Swedish Folktales: Bohuslän

The Giant Maid of Boråseröd Mountain

In Svarteborgs socken there is a mountain, Boråserödsberget, where a giant used to live. Like the rest of the race of giants he's now gone, they all vanished when people adopted the Christian faith. Some say that he died, but others think he moved to Dovre, Norway, a place where it’s known that other giants gathered when they fled the Swedish church bells.

Nonetheless, there are still signs of the giant at Boråseröd mountain. For instance, there's a depression in the stone called “the giant's door,” and they say that inside, the giant had halls filled with gold. Still, nobody has managed to find their way in, which is probably for the best, because giant-gold is no blessing.

The same giant had a daughter so beautiful that no one who saw her could ever forget the sight. Among those few who had luck enough to catch a glimpse of her was a man who worked at a nearby farm called Rom. One day when he was out looking for some horses who had gone astray, he saw a wondrously beautiful maiden who sat and played a harp in the sunshine.

The man knew who it was, and since he was a bold fellow and knew the girl’s father had a fair bit of gold, he thought it might actually be quite pleasant to be married to a giantess. And so, taking many twists and turns to avoid detection, he approached the giant-maid. When he got close enough he threw his knife between her and the mountain, and, since trolls are bound by steel, with or without consent she had to follow the man to his home.

During the night, when the giant found his daughter was missing, he set out to see what had become of her, and so found his way to Rom.

Through the wall he heard the snoring of two people, and when he lifted the roof off the house, he saw his daughter sleeping in the arms of the young man.

“What, you’re sleeping here, you little brat?” the giant roared. But on second thought he added quietly, “well, if it’s already come this far, I suppose you can have each other. However, you must hold the wedding before the new moon. And if you can provide me with all the food and drink I want, then your descendants shall be rich and powerful, but if you fail, I‘ll have nothing to do with your family.”

The wedding was planned in a hurry, and neighbors and relatives came from all around, bringing food with them. To make it a truly big affair, the two were to be married in Tosse church. But in the days before the wedding there was such a terrible flood that everyone wondered how the wedding party was going to cross the swollen stream that runs between Dingle and Bärby. So the giant and his wife went to Holmåsar in Berffendalen and got a huge slab of stone and four boulders, and carried them to the stream. The giant carried the slab under his arm and his wife carried the boulders in her glove, and with the stones they built a bridge which stands to this day.

After the ceremony the newlyweds left the church to go to the farm where the party was to be held, and the giant, he just sat himself down at a table with everybody else. Though the happy couple had tried their best to have plenty of food prepared, when the feast was over the giant declared he was only half full. So he said that for this reason only half of their family would be rich. Still, he did want to offer his daughter something nice on her wedding day, so he tossed a huge sack of gold and silver onto the floor and told his new son-in-law, “if you can carry it, you can keep it!” Quietly the bride gave her husband a potion that made him so strong that he could sling the sack over his shoulder and, to everyone's surprise, he carried it out of the house!

The newlyweds lived happily for a while, but soon the man started to complain and get mean. It went so far that once he even struck his wife, but she, she remained just as mild and patient as before.

Some time later the man was making ready to leave on a long journey and found that his horse was missing one of its horseshoes. There was nothing for it but to put a new one on, but the horseshoes he had on hand were too big. He started to curse and swear. Without saying a word, his wife took the horseshoe and bent it together as if it was made of lead. The man looked at her for a long while in shock and terror, finally managing to say, “but why have you, as strong as you are, just stood there and taken abuse from me?”

“Because, a wife should always obey her husband,” she said sweetly.

From that moment on the man became one of the nicest in town, and nobody ever heard an unkind word come out of his mouth again.