Meeting Hardship, Illness and Malice Valter W. Forsblom and His Documentation of Healing Practices...

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Nordic Yearbook of FolkloreVol. 70

Editor

ARNE BUGGE AMUNDSENOSLO, NORWAY

SPECIAL ISSUE: MAGIC AND TEXTS

Guest Editors:Ane Ohrvik and Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir

Published byTHE ROYAL GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS ACADEMY

UPPSALA, SWEDEN

Distributed bySWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS

UPPSALA, SWEDEN

ARVARV

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© 2015 by The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, UppsalaISSN 0066-8176

All rights reserved

Editorial BoardAnders Gustavsson, Oslo; Gustav Henningsen, Copenhagen

Bengt af Klintberg, Lidingö; Ann Helene Bolstad Skjelbred, OsloUlrika Wolf-Knuts, Åbo (Turku)

Articles appearing in this yearbook are abstracted and indexed inEuropean Reference Index

for the Humanities and Social Sciences ERIH PLUS 2011–Editorial address:

Prof. Arne Bugge AmundsenDepartment of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages

University of OsloBox 1010 Blindern

NO–0315 Oslo, Norwayphone + 4792244774

e-mail: [email protected]://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/forskning/publikasjoner/tidsskrifter/arv/index.html

Cover: Kirsten BerrumFor index of earlier volumes, seehttp://www.kgaa.nu/tidskrift.php

DistributorSwedish Science Press

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fax: +46(0)18365277e-mail: [email protected]

Printed in SwedenTextgruppen i Uppsala AB, Uppsala 2015

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Contents

ArticlesAne Ohrvik & Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir: Magic and Texts:

An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Clive Tolley: The Peripheral at the Centre. The Subversive Intent of

Norse Myth and Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir: The Narrative Role of Magic in the

Fornaldarsögur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Stephen A. Mitchell: Leechbooks, Manuals, and Grimoires. On the

Early History of Magical Texts in Scandinavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Fredrik Skott: Passing Through as Healing and Crime. An Example

from Eighteenth-century Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Ane Ohrvik: A Hidden Magical Universe? Exploring the Secrets of

Secrecy in Early Modern Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Laura Stark: Magic and Witchcraft in Their Everyday Context.

Childhood Memories from the Nineteenth-century Finnish Countryside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Catharina Raudvere: Meeting Hardship, Illness and Malice. Valter W. Forsblom and His Documentation of Healing Practices in Swedish-Speaking Finland 1913–1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

ObituaryBo Almquist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Book ReviewsArvidson, Mats, Ursula Geisler & Kristofer Hansson (ed.): Kris och

kultur (Sven-Erik Klinkmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Asplund Ingemark, Camilla: Therapeutic Uses of Storytelling

(Thomas A. DuBois) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177Atlantic Currents. Essays on Lore, Literatur and Language (Coppélie

Cocq) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179Bäckström, Mattias: Hjärtats härdar (Arne Bugge Amundsen) . . . . . . 181

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Bringéus, Nils-Arvid: Örkelljungapåg och Lundaprofessor (Anders Gustavsson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Christiansen, Palle Ove: Dagligliv i 1800-tallets Jylland (Anders Gustavsson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Ekrem, Carola, Pamela Gustavsson, Petra Hakala & Mikael Korhonen: Arkiv, minne, glömska (Susanne Nylund Skog) . . . . . 188

Enefalk, Hanna: Skillingtryck! (Gunnar Ternhag) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190Eriksen, Anne, Mia Göran & Ragnhild Evang Reinton (eds.):

Tingenes tilsynekomster (Gösta Arvastson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192Fahlgren, Siv, Anders Johansson & Eva Söderberg (eds.):

Millennium (Kerstin Bergman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Fjeldsøe, Michael: Kulturradikalismens musik (Alf Arvidsson) . . . . 199Fjell, Tove Ingebjørg: Den usynliggjorte volden (Inger Lövkrona) . . 201Frykman, Jonas: Berörd (Kyrre Kverndokk) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205Gustavsson, Anders: Resident Populace and Summer Holiday

Visitors (Anne Leonora Blaakilde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207Hagelstam, Sonja: Röster från kriget (Florence Fröhlig) . . . . . . . . . . 209Hakamies, Pekka & Anneli Honko (eds.): Theoretical Milestones.

Selected writings of Lauri Honko (Anders Gustavsson) . . . . . . . . 212Hammarström, Katarina (ed.): Register över visor och ramsor från

norra Södermanland (Patrik Sandgren) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213Herjulfsdotter, Ritwa: Mariaväxter i folktron (Anders Gustavsson) . 214Hirvi, Laura: Identities in Practice (Barbara Bertolani) . . . . . . . . . . . 215Kværndrup, Sigurd & Tommy Olofsson: Medeltiden i ord och bild

(Ulrika Wolf-Knuts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217Leconteux, Claude: Phantom Armies of the Night (Bengt af Klint-

berg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219Lindberg, Boel (ed.): Gamla visor, ballader och rap (Dan Lundberg) 221Lindtner, Synnøve Skarsbø: “Som en frisk vind gjennom stuen”

(Susanne Nylund Skog) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222Marander-Eklund, Lena: Att vara hemma och fru (Kerstin Gunne-

mark) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224Nikolić, Dragan: Tre städer, två broar och ett museum (Owe Ron-

ström) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226Swensen, Grete (ed.): Å lage kulturminner (Anders Gustavsson) . . . 233

Books Received by the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Meeting Hardship, Illness and Malice 147

Meeting Hardship, Illness and MaliceValter W. Forsblom and His Documentation of Healing Practices in Swedish-Speaking Finland 1913–1917

Catharina Raudvere

Witchcraft and magic may be defined in the broadest sense as beliefs andrituals that attribute skills and insights to some people who thereby arethought to have the ability to master forces of clandestine origin: forcespossible to identify through their consequences for everyday life, but notvisible or known of in detail by ordinary people. The use of the term witch-craft usually also implies some kind of public denouncement and arouses as-sociations with accusations and trials, while magic has a partly different setof additional associations that also include the world of learning during theRenaissance and the early modern period. The Scandinavian vernacular ter-minology of witchcraft and magic (trolldom or häxeri) is in many respectsaffected by the witch-hunting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries(Oja 1999:52‒120; Lennersand and Oja 2006), which also introduced thepopular use of the word häxa/hexe that lingered on in popular belief. The ef-fect of a social trauma like the witch trials must be taken into considerationwhen long-term perspectives on magical practices are argued for on the ba-sis of later folklore records. The vernacular vocabulary for extraordinary in-sights and abilities to heal and destroy is rich and detailed, and not alwayspossible to translate into general concepts like witchcraft and magic (Raud-vere 2002:80‒90, 107‒108).

