the scent on the wind before the creatures were visible. Foresters went to investigate the traces, but on the almost snowless ground they found no hard evidence. Were the figures trolls that had postponed their hibernation or clandestine intruders in the forest?

The neighbor's Bernese mountain dog had whined and padded restlessly back and forth throughout the previous night. In the morning the dog refused to follow the tracks, rejecting all incentives.

Pulliainen's yes to "urban animals"

Biologist Professor Erkki Pulliainen considers the situation transitory and no cause for alarm.

"The situation does occur sporadically with the first snows and the onset of the hibernation season for bears and trolls. The only disturbances for city-dwellers at such times," Pulliainen emphasizes, "are likely to be from wolves, wolverines, and lynxes, and these haunt the neighboring rerrain only in search of food, with no intention of deliberately intruding on people." The food-shortage theory is not acceptable by Pulliainen personally.

"On the contrary, the reason for the animals' resort to city outskirts is clearly that certain small parasitical animals are likely to be plentiful in precisely these areas. And the lynx, for example, has shown itself over the course of time to be, as a species, highly culturally adaptable." Lynxes have long been present on the outskirts of Helsinki, Turku, and Tampere, Pulliainen reports, where plentiful food is available, such as hares and white-tailed reindeer, and the terrain is suitable: marshland coppices, dense mixed woodland, and coniferous forest.

The locals are in fear

Riikka Vesaisto, a Joensuu farmer's wife, totally disagrees with Professor Pulliainen. In her view, large wild beasts are a concrete threat, not only to her sheep but to her family.

"Two weeks ago my son was off to school -- he is in the first grade -- and he said he'd seen an 'old black man' staring at him from behind a fir tree. The boy ran for it and managed to get to the school playground without being hurt. Together we checked an animal book and found out what he'd seen: it was a troll. How long will it have to be before we wake up and realize a full-grown troll is a wild beast two meters tall and that a little child's just a snack for it?"

Riikka Vesaisto's husband, Antti, shares her view. "They ought to bring the bounty money back. Of course they're all going on about conservation now, but I'd like to see that tree hugger's face if some wolf or bugaboo snapped up his brat on the way to school."
(Johanna Sinisalo, Troll: A Love Story, 2000, pp.59-61).

This report sounds most veritable. If Sinisalo made it up, she must be well versed in hominology. But if it's a real newspaper article, why do we learn of it from a book of fiction and not from world news agencies? Because the name "troll", unlike "yeti" or "bigfoot", sounds too mythical for them? And I would dearly like to see the animal book that helped Riikka Vesaisto and her boy find out that he'd seen a troll.

DB

[Tom Shirley]

Leea Virtanen (Ed.), The Stolen Grandmother and other Urban Legends, 1987

In the Tapanila district of Helsinki, a neighborhood of detached single-family homes, a mother had put her infant of less than one in its baby carriage for a nap. She pushed the carriage into the garden and kept an eye on it through the window, going out every now and then to see how the child was.

She began preparing food in the kitchen and, for a moment, forgot to check on the baby.
Then the sound of her child crying came into the kitchen, but it stopped abruptly, and the mother carried on peeling potatoes. When the soup was on the stove, she went out to bring her child inside.

She nearly fainted when she saw the baby was gone. Instead, there was an almost newborn troll youngling, wrapped up in the baby carriage's blanket. A neighbor had seen a dark shadow slinking out of the garden. The child was never found.
(Johanna Sinisalo, Troll: A Love Story, p.99)

Folklore is rooted in reality, and thus an indispensable source of information for the hominologist. But the above legend poses a big problem. We know cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, but they don't swap their eggs. Monkeys are known to steal offspring of each other, but they don't practice exchanges. Apes and other animals kidnap human infants, but never leave their young instead. In my Russian book on folklore I cite many examples from different ethnic lore of homins abducting human children, and I have one case of their taking a human infant and leaving their own. We know homins practice the custom of "return gifts", but could it include their offspring? This seems totally unnatural, 'unbiological'. Does it mean folklore is nothing but mythological regarding this motif? DB

[Tom Shirley]

Aha, I did expect Tales (4) would touch the audience and draw comments. The heading indicated clearly it was a legend, and legends are not to be taken at face value. Folklore reflects both objective and subjective reality, that is not only what people see and hear but also what they think, imagine and speculate about what they see and hear. Tales about the origin of trolls and other homins are a good example of purely subjective motifs, i.e. mythological and fictitious.

If the episode had been real, not legendary, would it have resolved the entire matter of trolls, as suggested by Will? I doubt, unless the mother of the stolen baby happened to be the wife of an anthropology professor. The story of bigfoot Fox doesn't add optimism in this respect.

I forgot to note last time that there are cases of humans abandoning their offspring or kidnapping other people's, but cases of surreptitious exchanges are not known to me. Why such antics are ascribed in folklore to trolls and other homins may be hinted in the following tale in the same book:

"You never get out of a troll's cave once you've drunk a mug of trolls' honey."
Willow cried out with fear when she saw the two big hulking brutes. "Don't be afraid," the young troll whispered. "Nothing bad will happen to you." He looked at the girl pleadingly: "Stay here. I'm the only one of the troll people (!!! - DB) who longs and yearns like human beings. When I was little, my mother exchanged me for a human child. She wanted me to grow up like a human in skill and cleaverness. But my father couldn't stand people. He brought me back and put the child there in my place. But anyway, I was lying for seven days and seven nights in the human child's cradle, and I heard the human mother singing her lullabies. Since then I've only been half-troll, the other half longs to be back with people." (Anni Swan, Silky and The Trolls, 1933, quoted in Johanna Sinisalo, Troll: A Love Story, p.264).

