Of moose, trolls, and Swedes - Author's Notes for Under The Northern Lights

The moose (Alkes alkes) is an animal that has a big potential for being redonkulous. That made me hesitate to write a chapter where for at least a second someone is scared of a moose. The thing is, see, that I have found that my fellow Swedes have a less tendency to think of the beast as redonkulous than other people - especially, it seems, the people of US of A, who I sort of imagines make up the majority of bronies. That's because of the role the moose has in culture and media.
It's the biggest and most common big game in what wilderness we have. A stereotypical hunter or hick in Swedish media will inevitably hunt moose. It is manly! (Don't hunt reindeer instead. Reindeer are the domesticated cattle of the Sami tribes. They are just herded in a different way. A reindeer hunter is a cattle rustler, basically.) Being beaned by a moose is pretty unlikely, but they are big and strong. (Any death due to moose is because they are in a fair amount of traffic accidents.)
It's also - don't laugh - rather majestic, or it at least can be, when you meet it in nature. It's regularily referred to as the "King of the forest". In both fine art and kitsch the moose standing in nature and looking majestic is common - usually by a tarn or lake, sometimes in sunlight, sometimes as a dark shadow.
It has, perhaps because tourists from other European countries seem to love them, also become symbols for the country. Moose dolls, figurines, keychains, t-shirts and so on tend to crop up on the same merchandise that has the Swedish flag or the like. There are even people selling novelty jewlery made of moose poop.

That pic was named by a chap named John Bauer, who illustrated a lot of fairy tales in the beginning of the century. It shows the moose Skutt (Leap) guarding little princess Tuvstarr (that's the name of a plant growing by lakes, natch, and she becomes one in the sad story). He tries to guard her through the story but can't - she loses all that makes her human in the forest to various supernatural beings. You know, for kids? But I think Skutt is one badass moose.

Bauer is most famous for illustrating something else: trolls. In Sweden, he probably formed the picture of how a "troll" looked like all the way until all the kids started playing World of Warcraft and trolls became blue dudes from Jamaica.

The thing with imaginary beings like trolls is that they are, y'know, not real. I'm an old roleplayer (Dungeons & Dragons and that stuff) and I often found people taking a creature of folklore, making it into a neat monster for the game, and would say: this is what people believed. The problem is with folklore is that it isn't very specific. What is believed in one place or time is not believed in one other, and people are not neccessarily certain. Often one word is used for a lot of different things. Like 'troll'. It tends to end up meaning 'supernatural, humanoid creature'. Some trolls are giants, some trolls little beings, some trolls at least take the shape of objects or animals, and some look just like you and me.

In fact, the trolls people actually still believed in a hundred years ago were much like the idea of elves/fairies/sidhe/whatever you might call them. Generally, you are out in a remote and scary place when you meet a stranger. They are an incredibly beautiful woman or handsome man in the clothes of a very rich person. They shouldn't be there, you realise. They are a troll. Horrible things will probably happen to you. (Or you have great sex.) They had supernatural powers; 'trolla' means 'do magic' and a 'trollkarl' is a wizard.

That is unlike the trolls in folk tales no one was supposed to believe in, but told for entertainment. They were ogres or giants, often with bizarre features like several heads. They were still portrayed as rich (sort of like dragons - hoards of gold and the like) and 'rich as a troll' is still a proverb. They were usually strong but stupid, to show how awesome the human hero is. The stallo - or stalo, or stalu - of Sami folklore was like that. Hence the reindeer's name for moose. Those are the kind of trolls that John Bauer often ended up illustrating. Here are some examples.

A little boy meets a troll in the forest. IIRC the title is something like "Good day to you, sir". Always be polite, remember that.

Who says trolls have to be bad guys? Momma troll loves her son.

Pissed off troll. Notice the tail? Fairy tale trolls tend to have them over here. A troll disguising itself as human will take time to hide it in their pants or skirt.

Enough John Bauer. These are the sort of trolls I thought of when "ponyfying" them into moose, if that makes sense. I still tend to think - despite what I said above - that Bauer's trolls or the mysterious strangers from folklore are real trolls, and don't really like the myriard copies from Dungeons & Dragons (who got its troll from a novel by Poul Andersen) or Lord of The Rings in games and books and comics. Oh well.

So, why did I get the idea of having moose in a story about reindeer, and making them trolls? Well, I thought I should do something about moose - they are just as Scandinavian as reindeer, after all - and one of my favorite My Litt Pony fanfics held an answer and an inspiration. I am talking, of course, about It's A Dangerous Business Going Out Your Door by Jetfire. In it, our heroines encounter deer that are, for all intents and purposes, elves a la Tolkien. It fits perfectly. And while it might not fit perfectly, I think the moose as trolls - big, reclusive, savage yet kind trolls - fits good enough for government work.

Comments

[MariusIoannesP]

I knew it! You make a couple of references to "A Dangerous Business Going Out Your Door" in "Under the Northern Lights". I think Moose are mentioned in that story too. Either by the Deer Lady Falalauria or in the narration if I recall correctly.

Moose I think is just one of those inherently funny words. Moose! Moose! It just makes me giggle. Sometimes at the ghosties!

You know what I've always wondered. What does the Moose say? Do they wonder that in Sweden as the Norwegians wonder "What does the Fox say?"