As this article attempts to show that – with a Finnish-Swedish example ofa collection that is extraordinary in several respects – the moral valuation ofcunning knowledge and deeds, as reflected in Scandinavian folklore recordsfrom around the year 1900, was never unambiguous.1 It was highly depend-ent on the position of the parties involved in the ritual process, and their dif-ferent intentions and expectations. A major theme of the folklore recordsabout witchcraft concerns attacks of illness against humans and animals,and the methods for repelling these. The same assumptions about illness andthe same ceremonies were used with very different intentions and results. Inthis article I will discuss how illness and misfortune in Nordic folk beliefswere conceptualized in records of ritual practices as the primary point of de-

148 Catharina Raudvere

parture. The emphasis this time is on the recorder as a producer of texts andhis analytical framework rather than world view of the informants. ValterW. Forsblom (1888–1960) documented healing practices in Swedish-speak-ing areas of Finland between 1913 and 1917. Ten years later he edited hismaterial for one of the volumes of Finlands svenska folkdiktning (Forsblom1927), in which he included most of his collected corpus.2 The material isamongst the most valuable kept in Scandinavian archives, and few other col-lections can match the collector’s sense for coherence in the choice ofthemes for the interviews, the detailed photographic documentation, andself-reflective summaries in the reports after each field trip. Today, the ar-chive of the Society for Swedish Literature in Finland houses the recordsand related materials (Steinby 1985:163‒169; Wolf-Knuts 1999; Ekrem etal. 2014:22‒197).3

Forsblom’s collections will be discussed, not strictly from a witchcraftperspective only, but for how it can bear witness to a world view and a ver-nacular anthropology that formed the basis for ritual strategies, providingtools to cope with illness, misfortune, and attacks of envy and malice. Thematerial features Christian concepts (some with obvious Catholic origins)and ritual behaviour blended with pre-/non-Christian. To Forsblom and hiscontemporaries long-term continuity over the centuries was the self-evidentperspective on how to read the material over time. The texts and photo-graphs could, however, equally well be read as rural-culture testimony fromthe First World War era. Trolldom is perhaps not the most frequently usedterm in the cases presented in the material, as the local terminology is variedand often specific when characterizing the disease. Nonetheless, these diag-noses belong to a conceptual framework providing a blend of comprehens-ible explanations and fantastic elements in combination with elaborate heal-ing practices. The witchcraft theme of this special issue on magic and textsalso provides an opportunity to reflect upon one’s own discipline: its biases,its pre-assumptions, its links as well as its missed opportunities in regard tointerdisciplinary contacts. Alongside the questions about Finland-Swedishhealing practices, I therefore also briefly discuss the role of folk belief ma-terials in my own dicipline, the history of religions.

Confronting Evil and IllnessTo get a taste of the character of the Forsblom collection, a brief examplewill be presented as an introduction. In the western, Swedish-speaking partsof Finland, diverse psychological symptoms such as unease, anxiety andfatigue were given the name “mother-illness” (modersjukan, refering to theuterus) in the pre-modern era. Forsblom commented on the name and beliefsconnected to “mother-illness”, noting that it was thought to be caused bysorrow and misfortune, or tapeworms: in both cases it was located in the bel-ly and called for an explanation as to who had sent the malady. Irrespective


of the diffuse symptoms, a tangible sign of intrusion is sought. “Mother-illness” was associated with persistent physical and psychological pain forthe helpless victim, and needed the intercession of a third party in the drama:the healer. In the following vocative charm, the speaking voice in the textaddresses the ill, and commands the illness that ravages the suffering bodyto be bound:4

Mother-IllIn your belly Be in peaceThere you shall liveBe contentLike iron and steelIn the name of the Father, Son a. t. H. S. [and the Holy Spirit](Sideby 1913, printed in Forsblom 1927:243).5

The formula is brusque and straightforward in its tone, and the direct com-mand to the illness is followed by some rather concrete instructions that setthe stage and define the roles. Nevertheless, its objective is positive. The fo-cus is on how to correct what has been put in disorder. The source of malice(the act of trolldom or häxeri) remains obscure and the identification/accu-sation element of the witch trials is absent. The patient’s navel is to be mas-saged with lard, and the sufferer is also to be offered heated vodka or warmcoffee. Local beliefs determine the illness as situated in the stomach, in ac-cordance with the view that the malady was caused by an intruding forceleaving some mark on the order. The ritual treatment methods are commonand follow the pattern of the geographical area.

As a charm, the formula conforms to a genre that is known from all overScandinavia and large parts of northern Europe – in both form and content(Klintberg 1965:39‒57; 1978; 2000). There is a rich documentation of bothsimilar wording and ritual action, especially from Finland, in both Swedishand Finnish (Wolf-Knuts 2004; 2009). The confrontational method, whichalso carries an implicit diagnosis of the situation in its subtext, is known inOld Norse literature and in later legends and charms (Raudvere 1993:157‒180; 2003:25‒87, 89‒94, 157‒162). If briefly summarized, the charmsin Forsblom’s collection could be said to represent a mode of handling acritical situation: beliefs and customary rituals that Forsblom struggled toplace in two different categories. The ritual requisites are quite convention-al, and it is questionable whether the recorded text should be read as a testi-mony of an observed ritual event, or if we are encountering a narrative defi-nitely based on actually practised healing ceremonies, or perhaps even apost-ritual narrative reinforced by the symbolism of significant substancespresent in many folk belief narratives in Scandinavia: for example blood,milk, vodka, urine, iron, the form of a star or a pentagram, or the sign of thecross.


