The favorite fairy tales of generations of Swedish children are combined in this anthology with pictures by Sweden's greatest illustrator of fairy tales, John Bauer.
When reading the fairy tales of a culture, the reader not only learns what they thought, but also the climate of their origins. The habitat of the Swedes is quite clear from this collection, where all tales are about trolls and ogres in a forest. What distinguishes these creatures from those in the tales from other locations is that the trolls are not totally evil and must follow a strict code of conduct. For example, even though a troll may want to cook and eat you, once they accept something from you they are forbidden to harm you in any way.
All manner of trolls and other creatures of the forest are described in these tales. In most of them, they are interacting with humans, sometimes passing for humans in their attempts to obtain riches, mates or just to satisfy their curiosity about humans. Oddly enough, the heroes in these tales rarely vanquish their foes by chopping of their heads. Sometimes they defeat them by trickery and other times by kindness. All of the stories have happy endings, occasionally when the captive princess is rescued by the hero in the nick of time. However, even when holding captives against their will, the trolls do not torture their victims, unless you consider troll kindness to be a torture.
Sweden