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Bergsrå

mythical creature in Norse folklore

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ10428568 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Bergsrå (Mountain Rå), Bergatrollet (Mountain Troll), or Bergakungen (Mountain King) was a mythical creature or spirit of the mountain in Norse mythology.

The bergsrå could be either masculine or feminine. It lived in the mountain with a court of relatives and sometimes surrounded by trolls. It was a common phenomenon in the mythology about the bergsrå to trick people into their dwellings in the mountain and to become bergtagen (literary: "taken into the mountain"). These bergtagnings (Swedish: abduction into the mountain) are usual are done by lone males and their victims tend to be women.

A typical description of such a claimed occurrence was given by Sven Andersson in 1691 when he was on trial for having sexual intercourse with a female bergsrå.

Editorial summary

“Bergsrå” enters the record as mythical creature in Norse folklore. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bergsrå, mythical and creature can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1691—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bergsrå, mythical and creature.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bergsrå” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bergsrå, mythical and creature provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10428568. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1691.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bergsrå”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bergsrå primary sources, Bergsrå archive and Bergsrå research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bergsrå” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.