The Forsblom collection not only highlights the zone between narrationand ritual, it is a usable tool when asking what kind of religious representa-tions are used by different academic disciplines. The history of religions dis-cipline has in general paid far too little attention to these kinds of expres-sions of everyday religion. Some would say that the recorded charm quotedis not a religious document at all, but folk poetry; others would perhaps ar-gue that the concluding Trinitarian blessing is merely a formulaic way ofending the reading, not an expression of belief. Or is it a means to integratethe healing ritual within the framework of the Church? Although folk beliefsformed an important part of the early days of the discipline when it grewaway from theology and nearer to new disciplines like ethnography and an-thropology, the national ambitions to collect folk beliefs never played thesame role in the history of religions as more distantly located materials orthe study of the holy scriptures of the world religions.

The Study of Religion and Its Use of Folk Belief MaterialsIn Finland and Estonia the link between the history of religions and folklor-istics is unique, as it has been developed in long-term academic work andhas thrived to the present day. This interdisciplinary approach is representedby names such as Anna-Leena Siikala, Ulrika Wolf-Knuts, Laura Stark andLotte Tarka in Finland, Marja-Liisa Keinänen in Sweden, and Ülo Valk inEstonia. It is otherwise, and regrettably, a path untrodden in Scandinavianreligious studies, with some exceptions. However, a reawakened, and in-creasing, interest is evident in Scandinavia, and international research bearswitness to a new wave of anthropological studies of Christianity that includeconceptions of witchcraft, demons, saints and the dead, without dichotomiz-ing these in relation to institutionalized Christianity. Such a context wouldgive space to the expressions of everyday religion from a historical perspec-tive as well.

In the wake of the linguistic turn and post-structuralist deconstruction thathighlighted the value of the fragment as a valuable source in its own right,one would think that the Scandinavian folklore records would find newreaders and users. Most of the archive material could not be said to be any-thing but fragments in relation to their wider cultural and social context, butit does not mean that it is without source value when approaching religiouslife in pre-modern periods. There are implicit representations of a worldview in the kind of material Forsblom collected and the local terminology –with its intricate names for illnesses and healing processes – provided expla-nations of cause and effect. Analyses of the seemingly banal can actually re-veal significant contemporaneous reflection on the human condition.

From this perspective, Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk’s (2012) discus-sion of vernacular religion is most interesting. The term puts the focus on


Åkers mor prepares remedies against a troll shot (flojest), Vörå 1916 (SLS 267:17). © Societyof Swedish Literature in Finland: The Archives of Folk Culture. (Photo: Valter W. Forsblom.)

expressive forms outside the established religious institutions, ones that canembrace elements of very different origin. As the main purpose of Scandi-navian folk religion was not to preach and convince, but to solve problemsand provide meaning to what otherwise could not be explained, the broadrepertoire was also an advantage for the performer, who could thereby ad-just to the situation and audience. The recorded folk beliefs do not necessar-ily relate to religion or mythology in a structural sense, but conceptions andlife-worlds connected to rural life before the mechanization of agricultureand early industrialization – though filtered through the collectors’ ambi-tions and attitudes when turning literature into written archive records clas-sified according to narrative motifs. This must also be included in order tofacilitate a broader understanding of how meaning was constructed andexistential issues solved not as a parallel religious universe, but in relationto the teachings and rituals of the Church.

Explanations for discomfort, illness and death played a dominant role inScandinavian folk religion, and it provided instructions on how to cope withmisfortune, as well as how to protect the limited resources from distant at-tacks. These instructions also implicitly transmitted an image of the forcesand power relations that defined human contact with the Christian God, thedead, fate and, moreover, the evil desires of cunning people and, conse-


quently, people’s dependence on healers. The following was something tobe read aloud to both humans and cattle targeted by “shots”: i.e. missiles ofevil and envy (Honko 1959:83‒146) that had entered their bodies:

For in-shotFor out-shotThrough fireWindWaterAnd earth(Korsnäs 1915, printed in Forsblom 1927:278).6

This incantation that refers to the four elements to strengthen its case pro-vides further ritual instructions for reading it: “To be read three times overfreshly-milked milk.” Similar charms from the same area have even moredetailed instructions and could indicate that the substance had to come froma one-coloured cow or state that the substance in use was to be ingested bythe sick person and the remainder to be rubbed into the skin. In its own com-pact way this charm tells us of an attack that cannot be stopped even by anyof the elements. Only direct action based on the same kind of cunning wis-dom could reverse the situation.

The Collector and the CollectionsMost archived folk belief collections are based on circulated questionnaires:too often with leading questions followed by heavily edited answers thatconfirm preconceived themes and motifs with little left of the local context.Valter W. Forsblom is different, as his work sprang from an interest in someconcrete practices and his recording was done in a limited geographical areaand over a (comparatively) short period of time. He nevertheless had timeto go back to gather additional material and could thereby refine his meth-odology. Rather than confirming an established belief motif, his aim was toseek variations of a certain curing practice. The beliefs entered the recordsas explanations for the action taken.

The fieldwork was done during Forsblom’s days as a student and repre-sents his first attempts to interview people. The first collection from thesummer of 1913 was handed in to the Society for Swedish Literature in Fin-land on the collector’s own initiative. Later he wrote: “My commitment wasto collect the purely folkloristic material, the charms, as well as the ethno-graphic material, the ceremonies and the practices, that are used when cur-ing illnesses” (1927:VII).7 Forsblom studied ethnography and worked whilean undergraduate at the Ethnographic Museum in Helsinki (Ekrem 2014;Wolf-Knuts 1991:31). Among his tutors were Kaarle Krohn, and this lead-ing folklorist held Forsblom in high esteem and encouraged further field-work, as did Ernst Lagus. That said, Forsblom seems to have had an inde-


Valter W. Forsblom with one of his informants, Lurkun, in Oravais during his fieldwork in thesummer of 1916 (SLS 267:18). © Society of Swedish Literature in Finland: The Archives ofFolk Culture. (Photo: Valter W. Forsblom.)

pendent mind and never pursued an academic career, neither at the univer-sity nor at any of the Finnish archives. He graduated from Helsinki Univer-sity in 1917, but never went on to write a doctoral thesis, which is surprisinggiven the rich materials he had collected. His interest in documenting folkmedicine and related beliefs was, it seems, limited to the early years, and heworked as an amanuensis at the Society in charge of its folklore archivesfrom 1927 to 1939. From 1943, Forsblom was employed as an officer at thepost and telegraph administration.

