“An old woman was going to wash her clothes on a Sunday morning. She placed her washing pot next to a large rock and set to work. After a while, she needed to change the water; she took the pot and poured the [still quite] hot water out on the ground [close by]. She finished her laundry and started doing [her] other chores, and she didn’t notice anything. It became evening, and she went to bed and slept well all night.
But in the morning, as she was getting up, she felt a terrible pain in her face - half of her face was dark blue and covered in blisters. The old woman got very scared, because she realized that she had accidentally scalded a vätte¹ with her hot laundry water. Vättarna² are, as is [commonly] known, little earth spirits that usually appear in the shape of little toads.
They called for a wise old woman³. This woman went from house to house, begging for money - one and a half styver⁴ was called "halvannan peng⁵” - and she should get nine of those.
It wouldn’t be acceptable for her to receive the money by any other means than begging. When she had collected the money, she sent the sick old woman out to acquire milk from a cow that was completely red.
Now when the milk had been collected, an offering was made to the king⁶ of vättarna. A hole was dug next to the rock where the woman had done her laundry, and the money and milk was thrown into [the hole]. Then the sick [old woman] had to remain indoors for nine days, and she wasn’t allowed to show her face to anyone [that was human].
After nine days, the sick [old woman] was feeling a lot better, and after she had bought lampante olive oil for twelve shillings⁷ and used it to moisturize her face, she soon made a full recovery.“
- sägen from Tving, Blekinge, as told by Ebbe Schön in Svenska sägner
¹ land wight
² land wights
³ one of the kloka; a practitioner of traditional folk medicine
⁴ a coin of low value
⁵ lit. "one and a half coin”
⁶Ebbe Schön notes that the king might have been added to the sägen by the person recording it, but that the description of the offering is consistent with how traditional folk medicine was practiced. He writes “The curing [ritual] is, like so often within folk medicine, complicated - [because] this will make it more potent. The number nine, that is three times the magical number three, seems to be of vital importance in this ritual. ”
⁷ Swedish shillings, skilling
Bonus: pictures of (some of) the traditional cow breeds that originate from Blekinge/southern Sweden:
Rusalka is a female water spirit in Slavic mythology and folklore. According to Vladimir Propp, the original “rusalka” was an appellation used by Pagan Slavic tribes, who linked them with fertility and did not consider rusalkas evil before the nineteenth century. They came out of the water in the spring to transfer life-giving moisture to the fields and thus helped nurture the crops.
In nineteenth century versions, a rusalka is an unquiet, dangerous being who is no longer alive, associated with the unclean spirit. According to Dmitry Zelenin, young women, who either committed suicide by drowning due to an unhappy marriage (they might have been jilted by their lovers or abused and harassed by their much older husbands) or who were violently drowned against their will (especially after becoming pregnant with unwanted children), must live out their designated time on earth as rusalkas. However, the initial Slavic lore suggests that not all rusalkas occurrences were linked with death from water.
It is accounted by most stories that the soul of a young woman who had died in or near a river or a lake would come back to haunt that waterway. This undead rusalka is not invariably malevolent, and would be allowed to die in peace if her death is avenged. Her main purpose is, however, to lure young men, seduced by either her looks or her voice, into the depths of said waterways where she would entangle their feet with her long red hair and submerge them. Her body would instantly become very slippery and not allow the victim to cling on to her body in order to reach the surface. She would then wait until the victim had drowned, or, on some occasions, tickle them to death, as she laughed. It is also believed, by a few accounts, that rusalkas can change their appearance to match the tastes of men they are about to seduce, although a rusalka is generally considered to represent universal beauty, therefore is highly feared yet respected in Slavic culture.
