Sven Andersson (farmworker)
character in Swedish folklore
Sven Andersson (1668–1691), was a Swedish farmhand from Vättle in Västergötland, who was executed for having sexual intercourse with a bergsrå (a mountain-nymph; a mythical female creature of the mountain). The case is often quoted to illustrate the cases where humans were sentenced to death accused of having sexual relations with mythical creatures, and was likely the last one of such cases in Sweden. It also provides a good illustration of the phenomenon known as bergtagning (Literary: Taken by the mountain), which is a well-attested belief in old Scandinavia.
The case
Andersson was a farm worker. In 1690, he was observed by the parish vicar Petrus Magni Kellander to be pale and exhausted. The farmer Lars Jonsson informed Kellander that Andersson was often: "abducted by the bergrå and remained with her for days". When Andersson was questioned by Kellander as to the truth about these occurrences, he answered: "God help me, so it is!"
Sven Andersson stated, that he had fallen asleep in the woods one autumn day when searching for a missing goat, when he was taken in to the mountain by a woman in white. She gave him food and drink and had sexual intercourse with him. Kellander had him watched, gave him religious instruction and made him promise to stay away from the places where the supernatural woman used to meet him and take him away.
Shortly after this, Andersson was arrested because of the rumors.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sven Andersson (farmworker)” 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.