Forsblom amassed five large collections related to healing practices. Thefirst was assembled on his own initiative for “ethnographic purposes” as hewrote when submitting it in the autumn of 1913 to the Society, which im-mediately recognized the quality of his endeavours. He was awarded 200Finnish marks for his work and trusted by the board to lead an ethnographicexpedition the following summer to southern Ostrobothnia, tasked withdocumenting rural architecture. However, Forsblom concurrently took theopportunity to record folk medicine when finding time, aided by a camerawith which the expedition had been equipped. This new tool profoundly in-fluenced his documentation methods, and over the following three years,Forsblom was able to focus on folk medicine with the help of a camera. His


collections relating to healing grew larger for every summer, and he devel-oped an increasingly critical awareness of the limitations to his goal of com-prehending all the aspects of a single ritual event: so fugitive and still socomplex. Forsblom was highly aware of the fact that the words he recordedhad their function in an oral context, and that most often the words were in-separably embedded in ritual practice. This perhaps serves as an explanationfor his enthusiasm for photo-documentation, and his struggle with the boardof the Society to obtain further funding, or at least be reimbursed for his ex-penses.

As early as in his first report from 1913, and indeed thereafter, Forsblomrepeatedly emphasizes that the old traditions are rejected by young people,who are influenced by school education, newspapers and modern thinking(Forsblom 1913; 1914; 1915). This in turn engenders reluctance by old heal-ers to reveal their knowledge and abilities, anticipating that they might beridiculed. Forsblom’s further correspondence with the Society bears witnessto the fact that the board developed an admiration for this student’s abilityto gain the trust of his informants, to the extent that they could discuss suchsensitive topics as trolldom-related topics with him. That said, we can dis-cern from his reports that he somewhat strained the limits of their willing-ness to discuss such matters.

Forsblom admits that he sometimes has adapted to this: he has playedalong and scorned modern medicine, instead praising old methods, and haspromised not to show his collection to the local clergymen or the youth. Thisrescue work, according to Forsblom, was the fundamental value of the col-lecting activities. His conviction is that the old traditions are threatened bymodernity, and that the defenders of change and development cut their linkwith the past as a result of pure ignorance. His main criticism is, however,directed at the Church “that has made itself known for its zealous ambitionto eradicate superstition [vidskepelse] from the world […] but – luckily forscientific research – only with all too limited results” (Forsblom 1914:XLVII).8 The attacks on the Church from an otherwise quite conservativeperson could perhaps seem surprising, but are based on Forsblom’s experi-ence of the impact of this institution and education on folk medicine. Thosewho knew and used this rich tapestry of words and deeds he had encoun-tered and admired tended to conceal it (and not only to retain the magic ofthe secrecy of their procedures) from the eyes of the modern: personified bythe priest, the teacher and other educated people. This means that some ofthe charms are “defective or all together truncated. (Surprisingly enough,these truncated charms have been used with success)” as Forsblom wroteabout their fragmentary condition (1913:XLII).9 He clearly identified him-self with an academic position that aimed at recognizing tradition unspoiltby both the Church and modern living conditions.

The work of Valter W. Forsblom should not be idealized; it has its biases


and limitations. He was a child of his time and an evolutionist: thepre-Christian elements are an assumption in his work, not the result of in-vestigation, and they have their given place on a chronological line. Fors-blom had a special interest in charms, with their combination of both Chris-tian and pre-/non-Christian elements; and he considered them ancient inform and content, thereby providing insight into the true religion of the folkbeyond the institutional influences from the Church. In his own words, thestudy of these practices was “a unique opportunity to get insight into theopinions and beliefs of the peasantry, precisely in the area where religionand magic meet; an area people today rarely want to expose to everyone’sgaze” (1913:XLI).10 Still, they were distinctly tied to problems and situa-tions in the present. Forsblom’s chronological framework for interpretationalternated between the timeless, and in the view of his time the authentic,and the appearance of modern society that put the old remedies and practicesin a new light. Even if his comments emphasize the former, it is apparentthat he had an open eye for the latter.

The Diagnosis, the Healer and the PerformanceOf all the folk medicine terms Forsblom provides in his work, two relatedconcepts are of particular importance. The healer or the performer is an om-lagare, and the act or technique is called omlagning or omlagelse; or, usedin a verbal construction, att laga om. It means to attend, with a certain ac-centuation of making sure that the wrong is reversed, i.e. putting somethingback into its original or natural order. From this perspective illness was un-derstood as an erroneous state and the healing process was a method to re-store balance. The terminology carries with it a basic comprehension ofillness as an outside intrusion into the body. The cases discussed below willconfirm how it most often was thought that a tangible object had entered thebody (Honko 1959).

As seen in the quotations above, the sender is mostly only an implicitpresence in the charms. But in the formula below, a recurring personifica-tion is the highly tangible source of illness: Pest (“Plague”) himself. In con-trast to the above, neither the illness nor the affected is clearly defined. Thecharacter seems to represent a strong collective memory of epidemic ca-tastrophes both far back in history and more recent (Honko 1958:151‒192).The gendered Pest (in other records Pestborg) is portrayed with corporalfeatures, walking and answering when confronted by Christ. The narrativescene is dominated by the two combatants and their clash.

Christ and Peter came walking along a roadThen he met PestThen Christ said:Where is Pest going?


Into the flesh and bone of peopleNo, Christ saidAnother road you will takeUnder an earthbound stoneWhere no green grass is growingThere you shall goAnd stand Like Christ stood on the crossIn the name of the Father, and the Son, a. t. H. S. [and the Holy Spirit].To be read in one breath over vodka or unfiltered milk(Vörå 1916, printed in Forsblom 1927:269‒270).11

Only a few lines long, this charm is close to a folk legend with its narrativeconstruction in several sequences and a dialogue. The meeting scene and theconfrontation are known from charms all over Europe (Roper 2004; 2009).Christ is depicted as the active healer, the one who confronts the source ofthe pest shot with a long instruction of where to go instead of entering thebodies of humans. The space under the earthbound stone appears to be a bar-ren place, perhaps in Hell or nearby, and Pest – in contrast to Christ, perhapseven to be identified with the Devil – receives a just punishment.