Agreed. At our present level of knowledge, this motif is deemed to be mythical. DB

[Tom Shirley]

R's sister has done a great job of checking through Internet and found out that the troll references (books, newspaper reports, etc., cited in the novel Troll) are real, not imaginary. I am very grateful to her for this achievement. There is even more sense now to try and get in touch with the author Johanna Sinisalo. Additionally, R paid attention to the dedication in the book: For Hannu, Markku, Petri, and Toni, who were there. The author "may have had her own personal experiences. Perhaps an actual encounter inspired her research and book", suggests R. Perhaps.

And did you pay attention to "You never get out of a troll's cave once you've drunk a mug of troll's honey"? A mug of honey is fine and tempting, even if it's troll's honey, whatever it is. The warning reminded me of the advice in Russian folklore to women in case one is abducted by the leshy (woodsman, wood goblin). She should go on hunger strike, never eat a bit of food given her by the abductor from a menu of raw lizards, frogs and snails. Seeing that, he won't fail to release her. Who wants a mistress starving to death? Can't exclude the advice is based on experience.

Now one more reference in the Troll book:

Victims to the trolls were led, Widows did they take and wed.
Are the people not gone mad,
Trusting trolls, a tribe gone bad.
Steered by Satan to sinful stem,
They worship trolls and pray to them.

(Mikael Agricola, Preface to The Finnish Translation of the Psalms, 1551, in: Johanna Sinisalo, Troll: A Love Story, p.140)

Very familiar theme. "Azazel, in the Old Testament, was a demom in the Wilderness of Judea (south of Jerusalem) to whom the scapegoat was sent on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16: 1-28)"(Encyclopedia Americana).

Moses decreed: "And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations" (Leviticus 17:7, The Holy Bible, London, 1850). In the Hebrew text there are no "devils", there are "seirim" (the hairy ones). DB

[Tom Shirley]

Once some foemen came to a house in the evening, claiming to be traveling men, and asked a lodging for the night. But the man of the house said, "So few sheds we have here, we can give thee no lodging for the night. By the wood, though, we have an outhouse. If that will serve thy turn, then lay thee down there for the night."

The foemen went to the outhouse. But, lo and behold, the morning brought a troll that had set up home in the outhouse. The troll began to ransack the foemen's backpacks and stuff the meat it found there in its mouth." (Troll Tales, Edited by The Finnish Literature Society, 1990, told by Roope Hollman, a hired hand from the village of Haukivuori, 1884. Troll: A Love Story, p.148).

Salo was telling the tale very earnestly... (...) "Oh, come off it ... These old wives' tales, Lapland witches' tales. All sorts of shit you hear. About the Russkis, for instance, they say that when they run out of men, they catch a troll, put a uniform on the beast, and send it off to the western front. Watch out when you see one of those crashing through the forest at you ... there you have it, one of the wonders of the north."
"But who is from the north, then?" Maatta said. "I'm from far enough up north myself, and I know of folks who keep trolls as domestic animals." (Vaino Linna, The Unknown Soldier, 1954. Troll: A Love Story, pp.170,171).

Brothers three be we,
Three brothers boys we be;
One went after elk,
The other for a hare,
The third bid fair
To snare a troll.
Back there came one brother,
Hare's paw in his palm;
Back there came another,
Fur of fox was on his arm.
Back there never came the other
(Ancient Poems of the Finnish People,
VII:3. 1237, 1933, Suistamo.
In: Troll: A Love Story,p.181)

Though the troll does indeed prefer inaccessible areas, hibernates, and buries its droppings, thus leaving no observable traces on the terrain, it is nevertheless anomalous for no single troll carcass to have been found in the wilds until 1907. This anomaly has clearly given impetus to a belief that has made its appearance in more recent folklore: that the trolls bury their dead. (...)

... one Hirvas-Uula, a well-known reindeer-herdsman, who (...) did come when invited to confirm his sighting of trolls to the congregation. (...) he had seen "the forest demon," according to his own testimony, half-a-dozen times, while hunting hares, for example, though, for the most part, very far off, it it true. In one of the most striking of his tales he described seeing as many as four trolls, working together to drive a wild reindeer onto stony ground to break its leg.

In the village of Sirkka, in the parish of Kittila, the Makela family had entertained a troll child as a changeling, and in Palo a householder had knowingly fraternized with a demon; and so forth. (...) The landmarks that the stories specified as troll dwelling-places began to become the sites of sacrificial gifts, like those typical of the ancient Lapp stone-idol culture. (...) In the Kittila cult, trolls were thus regarded as a species of forest gods that the human race had, in its mindlessness, driven into deep forest; but the trolls could, as it were, transfer on to a person they met some part of their supernatural aura.
(Liisa-Marja Iivo, The Satan Sects of the Tornionjoki River Valley and Kittila in the 1910s. In: Troll: A Love Story, pp.192-97).