In the last post about trolls, the concept of ”bergtagning”, where trolls kidnaps people, were explained. One version of this story is the Changeling, where the trolls take a human child from the cradle and replace it with a troll child. The risk of this happening was greatest before the child was baptized.
There were different ways to tell if your child had been taken and replaced. Sometimes, it simply looked different. Other times, the changeling could look exactly like the human child, but just as with trolls in general, something would just seem ”off”. Maybe the child cried to much, ate copious amounts of food or didn’t grow as it should.
These stories were probably a way to explain why some kids were different, for example born with disabilities. What makes it even worse is the way the ”changeling” would be treated.
If you suspected that your child had been replaced by a troll child, you should treat it so bad that the troll’s mother would return for it, and give the human child back. Examples could be to beat it, sweep the child out of the house with the broom or throw it on the manure pile.
In one story, the mother who suspects her child had been replaced, is just about to throw the changeling into the fire, when the troll mother shows up and takes back her child, screaming:
”I would never treat your child as bad as you would treat mine!”
Let’s hope the troll child had a better upbringing with it’s real parents.
Sources:
Egerkrans, Johan. ”Nordiska väsen”
Schön, Ebbe. ”Älvor, vättar och andra väsen”
Wall, Tora. ”Folktrons väsen”