In his introduction to the printed volume on magical folk medicine, Fors-blom emphasizes that omlagning was not regarded as an act of destructiveintent (trolldom), nor was it considered to be a sin. A decisive moral distinc-tion is made by the informants between sending illness and curing. Usingcunning knowledge to cause discomfort, bad luck or maladies was thoughtto be acting under the influence of the Devil. In a contrast, healing perfor-mances were regarded as a body of knowledge, and Forsblom presents a richvernacular vocabulary for knowledge of, or insight into, matters clandes-tine; taken together, the records provide the contour of an ontology wheretrolldom as cause and effect is reasonable. The bearers of this special knowl-edge were often identified among the informants as old people and/or wisepeople; and apparently these two characteristics went together. The properorder of transmission was emphasized to Forsblom: the special knowledgecould only travel in one direction; the young could never teach old people.This reflects an age hierarchy that we know was a social fact. Old age in it-self was certainly a powerful element, and as such a vital prerequisite formany of the charms, but also conceived as actively transmitted from ancientdays. Things old were considered to have a moral value. The healer must beold in order to guarantee that the knowledge is valid; but, conversely, in-creasing frailty over the years is thereby at the same time a danger to the ef-ficacy of the powerful words. Losing one’s teeth, for example, was thoughtto be a sign of losing command of the insights. Both men and women actedas healers and were met with a combination of fear and respect because oftheir abilities to offer solutions to critical problems.

In order to defend the practices, the informants made references to the


An attempt to ward off a troll shot (flojest), which has targeted the victim and is caused by anevil-minded person. Nedervetil, 1917 (SLS 267:17). © Society of Swedish Literature in Fin-land: The Archives of Folk Culture. (Photo: Valter W. Forsblom.)

healing acts of Christ, and to the fact that also he passed on these skills tohis disciples. The use and correct transmission of special powers is therebysanctioned in a biblical context. The acts of healing are often declared to be“in the name of the Father…”, and the formulas connected to Church cere-monies; they are not, it appears, associated with the performance of any de-structive witchcraft. The concluding “Amen”, crucial in its Church context,was not supposed to be uttered. The reason given by the informants was that,once pronounced, the concluding vocation made it impossible for the healerto perform another ritual if the first turned out to be ineffective. Some cate-chisms explicitly defined the source of malicious behaviour as originatingfrom the Devil himself (Wolf-Knuts 1991:117‒122; Raudvere 1993:95‒108). However, the attitude is sometimes ambiguous when attributingsuch powers to the Devil and such an extent of his authority. Did he havesuch influence over the world of humans or was the very belief in the effi-cacy of such rituals a sin?

Two kinds of scenes appear in Forsblom’s records. The most frequent isthe healing scene proper and actors with distinct roles. The ill person has ap-proached the healer and goes to his or her place and the recorded charm textis embedded in a subsequent healing session. Alternatively, the scene is fo-


cused on the cause of the illness: i.e., centred on people with bad intentions:the envious, the lustful, and those with strong thoughts. In his typology,Forsblom emphasizes rituals with and without charms, which goes back tohis distinction between folkloristics and ethnography and their different ob-jects of study.

However, many of the charms can offer an implicit narrative. The damageis already done (with clear-cut agents) and the ritual provides methods to putthings right again. The wording is condensed and it is up to imagination toconstruct a before and an after.

Is [it] in fleshThen it shall go out of fleshIs [it] in sinewThen it shall go out of sinewAnd is [it] in boneIt shall go out of boneAnd thus it shall moveAs Peter wentOver the River JordanJust behind Jesus Christ(Korsnäs 1915, printed in Forsblom 1927:294).12

The biblical reference here serves as a vague background, more like asimile. The healer, the person with the insights to put things right, is the onewho can read for change (laga om). The healers frequently received mone-tary payment or reward in the form of alcohol or another gift. Forsblom’sfrequent emphasis on age, when summarizing his records, opens for thequestion of whether the healers were persons on the margins of local socie-ty; but this is highly disputable. Rather, they could be argued to have beencentral because of their abilities. Age is as much a social fact as a symbolicexpression of knowledge acquired over a long time and hence trustworthyexperience. Read today, Forsblom’s identification of the remaining wisepeople as representatives of a threatened tradition is a partly contradictoryargument, in that it identifies the healer at the centre of attention as an im-portant person.

Forsblom underlines the healing words as exclusive and a tool of the fewin his description of omlagning rituals: “The charms are usually read with alow voice or whispering so that the ‘precious words’ will not lose theirpower, which they would if any person present should memorize them dur-ing the course of the process” (1927:3).13 In addition to age, the hands of thehealer are said to be forceful, mighty or valuable. The tactile aspects of theritual are often important parts of the ritual acts complementing the readingof a charm, the latter often formulated as a vocative with a command to theillness to depart. The touch by the healer on the sick person was a concreteway of transmitting the power to cure the illness. The stronger/more solidthe knowledge, the more clandestine the source of it. About some healers it


“Gräneby Jaak” (Jakob Lytts), a well-known healer (omlagare) and witch (trollkarl), reads thecards on a Sunday afternoon outside the inn at Terjärv in 1917. An interested audience is fol-lowing his interpretation of the cards (SLS 285:16). © Society of Swedish Literature in Fin-land: The Archives of Folk Culture. (Photo: Valter W. Forsblom.)

was said that they had had contacts with Saami people or even dealt with theDevil. Through this they had achieved the full capacity to send whateverevil they wanted. Some of the healers were real characters, and their nameslived on as evidence of the strength of tradition in the old days. In thesecases the memory of the ritual practice was transformed into a narrative: andForsblom himself was aware that he transmitted legends when he comment-ed, regarding some of the strong healers, that the people of Ostrobothniawith the greatest respect mention the names of famous men “whose deedshad grown into fantastic dimensions” (1913:XLII).14 One of them had notonly received his insights “from the Lapp” and could ride as fast as the priestto church on Christmas morning: but could also cure all kinds of illnesses,and he was known to have performed abortions.

The ritual substances play a fundamental role both in the ritual practiceand in the formulations of the charms. The elements appear in the charmsand several of these end with instructions on how to read (along with poss-ible physical movements), but almost all of them have references to sub-stances over which they are to be read, in order to pass on the strength and


furthermore to be rubbed in or consumed. Substances with strong symbolicvalue appear: water, salt, blood, alcohol, and a number of less pleasantfluids.

Although the contextual information is scarce, it seems likely that therewere audiences at the rituals (and not only those in Forsblom’s photographs)and that the healer was not the only one involved in the performance; the ac-tive participation of the patient should not be underestimated. It was thesewitnesses who could help spread the word about effective rituals and whosestories helped to construct the post-ritual narrative where the charms hadtheir given place.

The Search for a Conceptual FrameworkIn his reports from the five field trips, Forsblom was very explicit about hisview of the collected materials as belonging to a coherent world view basedon both pre-/non-Christian conceptions and the teachings of the Church. Heexplained his aim as bringing forward the “logical combination of thoughts”he had observed (as stated in the longer quotation from his study on the at-tacks of the nightmare hag 1917b:117), and was wary about overusing um-brella concepts like witchcraft and superstition (trolldom and övertro) in-stead, he preferred vernacular terminology that carried with it more of thedetailed beliefs. The naming of a “shot” or an “arrow” was part of the heal-ing process. The name could define the victim, the kind of suffering, themethod of sending, and its material form when dispatched from the source(evil thoughts) towards the body of the victim.

God protect youFrom troll-shotsTroll women’s shotsAnd every shotThat flies in the midst of the dayAnd at all timesI put youBetween farm and gateFrom the rise of the sunTo its setting.To be read over teat-warm milk. To be consumed; the rest is to be rubbed in(Korsnäs 1915, printed in Forsblom 1927:283).15

After reaching its target (where it was thought to sometimes leave a mark onthe body, which could be detected by the healer), the shot affixed itself tothe victim. No place or time was safe when it came to such attacks from theevil-minded: a person could even be targeted while sitting in church duringSunday service. Sending the “shots” was frequently attributed to the Devil.In contrast to the healers, the senders are less visible as individuals in the re-cords, and the material does not suggest that any accusations or denounce-


One of Forsblom’s informants, Kajas Ann, in Terjärv in 1917. In her hand she holds an objectwith a pentagram inscribed within a circle. Kajas Ann is said to be able to ward off the lady ofthe forest (skogsrået) by the use of the symbol (SLS 285:14). © Society of Swedish Literaturein Finland: The Archives of Folk Culture. (Photo: Valter W. Forsblom.)

ments occurred. Rather, the imagined evil sources were embedded in thenarratives surrounding formulas and rituals.

This sensitivity to the local understanding of cause, effect and counter-strike was a quite unusual position at the time. On the one hand, the individ-ual records are highly contextualized; on the other hand Forsblom’s com-mentaries on how he could observe a strong cohesion between the beliefelements must be placed in the academic discourse of his time (Raudvere1993:140‒141). To Forsblom, medical charms and healing rituals (sjuk-domsbevärjelser and omlagningar) represented two very different forms ofactivities – the verbal and the ritual – which he connected to the analyticalscope of two different academic disciplines. He voiced a sense of a rift be-tween ethnography and folkloristics in his reports to the Society and repeat-edly stated that his collections dealt with both. This can perhaps be ex-plained by his academic background: he was an ethnographer coming tofolkloristics, whereas other folklorists had a background in Nordic lan-guages or literature and hence a view of folkloristics as mainly a form of lit-erature deriving from the rural population.

Whether concerning narrative or ritual, to Forsblom the supernatural be-


ings are connected to the world of humans. And more than that. In his ac-counts we can find human desire, envy, and well-wishing as more or less in-dependent forces behind magical action. This implicit definition of religion– as social interaction by means of words, deeds and visual representations– feels very contemporary. This is particularly the case in relation to hisother line of reasoning about the evolutionistic separation of religion andmagic; something Forsblom repeatedly emphasized. “Magical folk medi-cine offers in this respect […] a rich and invaluable source for observations.It is certain that it has emerged from an – albeit primitive – logical combi-nation of thoughts, and its application has certainly lived through historyand is to be seen in folk practices” (1917b:117‒118).16

Forsblom continues with a discussion about the layers of belief through-out history, in accordance with the evolutionary paradigm, but adds:

One will find in the oldest layers of folk beliefs and conceptions a consequence, alaw-bound thinking, a primitive philosophy to be present; and one will discern cer-tain fundamental principles according to which this way of thinking has been turnedinto practice and has generated practices and customs that have been inherited fromgeneration to generation up until our days (1917b:118).17

In contrast to many recorders of folklore in this period, Forsblom was nottrying to rationalize; instead, he emphasized that the beliefs, narratives andrituals follow their own logic, and that the elements of folk beliefs and heal-ing – no matter how banal or simple they may seem – belong to a totality. Itis a mature reflection made by a (comparatively) young man who receivedhis master’s degree the same year he wrote the above, 1917. Definitively be-fore Lucien Lévy-Bruhl published his Mentalité primitive in 1922, where heclaimed the existence of a primitive logic.

The challenge of working with Forsblom’s collections is that, no matterhow thorough he is in noting the time, place and names of the informants (atleast after a while), he organized his records according to the themes thatlater structured Finlands svenska folkdiktning. Forsblom was commissionedto edit a volume on “magical folk medicine” in the series, the last of the fivevolumes on folk beliefs and witchcraft – a volume which is in many respectsa completion of the work he began with his first fieldwork in the summer of1913. He started the editing work in 1926 and the volume was published latethe following year. The original records were not preserved, and the manu-scripts by Forsblom’s hand now only exist thematically structured by him-self. As an editorial principle, he omitted the legendary narratives related tothe ritual practices since they were, in his opinion, not first-hand informa-tion. The records are arranged according to the various illnesses and to someextent to the symptoms: a few chapters concern the causes behind such phe-nomena as troll shots or the nightmare hag.

In the preface, Forsblom refers to such scholars as Edward Westermarck,Martin P. Nilsson and James George Frazer, who all influenced his views


on cultural development and taxonomy. Forsblom admits that this is morethan was originally planned, “a fully systematic attempt to thoroughly bringtogether” beliefs about supernatural beings, and he writes that a reason whyit is kept in one volume is that there are no suitable grounds on which to di-vide the material.

Forsblom differentiates, as was the convention of the day, between reli-gion (folktro) and magic (trolldom). In the first he sees communication; inthe latter, attempts to change certain conditions such as illness, bad luck orlack of affection. He notes that it has been impossible in many cases to de-termine whether the healing practices have “a magical element or not”, andthe classifications therefore follow the illnesses rather than the ritual action– his clear ambition is to put them in context. In this way, he combined theevolutionary explanation and a search for logical patterns.

Reading Forsblom TodayForsblom’s records are, from the perspectives of Nordic folkloristics, with-out doubt both unique and extraordinarily rich. The collector’s strong em-phasis on the beliefs and rituals as coherent within their own framework oflogic may sound very contemporary to a modern reader, especially since itis based on highly localized fieldwork, but the theoretical basis is a concep-tion of a “primitive philosophy” in line with the evolutionary academicframework of the time. Nevertheless, Forsblom’s records can be used assources for how adversity was conceptualized among Swedish speakers inFinland at the beginning of the twentieth century. Illness and hardship weremet with narrative and ritual strategies, where non-Christian and Christianconcepts complemented each other and where both men and women tookritual responsibilities in practices where text and action were inseparable.

Even without statistics on demography and production, the texts ValterW. Forsblom recorded can tell us a lot about the human condition in westernFinland in the early twentieth century. Even if the Trinitarian formula isconstantly present in the Forsblom collections of healing practices, the focusof the religious universe presented is on humans and their relationship tothreatening forces that were very much present in their everyday life ratherthan the Heavenly Father and the Holy Trinity. The fears described are re-lated both to illnesses and famine and to anxiety and existential reflection.

Folk beliefs assembled in their textual form in folklore archives have longplayed an inconspicuous role in the study of religion, studies that to a largeextent have focused on organized religion, public discourses and identityprojects. A collection like Forsblom’s can be a tool for working with abroader concept of religion, applicable to contemporary religions as well.Both in his way of reasoning around and in practising his studies, Fors-blom’s approach was, in a sense, interdisciplinary before the term was


coined and even though the conditions for academic cooperation were dif-ferent.

When looking for witchcraft, in the sense of intentionally evil deeds andwilful damage, it becomes a question of whether to read the records as ver-batim documentation of events or emphasizing the narrative aspects of rit-uals. In Forsblom’s records the performers of trolldom and senders of illnessand worries stand in the background of the narratives and are mostly implicitpresences in the formulas. However, the trolldom is definitively there. AsForsblom sensed already as a young student, the words and deeds for howto ward off illness and distress derive their meaning from a coherent set ofthoughts that tell of how humans are affected by the will of God, fate andthe influence of others.

Catharina RaudvereProfessor of the History of ReligionsDepartment of Cross-Cultural and Regional StudiesUniversity of CopenhagenKaren Blixens Vej 4DK- 2300 Copenhagen SDenmarke-mail: [email protected]

ReferencesPrimary SourcesThe Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, Helsinki:Valter W. Forsblom’s collections: SLS 218 (from 1913), SLS 232 (from 1914), SLS

253a and b (from 1915), SLS 267 (from 1916), and 285 (from 1917).Forsblom, Valter W. 1913: Till Svenska Litteratursällskapets i Finland folkloristiska

sektion. Förhandlingar och uppsatser, vol. 27.Forsblom, Valter W. 1914: Till Svenska Litteratursällskapets i Finland folkloristiska

kommitté. Förhandlingar och uppsatser, vol. 28.Forsblom, Valter W. 1915: Till Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. Förhand-

lingar och uppsatser, vol. 29.Forsblom, Valter W. 1917a: Föreställningar i svenska Österbotten om trollskott.

Folkloristiska och etnografiska studier vol. 2. Helsingfors. Forsblom, Valter W. 1917b: Om mara och marritt i österbottnisk folktro. Folkloris-

tiska och etnografiska studier vol. 2. Helsingfors.Forsblom, Valter W. 1927. Finlands svenska folkdiktning VII. Folktro och trolldom

5. Magisk folkmedicin. Helsinki.

Secondary sourcesBowman, Marion and Ülo Valk 2012: Introduction. Vernacular Religion, Generic

Expressions and the Dynamics of Belief. Bowman, Marion and Ülo Valk (eds.):Vernacular Religion in Everyday Life. Expressions of Belief. London. Pp. 1–21.

Ekrem, Carola 2014: Belysandet af vår allmoges andliga lif. Traditionsinsamlingen


inom Svenska litteratursällskapet. Arkiv, minne, glömska. Arkiven vid Svenskalitteratursällskapet i Finland 1885–2010. Helsinki.

Ekrem, Carola et al. 2014: Arkiv, minne, glömska. Arkiven vid Svenska litteratursäll-skapet i Finland 1885-2010. Helsinki.

Honko, Lauri 1959: Krankheitsprojektile. Untersuchung über eine urtümlicheKrankheitserklärung. Helsinki.

Klintberg, Bengt af 1965: Svenska trollformler. Stockholm.Klintberg, Bengt af 1978: Magisk diktteknik. Tre exempel. Harens klagan. Stock-

holm.Klintberg, Bengt af 2000: Kunna mer än sitt Fader vår. Lennart Elmevik (ed.): Dia-

lekter och folkminnen. Uppsala.Lennersand, Marie and Linda Oja 2006: Livet går vidare. Ålvdalen och Rättvik efter

de stora häxprocesserna. Hedemora.Oja, Linda 1999: Varken Gud eller natur. Synen på magi i 1600- och 1700-talens

Sverige. Eslöv.Raudvere, Catharina 1993: Maran i nordisk folktro. Lund.Raudvere, Catharina 2002: Trolldómr in Early Medieval Scandinavia. Bengt Ankar-

loo and Stuart Clark (eds.): Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Vol. 3. London. Pp.73–172.

Raudvere, Catharina 2003: Kunskap och insikt i norrön tradition. Mytologi, ritualeroch trolldomsanklagelser. Lund.

Raudvere, Catharina 2012: Fictive Rituals in Völuspá. Mythological Narration be-tween Agency and Structure in the Representation of Reality. Lund.

Roper, Jonathan 2004: Typologising English Charms. Jonathan Roper (ed.): Charmsand Charming in Europe. Basingstoke & New York. Pp. 128–144.

Roper, Jonathan 2009: Introduction. Unity and Diversity in Charms Studies. Jona-than Roper (ed.): Charms, Charmers and Charming. International Research onVerbal Magic. Basingstoke & New York. Pp. xiv–xvi.

Steinby, Torsten 1985: Forskning och vitterhet. Svenska litteratursällskapet i Fin-land 1885–1985. Vol. 1. Det första halvseklet. Helsinfors.

Wolf-Knuts, Ulrika 1991: Människan och djävulen. En studie kring form, motiv ochfunktion i folklig tradition. Åbo.

Wolf-Knuts, Ulrika 1999: Folkloren och dess upptecknare. Finlands svenska littera-turhistoria. Vol. 1. Åren 1400-1900. Helsinki.

Wolf-Knuts, Ulrika 2004: Swedish Finn Incantations. Valter W. Forsblom onCharms and Charming. Jonathan Roper (ed.): Charms and Charming in Europe.Basingstoke & New York. Pp. 188–204.

Wolf-Knuts, Ulrika 2009: Charms as a Means of Coping. Jonathan Roper (ed.):Charms, Charmers and Charming. International Research on Verbal Magic.Basingstoke & New York. Pp. 62–70.

1 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conference “Nordic Mythologies” atUCLA in May 2012 and at “Sagas, Legends, and Trolls. The Supernatural from Early Modernback to Old Norse Tradition” at the University of Tartu in June 2014.2 The quotations from Forsblom’s collections are taken from the volume of Finlands svenskafolkdiktning on magical folk medicine, volume 7:5 “Magisk folkmedicin” (Forsblom 1927).The printed version strictly follows the archive manuscripts, and the volume is widely acces-sible in Scandinavian libraries. Forsblom followed the categories he had used to organize his


own records, but he added other Finland-Swedish folk belief sources (mainly printed works andother collections at the Society’s archive). It thus became a large volume of 759 pages plus pho-tos and indices.3 Valter W. Forsblom’s collections are filed at the Archives of Folk Culture of The Society ofSwedish Literature in Finland as: SLS 218 (from 1913), SLS 232 (from 1914), SLS 253a andb (from 1915), SLS 267 (from 1916), and 285 (from 1917). See: http://www.sls.fi4 All translations from Forsblom’s records are by the present author.5 “Modersjuk/ Uti din buk/ Var i ro/ Där du skall bo/ Var tillfreds/ Som järn och stål/ I namnFadrens och Sons o. d. H. A-s” (Sideby 1913, printed in Forsblom 1927:243).6 “För inskott/ För utskott/ Igenom eld/ Väder/ Vaten/ Och jord./ Läses tre gånger i nyss mjökadmjölk” (Korsnäs 1915, printed in Forsblom 1927:278).7 “Min uppgift var att insamla såväl det rent folkloristiska materialet, formlerna, som även detetnografiska materialet, de ceremonier och bruk, som användas vid sjukdomars botande” (Fors-blom 1927:VII).8 “har den ju nog gjort sig känd för sin nitälskan att utrota vidskepelsen ur världen […] men –till lycka för den vetenskapliga forskningen – med blott alltför klent resultat” (Forsblom 1914:XLVII).9 “defekta eller h. o. h. stympade. (Underligt nog tyckas även dessa stympade formler medframgång blivit använda.)” (Forsblom 1913:XLII).10 “ett enastående tillfälle att få en inblick i allmogens uppfattnings- och åskådningssätt på justdet område där religion och magi gå samman, ett område som nutidsmänniskan icke gärna villblotta för allas blickar” (Forsblom 1913:XLI).11 “Kristus å Petrus kom gångandes efter en väg/ Så mötte han Pesten/ Så sade Kristus:/ Vartskall Pesten gå?/ Uti mänisjors tjött å ben/ Nej, sade Kristus/ En annan väg skall du gå/ Underen jordfastan sten/ Där intet grönt gräs växer/ Dit skall du få gå/ Och stå/ Som Kristus uppåkorset stod/ I namn Fadrens och Sonens o. d. H. A./ Besvärjelsen läses i ett andetag tre gångeri brännvin eller osilad sötmjölk” (Forsblom 1927:269–270).12 “Je i tjött/ Så ska e ga ur tjött/ Je i sen/ Så ska e ga ur sen/ Å je i bein/ Så ska e ga ur bein/ Åså ska e far/ Som Petrus for/ Yvi Jordans flod/ Straks baket Jesus Kristus/ Läses tre gånger inymjölkad mjölk” (Forsblom 1927:294).13 “Besvärjelseformlerna uppläsas vanligen lågmält eller viskande, på det att de ’dyra orden’icke måtte mista sin kraft, vilket skulle inträffa, ifall en närvarande person under procedurensförlopp lärde sig desamma” (Forsblom 1927:3).14 “I folkets fantasi ha dessa stormäns bedrifter stundom antagit sagolika dimensioner” (Fors-blom 1913:XLII).15 “Gud bevare teg/ Från trollskåt/ Trålltjälngsskåt/ Å all skåt/ Som flyger om middagan/ Å alltider/ Ja sätter dej/ Mellan gård å grind/ Från solenes uppgång/ Och till dess nedergång./ Lagasom i spenvarm mjölk. Tages in; med återstoden smörjes” (Forsblom 1927:283).16 “Den magiska folkmedicinen erbjuder i detta hänseende en rik och ovärderlig källa för iakt-tagelser. Ty så visst som ett bruk en gång uppstått ur en – om och primitiv – logisk tankekom-bination och så visst som bruket fortlevat genom tiderna och återfinnes i folkseden” (Forsblom1917b:117–118).17 “Man skall i det äldsta skiktet av folktro och föreställningar finna en konsekvens, ett lagbun-det tänkande, en primitiv filosofi vara rådande, och man skall kunna skönja vissa grundprinci-per, enligt vilka detta tänkande omsatts i handling samt alstrat bruk och sed, som från släktledtill släktled gått i arv allt intill våra dagar” (Forsblom 1917b:118).

Meeting Hardship, Illness and Malice Valter W. Forsblom and His Documentation of Healing Practices...

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